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If you are still on Facebook, now is the time to delete it
- Thread starter Deleted member 17092
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WhatsApp is also end-to-end encrypted so nobody can see the contents of your message bar the recipient(s), so even using it for targeting data isn't really doable.
Waay ahead of you.
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When it comes to communication, consider using Signal
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It's not that easy. For video calls, yeah, I never even used it for that. But as a basic text app Whatsapp has just become ubiquitous in Europe. Actually I refused to get whatsapp for years because I thought I didn't need it and I didn't even have internet on my phone anyway. And if I'm honest i probably missed out on some cool stuff because of that.
Good friends and family will make an effort to contact you, sure. At least for important stuff. But if it's a spontaneous meet-up, "Hey, I'm at this park right now, does anyone want to come by?" Maybe not. Contacting people individually takes time. And there's also acquaintances who you probably wouldn't meet up with one-on-one, but who will include you in an invitation if it means just clicking on another icon on Facebook. Some of the coolest parties I've been on where the ones were I barely knew the hosts.
Most of my relatives live abroad. My 80-year-old grandparents are using whatsapp now and often post pics into our family group. They won't just switch to another app, it's taken them years to start using whatsapp. And I'm not close enough to my cousins to just call or email them what's up, but it's cool to see what they're doing from Facebook or our whatsapp group.
It's easier to keep in contact with older people who aren't technology savvy. I do family/friend group chats there and have connections there. It's not that easy to just delete. And i certainly don't want to delete over a decade worth of albums and pictures. I get why people want to delete theirs but i won't feel guilty why i am keeping mine.
Not to mention Oculus also forced you to use it to add friends and chat/voice chat and group up.
Umm. If you haven't used it since 2008 you probably not really aware how essential it is to a lot of people. You could even make an argument that is now a utility as much as a social app. Peoples livelihoods - business etc are on facebook, especially creatives and the leisure and catering industries. Keeping in contact with friends and family isn't a lame ass excuse either. Its peoples lives. Considering the globalised world we live in, people do have close contacts across the globe. People can contact each other for free. It will take a lot of work for people to migrate to other services, but even then that is likely not to tackle the root issues that trouble all social media sites - the balance of free speech.
I don't particulary like having to use it, but I have too. I am aware of the shitty attitudes and practices (that go back beyond this week i.e, Cambridge Analaytica etc) but I will continue to do so, until a viable alternative is there for me (And everyone to switch). I will keep on top of what they are doing and will always review my use of it, but unless facebook start cracking down on what people post then people won't switch or can't switch.
Another thing to consider is the last week, a lot of what we have seen as come through Social Media and Facebook. The fact that people have been able to record and broadcasts these heinous acts by the police is the very reason we are having these protests in the first place. That would not be possible without Facebook, or other social media apps. We've watched the entire last week unfold on social media. It actually gives us so much more information, and thinking about it, it actually frightens me to think what position we would be in without it. It as also been a platform for activism, many protests and meets, or ideas are organised through facebook.
Look, Social Media as it issues. It is easy to hate it but my position on it has changed throughout the last 5 years. The news doesn't give us everything. I have learnt and gathered so much information that I would never would have had without it. Ultimately it is up to the user to curate their own experience. Obviously it has its downsides and I really wish companies would do more to tackle those (it seems twitter is finally starting to). Like with anything, these assholes will bow down to its audience. If other organisations start moving ahead of them in other regards, facebook, or whoever will eventually follow.
I deleted mine on January 1st as a New Year's resolution to get rid of stuff from my life that wasn't adding any value to it. Facebook was at the top of that list. So glad I'm not on it anymore. My wife still is and is always complaining about the garbage she sees on Facebook. I feel liberated.
Pointless for me as I won't get rid of Instagram and Whatsapp.
Yes Facebook is evil, but it's also how you use it. I'm not converting any clicks for them (just our local version of The Onion, big whoop), and I'm certainly not engaging in politics on there.
Yes Facebook is evil, but it's also how you use it. I'm not converting any clicks for them (just our local version of The Onion, big whoop), and I'm certainly not engaging in politics on there.
