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Comment by teekert | Hacker News Reader

Whatsapp gained massive users with their "no commercials ever" claim. They were a small independent company. And people arguably got invested in the network as a result. Now they reverse on that but the public feels locked in. I myself think... just switch to Signal or Telegram, but the amount of WA users is simply massive here in the EU. Everybody uses it.

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Sometimes I wonder if the strategy of announcing "due to the anti commercial data privacy demands in Germany we are forced to suspend all German WA accounts for the next couple of days" is ever discussed at Facebook.

I'd be interested to see the political pressure it would create. I think the network is strong enough that people won't switch to other apps instantly and there would be a pretty big "just gimme back my WA" outcry which politicians would probably need to respond to.

Obviously the Datenschutzbeauftragte are theoretically independent but I'm sure they'd feel the heat. At least I'd be interested in seeing this play out if a law is being discussed. It won't ever happen but I have a feeling people would want WA enough that it could theoretically be used as a strategy.

My understanding is that the German people generally are very wary of data being moved around and collected 'unnecessarily'. I think a ploy like this would only backfire on FB.

I already see non-technical people switching; it would backfire massively since now the rest will overcome their inertia too.

Yes, I'd second that. While there would no doubt be some sort of outrage from the users, I don't think it would be nearly as strong as suggested. Germans in general, and especially the more educated, tend to be very protective of their data protection rights. If FB attempted something like this, it would be torn to shreds by German media.

> Germans in general, and especially the more educated, tend to be very protective of their data protection rights.

Indeed being German I can say this is true for Germany because of the experiences with two dictatorships on German ground in the 20th century - the last one ending only about 26 years ago. Many people living in the GDR that were under supervision by the Stasi (often without knowing) have read the Stasi file (if it exists) and know what details have been recorded about their lifes and what kind of kompromat could in principle be derived from it.

And oddly, Germany requires to to declare your religion to the government. So I guess the question would be: what is considered necessary? If Facebook needs data to offer a free service, that seems necessary unless Facebook employees are volunteers and servers run on kitten sneezes and rainbows.

> And oddly, Germany requires to to declare your religion to the government.

I trust my government with my data (well, mostly) because if it abuses that trust, I know that I and my fellow citizens can vote it out of power. We have no such control over FB.

This is not a requirement by the government. The question is asked on behalf of the communities of faith that explicitly tasked the government with that. That is a right religious communities have guaranteed by the constitution.

The government is not asking you if you are a member of a religious community that has not choosen to use that service.

Do you mean on tax forms or the declaration that you are not a member of Scientology?

Afaik you can enter whatever you want on the tax form, it is just used to collect membership fees/church tax on behalf of a church. Mostly part of an old deal between the state and the catholic church.

Scientology on the other hand counts more or less as an enemy of the state, stability and not something you let near children. So you need to fill out a corresponding form for specific jobs. If even half the stories of what they get up to are true that is a good thing.

I think people would switch pretty quickly. Most people will have friends locally and regionally - there will be some cut off internationally but they'd be the minority. And if everyone you know is prevented from using the same messaging service, the expedient solution is to change to a different one.

I think also that it would backfire, if you look at what happened in Brazil [0], the blockade made Telegram very popular and again with what's happening here, they benefit [1].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10749129

[1] https://twitter.com/telegram

Extreme non-techies will say "WhatsApp is broken, use this app instead". People who read the news will know it's about the US companies wanting to spy on your data (remember Germans don't have US 4th Amendment rights), and will switch apps.

I'm not convinced German constitutional protections are weaker than the 4th Amendment. The constitution even includes a right to the guarantee of confidentiality and integrity of information technology systems as ruled by the constitutional court. https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Entscheid...

I think the argument is more that Facebook is a US company, Facebook isn’t bound by German law (unless they operate in Germany, which they do), and the 4th Amendment only applies to Americans.

> Facebook isn’t bound by German law (unless they operate in Germany, which they do)

If you're not in the USA or Canada, and use Facebook, your agreement is with Facebook Ireland Ltd, and bound by Irish, and European, data protection law.

A Facebook user in India has EU data protection rights.

> I'm not convinced German constitutional protections are weaker than the 4th Amendment.

Here's a report from the EU commission about why the US constitutional/legal protection is much less than the EU (and hence German) equivalent:

    http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2015/519215/IPOL_STU%282015%29519215_EN.pdf

Basically: Unlike the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, US 4th Amendment doesn't cover non-US people outside the US, and it only covers government warrents. What Facebook does with your data is not covered by the 4th Amendment. What Facebook does with your data is covered by Article 8 of the EUCFR.

Telegram is a terrible platform and not at all comparable to signal.

Could you elaborate? I am using Telegram not because of privacy concerns but because of the desktop and tablet clients. I had absolutely no issues so far.

Telegram's weak points, as far as I can tell:

* chats not end-to-end encrypted by default (only secure chats), so clear text is on their servers

* group chats can't be secure chats

* the crypto is somewhat unconventional. While the developers had their reasons (constraints of mobile platforms), and no exploit has been found so far, AFAIK, any self-rolled crypto is a bit of a red flag to cryptographers.

* I have no reason to distrust Pavel Durov or his motives, but I am somewhat skeptical of services based in Russia (also, just to be clear, of services based in the USA or other five eyes).

To me, Wire might be the best of both worlds (as I've said in another post in this thread, and BTW I am not connected to them in any way):

Signal protocol; based in Switzerland; smartphone, desktop and web client; free; text and voice chat and group chat; open source (GPLv3, and on github); signup with phone number or email.

Wire does not use Signal Protocol. They use a protocol of their own devising that we do not recommend.

hey moxie! thanks for your work on signal

https://github.com/wireapp/wire#proteuscryptobox for info on Proteus/Cryptobox that Wire uses.

Telegram is not based in Russia. Pavel Durov fled the country and is currently operating Telegram from Germany.

It's not end-to-end encrypted, so telegram still has access to all your messages and can turn over data in the case of a subpoena or if they just feel like it.

the desktop client was not encrypted at all last i checked, only the mobile client.

signal is e2e encrypted, it's in a completely different ballpark

Maybe encryption-wise but function-wise it is miles ahead of both WA and signal. There are bots, stickers, live preview of gifs and (YouTube) movies, an audio player built in, an API, real desktop clients (yes I understand that breaks e2e encryption but it's nice when my phone battery is dead I can still send people messages), channels, cloud storage. Still it feels faster than WA. WA is a (very) local minimum and moves very slowly, we can do much better as users.

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