• UltraMagnus0001
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    291 month ago

    Isn’t whatsapp another data mining app for Facebook?

    • @TheGrandNagus
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      1230 days ago

      Yes, although to nowhere near the same extent as Facebook and Instagram.

      The chats are E2EE using Signal’s encryption protocol, so very good.

      But they will certainly mine everything else they can get. They may not know what you’re saying, but they do know who you’re talking to, when you’re doing it, your contacts, your profile pic, how often you send images, etc. any web links with tracking info embedded in the URL will likely be tracked too, once you open them.

      • yeehaw
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        530 days ago

        This still baffles me. What’s Facebook’s end game here? They are built on data collection and spying, but they own an app that is E2EE.

        • @Loce
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          529 days ago

          If you go only by the metadata, they know all your friends, their phone numbers, your location history, when do you chat, with whom, how often and how long. And I’m fairly sure they index conversation in some form.

          Just location history can paint a decent picture of what you do, where do you go, what do you like, which friends are nearby, etc… and all of that was implemented like 15+ years ago, imagine what they can do today with AI. It’s fair to say FB knows more about you then you do (FB, IG, Wapp…). And to be blunt, it could probably determine what ppls shit smells like, judging by all the pictures of a meal they post on IG.

        • @TheGrandNagus
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          29 days ago

          Honestly, I think they just saw that Whatsapp was becoming the standard chat app for basically all of the world outside of the US and China, and just didn’t want anybody else to have it.

          Additionally, metadata is better than no data, I guess.

          • sunzu2
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            129 days ago

            Meta data is prolly more valuable at scale…

            Most of are really generic so any single normie data package has but so much value. Middling income with middle hobbies etc

            However, having data on 330 million pedons along with each ones connections, thats power.

        • @[email protected]
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          329 days ago

          The metadata. The message content is E2E, but the data about the content isn’t necessarily e2e.

          • yeehaw
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            229 days ago

            Good point. Figuring out who is talking to who is valuable info for them too.

            • sunzu2
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              129 days ago

              Meta data is more valuable than whatever is being discussed most of the time