I'm lucky that my job and livelihood does not require me to be on facebook. Like I don't have to manage a brand account or sell stuff on instagram, or w/e. One thing I do occassionally miss is that brands will post updated hours on Facebook, but usually not other sites/services. So, Facebook will have their COVID19 hours but their Google business page doesn't, for instance. My wife also buys a lot of stuff from shops on instagram. Thankfully I don't really have that need, I don't buy anything from brands like that.
Totally respect everybody's choice to use a service, I think if you get more value from it than you perceive the negative value to you or your community, then I think it's fair to keep using a service. Wanted to share a couple anecdotes about how leaving FB was... ~4 years ago:
I thought I'd really miss being able to flip back 15 years of photos, or w/e, but.... it was actually really liberating to not have to worry about any of that anymore, like, what happens if I have some embarrassing photo of me drunk from 2006 or something, and it turns up for some reason. I used to be really fanatical about controlling who has access to photos of me and things like that, but it was always this fear hanging over my head ... I remember the day before I got married, a friend of mine posted this thing about me which was totally in good spirits, not malicious at all, but it was about like, remembering being single and hitting the city and it just had a photo of us at some bar, and he did it in good fun and all, but I was legit stressed out about it and how other people coming to my profile from my wife's family, etc., would think about it... And I had tell him, like, hey that's awesome thank you, but....... do you mind removing it? And, just that feeling of really not having to worry about that anymore has been a major relief for me. Sure, someone could still write my name and tag something on it, but that's pretty unlikely now several years later... I think everybody's mostly forgotten I exist on FB and I'm happy about that.
One hard thing for me was birthdays, which is silly, but I felt bad that I didn't know a lot of my friends birthdays, so a couple years ago I went through and accumulated as many of my friends bdays as I could and entered them as recurring reminders in Google Calendar (Google Calendar has a birthday feature built in, but only if someone puts their bday in their google profile, which most don't do).
Totally respect everybody's choice to use a service, I think if you get more value from it than you perceive the negative value to you or your community, then I think it's fair to keep using a service. Wanted to share a couple anecdotes about how leaving FB was... ~4 years ago:
I thought I'd really miss being able to flip back 15 years of photos, or w/e, but.... it was actually really liberating to not have to worry about any of that anymore, like, what happens if I have some embarrassing photo of me drunk from 2006 or something, and it turns up for some reason. I used to be really fanatical about controlling who has access to photos of me and things like that, but it was always this fear hanging over my head ... I remember the day before I got married, a friend of mine posted this thing about me which was totally in good spirits, not malicious at all, but it was about like, remembering being single and hitting the city and it just had a photo of us at some bar, and he did it in good fun and all, but I was legit stressed out about it and how other people coming to my profile from my wife's family, etc., would think about it... And I had tell him, like, hey that's awesome thank you, but....... do you mind removing it? And, just that feeling of really not having to worry about that anymore has been a major relief for me. Sure, someone could still write my name and tag something on it, but that's pretty unlikely now several years later... I think everybody's mostly forgotten I exist on FB and I'm happy about that.
One hard thing for me was birthdays, which is silly, but I felt bad that I didn't know a lot of my friends birthdays, so a couple years ago I went through and accumulated as many of my friends bdays as I could and entered them as recurring reminders in Google Calendar (Google Calendar has a birthday feature built in, but only if someone puts their bday in their google profile, which most don't do).
Eh. Maybe NSA can't read your messages en route but the Whatsapp app certainly can when they have arrived and the app decrypts them. Whether it uses that data... I wouldn't put my trust with Facebook.
Don't use Facebook (deleted a while ago, it seem pointless now, looks like a aged and out of date service/site), never got into Instagram and Whatsapp. I'm glad I swayed my family from Whatsapp when my brother wanted a way to contact us when he was deployed during his tours in Kuwait and Afghanistan. I had no clue what Whatsapp was, still don't, got him to just use skype, so maybe it's a video facechat thing.
I don't use WhatsApp and I wouldn't, but unless WhatsApp and Facebook are lying about end-to-end encryption, nah, WhatsApp cannot read your messages. If you're security minded, like if you're a dissident in a dictatorship or you're sharing state secrets, you should not be using WhatsApp and cannot trust it, but for normal communication it's fair to assume that WhatsApp cannot read your commnications, unless they're lying about their end-to-end encryption... Whcih, sure, they could be, but if it's implemented the way they say it's implement, then the app cannot read your communication.
