Facebook let Netflix see user DMs, quit streaming to keep Netflix happy: Lawsuit
arstechnica.com
Facebook Watch, Netflix were allegedly bigger competitors than they let on.

in 2018, Facebook told Vox that it doesn’t use private messages for ad targeting. But a few months later, The New York Times, citing “hundreds of pages of Facebook documents,” reported that Facebook “gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages.”

Surprising? No. Appalling? Yes.

  • bluewing@lemm.ee
    16·
    9 months ago

    Meta didn’t “give” anybody shit. They sold that access. Do you see the difference?

    As always, users are the commodity.

    • null@slrpnk.net
      31·
      9 months ago

      What private info does Meta get through federation with other instances?

      I suppose any DMs sent to Threads users?

      • octopus_ink@lemmy.mlEnglish
        131·
        9 months ago

        My point here is not overtly about Privacy. It’s about recognizing that Meta has been a terrible corporate citizen for their entire existence. We shouldn’t be pretending they are some friendly geeky company that just wants to participate like the rest of us. Even if they were, that’s not possible when you are going to pour hundreds of millions of users into these fediverse spaces all at once.

        They will exploit the fediverse to the maximum extent they can, and we should not be voluntarily accompanying them.

        • Leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
          31·
          9 months ago

          That’s an excellent point that I don’t see mentioned very often. Quite aside from the fact that Threads has popular scumbags like Libsoftiktok on it, they have 100 million users.

          The existing fediverse is already struggling to moderate effectively. Various communities on Mastodon have already been exposed to vitriolic trolling and tools like fediblock are struggling to deal with it. Over here on the threadiverse, there have been numerous spam and CSAM attacks which, again, the existing tools are struggling to deal with.

          If even just 1% of the Threads userbase are bad actors, that’s still one million bad actors all at once. Just the weight of numbers alone is going to swamp most instances.

    • RandoCalrandian@kbin.social
      6·
      9 months ago

      And even if it is your key, if you can’t see how they made the lock then you can’t prove other keys won’t unlock it.
      OSS FTW

  • Syn_Attck@lemmy.today
    6·
    9 months ago

    I want to point out how similar this is to the FYES arrangement which allows close allies to spy on each other’s citizens to skirt the legal blocks of a country spying on its own citizens. This allowed Facebook to honestly say (from a legal standpoint) they didn’t read/use private messages for ads. Because they didn’t say they didn’t sell private messages to other companies for tons of $$$, and let them do the reading and advertising.

    Let’s not forget how similar Facebook is to a CIA program that ended from public scrutiny only a few years prior, and how much involvement Facebook now has with US Government entities.

    If the CIA (or just Facebook) wanted to

    • Kill budding decentralization concepts and

    • Cause overload to the system while Facebook retains ultimate control once everyone gives up or only a few small instances are left

    Threads is how it would be done. Interesting naming coincidence too, as pulling a thread causes the entire garment to become structurally compromised.

  • Fixbeat@lemmy.ml
    5·
    9 months ago

    I’ve never had Meta (anything) and I gave Netflix the boot a couple years ago. I encourage everyone to also flee. I think both are a waste and they fucking spy on you. I imagine those lengthy privacy statements gave them permission to do this, but sharing private messages is particularly egregious.

  • Elise@beehaw.org
    3·
    9 months ago

    Ugh and now it’s happening yet again with discord. Everybody seems to want me to be on discord. Just after I managed to get off everything. At least they seem kinda OK for now but we all know it’s just a matter of time until dr evil gets his hands on it.

    • Pigeon@beehaw.org
      2·
      9 months ago

      Yea I would stay away from discord as well. I truly wish I could switch away from it. I tried revolt but the whole “developing behind a closed repo” thing threw me off. The added difficulty is that my whole social circle uses discord, I do not want to be that guy who tries to make everyone move because of privacy concerns that they do not share.

  • Pika@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    3·
    9 months ago

    Surprise level: 0

    I’m not sure how anyone expects any form of privacy from any company Under The Meta umbrella. I would be more surprised to be told that they weren’t selling your data to every company that offered to buy it.

    I would say this should be ruled out / illegalized but personally I’ve hit that point where I really don’t think we’re ever going to have any right to privacy in this country(US), and the government itself benefits far too much from the same privacy Outreach. It will just end up being a slap on the wrist or another pop up saying “Hey by using the site you agree to XYZ” or “by making this account you accept to give away your first born child”. But considering the alternative is probably them making the service a subscription based, I’m expecting the majority of their users would prefer it this way.

    That being said, Facebook’s biggest push right now is all your chats are now end-to-end encrypted, so what this tells me is that either Facebook knew this PR was going to get out there and they wanted to do damage control early, or that Facebook is not doing true end-to-end encryption and that it’s still server client encryption between both clients with Facebook holding the shared key.

  • Manmoth@lemmy.ml
    1·
    9 months ago

    Anyone using these services in current year is asking for this. If someone is not computer literate and “has” to use these unnecessary services because they can’t selfhost or whatever they need to recognize that total exploitation of their data is the cost and it will never, ever change unless you own your data on your own hardware.

    I can’t reiterate enough how much the government will never ever solve this problem.

  • 0xtero@beehaw.org
    11·
    9 months ago

    If you want private messaging - use Signal.
    If you use any kind of messaging on commercial platforms, expect immediate loss of privacy. They call them “direct” messages for a reason.

          • null@slrpnk.net
            21·
            9 months ago

            Phone numbers are still required

            But are they still attached to messages?

          • Undertaker@feddit.de
            2·
            9 months ago

            That’s not the point. It was statet that each message is associated with the number. But it isn’t. The only way to achieve this in Signal is getting into your phone.

      • 0xtero@beehaw.org
        0·
        9 months ago

        Something something Privacy vs. Anonymity. But I invite you to try. Good luck getting into my phone!

        • Syn_Attck@lemmy.today
          1·
          9 months ago

          Man sitting at library table: tap tap tap tap tap

          Couple behind him: starts arguing violently, creating massive distraction

          Man at table: awww mannn

          Let me know how that Killswitch on your phone works, hope you configured the power button shutdown press time from the default 10 seconds to 2 seconds, because SWAT can throw a flash bang through your window and have their boot on your neck before you’re able to navigate the shutdown screen.

          Note: I am in no way siding with any government agency, only stressing that they know about encryption, and their goal is to get you on the ground before you have a chance to shut your phone off. Even if you do manage to turn it off in time, hopefully your phone has the latest and greatest in anti-coldboot technology. I don’t know that GrapheneOS or any security mods wipe RAM.

          • 0xtero@beehaw.org
            1·
            9 months ago

            Oh boy. Some of you people watch too many movies.

            Let’s get some basic stuff established:

            • This thread is about commercial platforms selling your direct message data. That’s the threat model.
            • I don’t live in a country where the police SWAT teams throw flashbangs without court orders
            • If the authorities want to get to me (which, again, is not the threat model of this thread). They can. Easily. They know where I live. They just have to knock on the door. It’s not even locked.
            • I did, to my best knowledge, not reply to you in anywhere this thread. I’m not sure why you are replying to me.

            But sure. I’ll give you this: If your threat model is dodging SWAT team flashbangs, I doubt using Signal is much use to you at that point. That just wasn’t what this thread was talking about.