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Comment by kevcampb | Hacker News Reader

Why would any privacy advocate want to block this deal? I can only see this deal being beneficial for privacy in the long run.

Facebook are unable to collect data from the service without changing the ToS, which will likely cause a user exodus.

It's going to put such a huge unrecoverable dent in Facebook's finances that it will be a significant long term disadvantage to them.

If you are a privacy advocate, wait until the deal completes and then jump ship and bring your friends with you.

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> "... without changing the ToS, which will likely cause a user exodus."

How many people are even aware of what the ToS says? I don't recall a mass exodus from Google when they merged their privacy policies so I don't expect to see it here (for similar reasons - where would they go?).

Edit: > "... then jump ship and bring your friends with you."

You make it sound like this is easy. It isn't. That's why networks have value and are hard to build.

> You make it sound like this is easy. It isn't. That's why networks have value and are hard to build.

Exactly. Facebook sure isn't paying $19 billion for the ability to shuffle words around from phone to phone.

You overestimate an average user's privacy concerns.

How is this good for privacy if Facebook's business model is selling personal information for financial gain? They could change the ToS anytime and sell all your personal information (several years of messages, photos, video) next day. Also, they could pass this all to the government for a nice pile of cash (without needing to change the ToS).

They cannot change the ToS to sell all of your personal information as their ToS specifically states they do not store or archive that information.

Passing it to the government is another matter...

$50 says no more than 0.5% of users will leave a Facebook-owned Whatsapp for privacy concerns. People do not care, at all.

Well Telegram advertised getting 5 million (~1% of WhatsApp) users in a day shortly after the sale was announced. Correlation doesn't always imply causation but in this case that's quite the coincidence.

Think you just earned $50

Jump ship? There is none on the horizon.

Isn't Telegram racing to the top of the charts?

I've personally moved myself and a few friends to telegram. In some ways it's better, in some ways it's worse. It's definitely a competitor

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