Unfortunately it's not that simple for everyone. I personally would lose contact with a lot of people if I delete Messenger or Whatsapp. On all my contacts, I have two on Signal, zero on Matrix.
It is though. It's astonishing how little people are willing to sacrifice for their ideals.
If you don't have an issue with Facebook then disregard and continue using their services. If you do have a problem then try being the change you want to see. Tend your garden. You cannot control other people but you can control yourself.
"Be the change you want to see" doesn't really work for society level collective action problems. My concern with Facebook isn't that they have too much information about me, it is that they know too much about my country's citizens in aggregate (and thus can manipulate them). Whether I opt out has a real impact on me, but zero impact on whether they can run disinformation campaigns and swing elections.
>Whether I opt out has a real impact on me, but zero impact on whether they can run disinformation campaigns and swing elections.
Being the change you want to see doesn't automatically mean the world changes. It just means live with principles regardless of external factors. You don't like Facebook? Then don't use Facebook. It's as simple as that. Others can take it or leave it.
I just see it as people complaining about Facebook while continuing to use Facebook so it must not be a very big deal to them.
The two actions people can take are:
1. Delete Facebook apps, Whatsapp and IG. This can have low to high utility loss for you, but has negligible effect on Facebook. It would have a bad effect for me, who has many family members and friends connected on whatsapp and needs whatsapp to connect to anyone whom I meet in my country.
2. Lead a movement to switch away from these apps. This has an insanely high overhead, and requires significant organisation of people and a large individual commitment. This would have a significant effect on Facebook.
This is how I view the problem. This is not an example of people being unwilling to act on their ideals. It's a situation where acting on their ideals would cause them a significant burden with no effect, and causing the intended change would require ridiculously large effort.
Facebook makes it easier, but it is not like friends did not keep in touch before Facebook. I regularly send SMS/ email friends I make it point to spend writing and replying to mails regularly.
Sure, occasionally people get frustrated that you are not on these platforms, however I ended up being lot more responsive and attentive to non social media forms of communication. Social media is usually low effort, I rather have one person wishing me with personal email on my birthday, rather than hundreds of meaningless FB posts.
It was actually harder for business contacts than personal, customers want to chat in whatever works for them, harder to say no to someone paying you. However Teams/Slack has helped a lot and dose of compliance reasons which customers find easier to go along with.
I deleted all social about 5 years ago I did notice a narrowing of my friend circle. However, I also noticed a net uptick in my own personal happiness. There will be tradeoffs that you have to consider and figure out what is best for you. I personally believe that social media in general is responsible for a lot of the problems in our society, so take my opinion with appropriate grains of salt.
I believe that forcing such companies to respect privacy better is the right solution.
Deleting the Facebook owned applications from my phone would achieve close to nothing positive. I may convince a few family members and good friends to use another application only for me, but I will lose a lot of relations and Facebook wouldn't care. However I also did work in small research studies to expose to everyone the bad practices of some companies about privacy. It's not much but it helps when our governments make laws such as the GDPR.
I stopped using Facebook and just started phoning and texting people a few years ago. Almost all the contact you have with people on Facebook is fake, it’s mostly sharing memes and news. It’s more personal to do that over the phone. I think I’m closer with almost everyone since leaving Facebook. Most of my contacts have installed signal of their own accord at some point too which is weird but pleasant
This probably works ok if all of your friends live in the same country as you (and that country still widely uses SMS). However it turns out that international calls/texts are still an expensive minefield, and folks who move around internationally don't have stable phone numbers (since those are tied to country). And as a result, WhatsApp/Messenger is the only viable communication method for a lot of folks.
If all your friends use WhatsApp/Messenger sure that works. However if you have friends in China you need WeChat, in some places Line is the main platform. Some people tend to use Google Hangouts or FaceTime only . A lot of friends do not want use any FB products and will use Signal/Telegram etc
Even if SMS is expensive, email is still quite free. It works almost like SMS/messaging on phone, you get push notifications on your phone and you respond.
