this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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Privacy
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I see a lot of people in this thread talking about an EU regulation that will allow interoperability between messengers. I'm an EU citizen living here and this is, on one hand, amazing, because we can finally ditch proprietary apps and still keep in touch with people that still use them.
On the other hand, I'm concerned about the privacy implications of this. Converting people to Signal is pretty difficult in most cases, however, once they download it and start using it, Facebook gets no messages and metadata from our chats. If this interoperability comes into play, most people will see no reason in downloading Signal, since they can chat with people on Signal anyway. This would mean, that Facebook would still get the chats.
To me, this looks like a desperate way for Big Tech to keep profiting off user data even though better alternatives exist, while making it even more difficult to get people on these better platforms.
What do you guys think about this?
I think that this danger will exist but it will be easyier to convince people to switch to other privacy-friendly alternatives because they don't have to ditch all of their friends still using the garbage shit
These are valid concerns. But I doubt Big Tech is joyfully opening up their userbase to third parties to harvet more metadata. they would rather keep their walled gardens intact, add to that smaller players are insignificant compared the billion users these companies already serve. question mark is what other shenanigans are they going to inact once this legislation in enforced.
"ah yes, sweet metadata of other people who don't even use our products."
I knew they were very data-hungry, but NOT THAT MUCH.
Facebook does collect data on non-users.
Yeah, they are in alot of websites. Buat now, even if you block trackers on your browser aggresively and use apps without fb tracking etc. etc. your data will still be collected by fb with this thing.
One alternative is going offline :D
I'm really concerned about this.
Conversely they could more easily be convinced to make the switch, since they could still communicate with their contacts without forcing them (and in turn the entire social graph) to change app too.
If it's implemented well I think it will be mostly beneficial and it could actually end up slowly transitioning a lot of people to privacy respecting apps whereas before it seemed so impossible, due to this chicken and egg problem