this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
332 points (95.6% liked)
Technology
60350 readers
6600 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Isn't whatsapp another data mining app for Facebook?
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.
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.
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.