I move around about countries every few months, keeping a VOIP/Skype phone number as the number anyone can reach you at works for me, while my local number is more for getting an internet connection and occasionally for signups to local apps (like rideshares, food delivery etc) that reject some VoIP numbers .
This doesn't provide end-to-end-encryption for WhatsApp so I'd actually call this worse than just using WhatsApp in the first place. Facebook gets all the data and your messages are stored somewhere (either at Beeper or on your own server) as plaintext.
But it frees you from having to have on your phone sketchy closed-source software from a an evil tech empire for whom you are the product. That's worth a lot. And you can self-host matrix bridges that will do this.
Facebook doesn't have access to WhatsApp messages. WhatsApp uses the same end-to-end encryption protocol as Signal. We know this is true because the app has been extensively reverse engineered to create these third party clients among other reasons.
WhatsApp is closed source, so you have no idea what it's doing. And they can push an update doing whatever they wish to you at any moment. You have to rely on Facebook pinky-swearing that it is what they say it is. And I promise you it isn't what they say it is.
Being open source isn't necessary or sufficient to be able to audit a piece of software. Software can be audited even if it's closed source (for example by reverse engineering, although it's more difficult), and even if it's open source it might still be impractically difficult for non-experts to audit.
WhatsApp client is made by Facebook. It must see plaintext so it can put it on the screen. If it doesn’t send it anywhere yet, good - but it’s borrowed time.
Yes, they very publicly state that they do not have access and I have yet to see a reason to not believe them in that regard.
All big Facebook data leaks and hacks have just exploited not very well known APIs or badly set privacy settings. But nothing that was secret.
Q: Why would Iran block Signal but not WhatsApp if they actually use the exact same protocol?
A: Because Facebook has cut a deal with the regime to give them access to things they could not get access to with Signal
I suppose it could be that blocking WhatsApp would cause too much disruption, so the Iranian regime tolerates it for now, but I put much more weight on Facebook just rolling over.
There are other instances of WhatsApp being allowed and other allegedly as-secure platforms being banned. It could be chance or network effects, but my guess is that Facebook has built in tools to comply with those regimes' spying demands. Perhaps they even push locale-specific versions of the app.
Law enforcement has access to a list of people who forwarded particular links or media.
This indicates that e2e has some bypasses or exceptions. It would be pretty much impossible to unearth the details though.
Use the web-app version on Firefox with the "Facebook container" extension, and just add an icon to the home-screen that links to it. (Note this is for fb not WhatsApp, in which case you'd have to consider alternatives like Telegram and Signal)
With respect, I don’t understand your comment. You’re saying Facebook provides you utility. Well, FBs business model is they provide you a service in exchange for your data. You have the option of engaging in that transaction — using their service in exchange for your data. Or you have the option of not using their service.
Legally, I’m not sure how you can have it both ways, aside from either FB offering a paid tier (you pay cash instead of providing your data), or we shut FB down entirely.
What exactly do you believe is the solution?
Personally, I think social media is more harm than good. I don’t want to ban or control social media companies (my local officials aren’t even capable of keeping drugs and homeless addicts off school grounds, let alone dictating internet regulation). My personal choice is to not use it.
The point f6v was making (I think) was that the same argument above, against using something else, was used by the email users of the day ("everybody is using email, why should I use ICQ or MSN etc."). But then eventually the tide changes. It's just difficult and lonely to be the first :)
People used to send writing on paper in an envelope. Some still do. Perhaps one thing that’s not being said is the degree we each care about communication relative to how we communicate; this is a very personal topic. I am one who deleted all social media (except HN; joined recently because the stress of it is lower and I still like to share) and one who is comfortable with the slow pace of letters and email-as-letters. I’m of the Star Wars generation, growing up with computers and still knowing what is was like to place orders by calling on a rotary phone the number on the back of the catalog.
I really hate it when people say “just delete Facebook apps”. I would lose touch with almost everyone I know. They either use Facebook or WhatsApp, I can’t justify deleting either.
Actually these type of situation show who are your friends. Your friends will call you, text you and arrange meets. And There’s FaceTime if your far from friend. Stop relying on Facebook to connect you…
Excuse me, but what? My friends text and call me through WhatsApp or Facebook. If anything, me ditching those two services would justify them not reaching out, because it implies I’m the difficult one. Me making it difficult to be reached does not mean they’re not my friends.