Signal, Viber, and WhatsApp (and others... like RIP Google Allo's secured chat feature) all basically use the same E2E encryption method: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Protocol
Deleted Facebook like 6 years ago. I could already how toxic it was for society even back then.
WhatApp though, I'm afraid there's no getting away from. I'd love to because I feel it's so slow to update with good features, but the reality is you'll just be the one left out if you move.
I do feel like it must be a money loser for FB though so at least there's that.
WhatApp though, I'm afraid there's no getting away from. I'd love to because I feel it's so slow to update with good features, but the reality is you'll just be the one left out if you move.
I do feel like it must be a money loser for FB though so at least there's that.
The app in this case would have to send the unencrypted message back to Facebook separately from the actual message, which would get picked up on immediately by security researchers. To wit, the EFF still lists Whatsapp as a secure messaging app. That said, this comes with several caveats about data collection, but none of them are directly related to reading message contents. Of course, none of those caveats apply to Signal itself, so it's far better to just use that than a Facebook branded version of it if you're concerned about security.
I was late to join the platform, but I've deleted my profile almost a year ago. This shit was worthless, considering there's nearly an infinite alternative ways to contact people. So far every alternative I've found has brought me actually closer to the people I want to talk to, meaning facebook did a fucking terrible job at what they were supposed to be doing anyway.
I don't think it's that easy for security researcher's to know exactly what data is being sent where, if the app itself is not open source. As far as I can tell the following means that they share or will share your information with facebook:
"Facebook data sharing
WhatsApp's recent privacy policy update announced plans to share data with WhatsApp's parent company Facebook, signalling a concerning shift in WhatsApp's attitude toward user privacy. In particular, the open-ended, vague language in the updated privacy policy raises questions about exactly what WhatsApp user information is or is not shared with Facebook. WhatsApp has publicly announced plans to share users' phone numbers and usage data with Facebook for the purpose of serving users more relevant friend recommendations and ads. While existing WhatsApp users are given 30 days to opt out of this change in their Facebook user experience, they cannot opt out of the data sharing itself. This gives Facebook an alarmingly enhanced view of users' online communications activities, affiliations, and habits."
Where WhatsApp Went Wrong: EFF's Four Biggest Security Concerns
UPDATE (1/26/17): In response to news about WhatsApp's key management choices, we have added additional information about related trade-offs under "Key change notifications."After careful consideration, we have decided to add additional warnings and caveats about using WhatsApp to our...
Default online backup of decrypted messages results in the same. It's a few years old, so I don't know if you have more recent news on policy changes.
I get what is being asked here. I personally got rid of Facebook 2 months ago. But saying to remove a service that makes it super fast and easy to communicate with a lot of family and friends and to just "get their contact numbers" and to call and text them shit from now on. That actually takes a LOT more effort and time compared to posting something on Facebook or Instagram and getting a lot of responses at once and an easy to use field to replay back to each of them all in the exact same place.
You cannot judge someones time and situation. For me personally, i'm very self isolating, regardless of the pandemic. I've been called out on it all my life. "you always just go missing for months on end, do you not care?". So social media and the easy interaction has been a massive blessing for me to keep in touch with my huge family and old friends who now live far away, have families of their own, and don't have the time to call and chat like when we were all young.
So until a new app hits and grows HUGE like FB, this is gonna be a no from a lot of people. After I rage perma deleted my FB account, i then looked at my Instagram and realized only 10% of my FB friends are even on there. I searched and so many people don't even use it, which is the 2nd most popular service. So what is a person to use if not either of these?
And those that use it for work, some jobs require having it. Not everyone is self employed and can just change their shit on the dime and not cause problems.
You cannot judge someones time and situation. For me personally, i'm very self isolating, regardless of the pandemic. I've been called out on it all my life. "you always just go missing for months on end, do you not care?". So social media and the easy interaction has been a massive blessing for me to keep in touch with my huge family and old friends who now live far away, have families of their own, and don't have the time to call and chat like when we were all young.
So until a new app hits and grows HUGE like FB, this is gonna be a no from a lot of people. After I rage perma deleted my FB account, i then looked at my Instagram and realized only 10% of my FB friends are even on there. I searched and so many people don't even use it, which is the 2nd most popular service. So what is a person to use if not either of these?