EDIT:
> And There’s FaceTime if your far from friend. Stop relying on Facebook to connect you…
I'm not even sure to describe how ignorant this comment is. Even if I stop relying on Facebook to connect me. Now I'm relying to Apple to connect me? Am I supposed to tell me friends that because I don't use Facebook, they should all buy an iPhone to connect with me?
>Me making it difficult to be reached does not mean they’re not my friends.
Is phone and SMS considered 'difficult' now? Everyone I know simply uses SMS and phone calls.
I suppose if you have globally distributed friends groups, this could be difficult, otherwise I don't see why. You give up a few features and it's not the most secure but it's a viable alternative almost everyone has access to.
Well, I live abroad, my family and friends have various group chats on WhatsApp and Messenger. I can’t blame them for not wanting to include me, since it would cost them quite a bit of money to text or call me.
Plus, phone calls are quite different from general text messages. Messages allows anyone to reply on a time they’re free for it.
So in general, yes, SMS is considered difficult, in my situation.
The main thing that WhatsApp and Messenger gave me was the ability to stay in touch with anyone I knew, wherever they lived. SMS just doesn’t cut it; huge fees and no groups. There’s really no alternative.
Doesn't email and mailing groups not exist any more ?.
It is kind of funny as every Andriod or iOS phone user effectively gets an email account as part of their access to the platform so it not like this generation doesn't have email.
Also everyone uses email for app registrations, bank accounts and for some formal communication so it not like they don't know how to use either.
It seems we have forgotten that we did live abroad and kept in touch via tools with no vendor lock twenty years ago, telecom (SMS/phone) was lot more expensive then as well.
Ultimately use what you like if you find WhatsApp more useful sure, however forcing a vendor locked in platform on to others I find is incredibly rude.
I am not forcing you to lock into a vendor when I call/SMS/email you.
Email does exist, but it just doesn’t feel the same. I don’t feel like I’m having a real time conversation when using email. Email is not instantaneous, so making plans can take a couple of hours, compared to a couple of minutes.
I haven’t forgotten the days of SMS/email, it’s just that instant messaging made things a lot easier.
I just don’t understand those arguments. It’s like agreeing to carpool with a group of friends, then suddenly you decide to move to another town. They’re not bad friends for not wanting to pick you up, it’s just not convenient anymore.
You’re seriously twisting things to somehow make a point. I don’t understand why you have to respond with such a demeaning comment in the first place.
Over the last 5-10 years I’ve established quite a few chatrooms with multiple friends. Me somehow now demanding they switch over and respect my privacy is ridiculous.
And yes, I already use Signal and Telegram with people who use it. I just don’t go around demanding every single person I know switches over, just because I say so.
The feature exists but the overall quality and variety just aren't the same. For whatever reason, people get comfortable with the familiar and even a cosmetic change creates a barrier.
> I can't even figure out how to use it from my mobile device without installing an app.
I believe that's deliberate. The mobile web version of Facebook used to support personal messaging. In 2016 they removed it in an effort to push people onto the app.
> Your Page's Inbox is not currently available in the
> Facebook app or mobile web browsers. You can access
> your messages through a desktop browser, or by
> downloading Facebook Business Suite or Messenger
> from the app store.
In one comment on HN[0], a user suggested:
> You may need to access the page by clicking a link
> from another mbasic page in order to have some kind
> of checksum in the URL.
Another user replied that they were able to get access to the page with that method[1], but I haven't been able to replicate it.
Messaging was still available for a long time through mbasic.facebook.com up until very recently.
They removed that feature at the time their last big messenger outage happened.
messenger.com still works on Android Firefox as long as you switch to desktop mode.
Not sure for how long though, as it looks as if they are constantly sabotaging their platform. ..and it shows: Facebook Messenger feels far less relevant than maybe ten years ago.
In my German peer group everyone now uses either WhatsApp or Signal for private and Teams+email for work related communication.