And those that use it for work, some jobs require having it. Not everyone is self employed and can just change their shit on the dime and not cause problems.
It's impossible to not use WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger for most people outside the US. I can't delete those unfortunately.
Facebook is completely irrelevant in this day and age.
But telling people to use SMS instead of WhatsApp is unrealistic. People use WhatsApp for work, it's literally a necessity. There has to be a replacement for it that isn't reverting to some outdated messaging service because WhatsApp is far more than just a texting platform. Telegram is good but people need to spread the word so more of us start making the switch.
But telling people to use SMS instead of WhatsApp is unrealistic. People use WhatsApp for work, it's literally a necessity. There has to be a replacement for it that isn't reverting to some outdated messaging service because WhatsApp is far more than just a texting platform. Telegram is good but people need to spread the word so more of us start making the switch.
Facebook is not irrelevant. It has enormous political influence. I found it pretty easy to quit though.
I'm informing my WhatsApp contacts that I won't be available in that app, and including a link to download Telegram. I'm going to install Telegram on my parents' phones personally. I'm not going to tell anyone else what to do.
I don't use Facebook or WhatsApp for work. For people who do, just do what you can. You can use multiple apps, it won't kill you.
Just remember you can download all your facebook data very conveniently right through their account settings. I tried it and it works. It even comes with nice HTML offline albums.
Sorry, didn't spot your link. After having read that, it seems to me that we can hardly feel safe from facebook's adtracking when using whatsapp.
1.Because of the closed-source nature of whatsapp, we really have no idea how whatsapp have implemented the protocol. (and facebook has a history of not living up to its privacy promises.)
2.Default online backup of decrypted messages you have to remember to turn it off - and who does that because it's so convenient. 3.And finally the updated privacy policy and admitted meta data sharing with facebook.
But most importantly we agree on using Signal instead.
I deleted my Facebook last weekend. I still have messenger for family chat. I might delete that and require text messages instead.
Facebook doesn't matter to me but whatsapp is too integral to my day to day life to even consider deleting.
True, what I meant is that with so many other social media apps available now, it's pretty easy to still keep in touch with friends and family without having Facebook. It isn't irreplaceable for the average user. Messaging apps are a different beast, as it's basically only iMessage and WhatsApp dominating atm.
I got rid of Facebook in April and made a post to my "friends" to DM me if they wanted my contact info. No one did. Facebook gets me too worked up because of all the dumb fucking opinions have anyway.
Deleted years ago. Facebook has been a shitty company for a long time. The entire board of directors at this point are Trumpers after they ran everyone else off.
I did similar last year. I will say that if you wanted any of those friends to stay in touch, you should have DMed them. That way they know you give a shit.
That's a tip for anyone planning to leave FB. If there are people you want to stay in touch with, you should be the one to reach out.
Messenger is the main line of communication with my family and that's not easily thrown away and they will never likely change. So no unfortunately, it's not that easy.
unfortunately it's a pretty entrenched venue for leftist organizing in my area. it wouldn't be worth it.
I have it, but just for event planning (so my wife can invite me), and for some D&D stuff, but sometimes I got months without logging in. I have just the one friend.
explaining that to 100+ seperate families sounds like a nightmare (I do photography)
I can never leave Instagram because it's...
I do not blame anyone who doesn't want to leave Insta.
I get it. But no, I won't be deleting it. I want to still have contact with my family/friends, it isn't as easy as you try to make it out to be. Not everyone texts people in their lives, with Facebook, I know that they're still around, I'll know if something happened with them or how they're doing. If I'm just regulated to a contact number on my phone, I lose all of that. Then there's the many groups that I participate in, or even just finding out about events that are happening that I wouldn't find out otherwise. You're just assuming at this point that I'm going to have contacts with other means like SnapChat/Twitter/Discord, not everyone has that
One log in (even accidental) and your profile is back, fully functioning. Unless you really completely delete it, but Facebook really doesn't want that to happen of course - it's conviently well hidden behind a lot of clicks.
Can we please stop this "well just give them your phone number" nonsense, it is absurd. I am in several groups on WhatsApp. If I leave and nobody else does then they will just keep communicating in those groups and I will just miss it all. I'm not deleting WhatsApp.
