There's a general trend right now against privacy and in a more general sense against freedom. More and more companies are on board with it. I'm not sure if anyone in HN has any useful advice in this regard. I feel like I don't know what to do about the internet for the next 5-10 years. Does this particular measure matter very much? No, but it's another brick in the wall.
treesknees 2 hours ago [-]
It could be a move to have parity with TikTok, where they claim it’s for safety reasons. I’ve been seeing advertisements for Instagram touting their child/teen protection features. Seems like they’re really trying to beat the allegations that Instagram is bad for children’s health.
The sad part is, Instagram is exceptionally damaging to kids for a disjoint set of reasons.
dmix 1 hours ago [-]
Protecting kids and Terrorism, always the reason why nobody is allowed to have privacy on the internet.
nunobrito 1 hours ago [-]
Cars nowadays are packed with microphones and permanently connected to the internet on daily basis so that drivers can have remote assistance when the car breaks once every 5 years or so.
Sayrus 48 minutes ago [-]
I keep hearing this one. But at least for EU, the eCall system requires external communication to be disabled until activated during serious accident. It cannot be used for tracking the vehicle in real-time.
> 2. The personal data processed pursuant to this Regulation shall only be used for the purpose of handling the emergency situations referred to in the first subparagraph of Article 5(2).
> Manufacturers shall provide clear and comprehensive information in the owner's manual about the processing of data carried out through the 112-based eCall in-vehicle system. That information shall consist of:
> the fact that there is no constant tracking of the vehicle;
That vehicle nowadays are equipped with always-on internet and microphones is not related to remote assistance.
SV_BubbleTime 34 minutes ago [-]
This is such misdirection.
Your car if new enough, IS reporting its diagnostics including GPS via cell. All the time. This isn’t exactly personally identifiable so they get away with it just fine.
This is unrelated to the microphones and assistance systems.
Sayrus 6 minutes ago [-]
Which is exactly my point. Cars are reporting on you, but tying that to remote assistance is disingenuous.
Which just shows that consumers don't care. Tesla's camera surveillance wasn't exactly secret.
jszymborski 43 minutes ago [-]
Protect your kids from whom? Surely not Meta, which is my main concern.
plagiarist 18 minutes ago [-]
It certainly is unsafe for their AI training corpus. Win / win if they can also lie about protecting children as a motivation.
PunchyHamster 1 hours ago [-]
More like excuse
varispeed 1 hours ago [-]
How these protections are working when I get served literal porn every couple of shorts on Instagram?
morpheuskafka 29 minutes ago [-]
So apparently this was opt-in, much like Telegram's OTR chat feature, and thus completely different than WhatsApp where it has always been default. Not a good look regardless, but the few who went into chat settings for a specific person to turn this on in the first place will likely just switch to WhatsApp or another app rather than continue without it.
garbawarb 2 hours ago [-]
When Meta starting introducing E2E messaging it was a huge push. I wonder why they're doing away with it.
gmerc 1 hours ago [-]
It was for plausible deniability because of regulatory scrutiny. Regulator's dead now, so now there's no downside and only upsides to spying on your users.
dngray 39 minutes ago [-]
They never did this for user privacy, and yes I think you're spot on. This was just to remove liability.
Now it just costs them the data and development cost to maintain. Any remaining problems they'll throw some crappy AI moderator at to fix.
gmerc 18 minutes ago [-]
Not hard to be right about this when you worked there at the time ;)
infinitewars 8 minutes ago [-]
Palantir
john_strinlai 2 hours ago [-]
i am guessing that they just dont really need to pretend to care anymore. e2e messaging was a big marketing push, not ever an ideological thing. i assume they no longer believe the marketing benefits outweigh the downsides.
varispeed 1 hours ago [-]
Probably Whatsapp is next, if it isn't quietly already.
garbawarb 40 minutes ago [-]
I doubt it, E2E isba huge part of Whatsapp's selling point considering it's exclusively a messaging app. Instagram is primarily a social app with messaging features.
deafpolygon 1 hours ago [-]
> Probably Whatsapp is next, if it isn't quietly already.
And I will be pushing to remove WhatsApp if that’s the case.
gausswho 1 hours ago [-]
Is this legitimate? It's so incoherent to see this blurb at the top saying it's being retired while everything underneath is pitching the value of e2e.
Bender 8 minutes ago [-]
Never rely on a platform used by the masses to perform E2EE. It is far too easy to strip away E2EE for targeted users without their knowledge as they maintain the server and client code.
Instead consider using a code word or phrase to move sensitive conversations to something self hosted such as jabber using OMEMO XEP-0384 and XEP-0373 OpenPGP for XMPP and SASL SCRAM. OMEMO is an implementation of the Signal protocol on top of the XMPP protocol.
e.g. "_Expletive_! I stubbed my toe!" other-person: "lol geezer watch where you are walking." conversation quietly and temporarily moves to the pre-shared self-hosted Jabber server. Temporarily because going dark can draw attention. Feed the big chat platform boring garbage and misdirection.
dcliu 1 hours ago [-]
On the other hand Messenger has moved to only supporting e2ee chats, wonder why the difference.
GuB-42 19 minutes ago [-]
To me, Instagram is a public platform at its core, where people publish things for the whole world to see. Private messages are just a secondary feature.
It is like having a conversation in a restaurant, where the guy at the next table can listen to everything, but usually doesn't. Good enough for planning a surprise party, not for truly sensitive information. Kind of like private messages in Reddit, Discord, etc... a convenient feature, but don't expect real privacy.
Messenger has a higher expectation of privacy, Facebook is more at the "group of friends" level. While Instagram is a public restaurant, Facebook is more like a house party. WhatsApp has the highest expectation of privacy as it is designed for private, often one-to-one conversations first.
yobid20 20 minutes ago [-]
because they want to read your messages for training ai and for advertising
zipping1549 2 hours ago [-]
We all know what this means.
villgax 1 hours ago [-]
just waiting on whatsapp to rug pull as well & then bye bye privacy & meta from my life
dylan604 57 minutes ago [-]
Wouldn't bye bye meta be hello privacy into your life?
emsign 1 hours ago [-]
The USA is going full fascism. People keep laughing at it and only realize it when it's too late.
apopapo 1 hours ago [-]
It's not only the united states of America. These tyrannical views have been brewing everywhere for years, and there was not enough public counter-narrative to these ideologies.
chromic04850 17 seconds ago [-]
[dead]
some_furry 2 hours ago [-]
I wonder if this is the start of a trend or just a one-off?
odo1242 4 minutes ago [-]
Probably a one off? Instagram’s e2ee was opt-in from the start- and meanwhile Facebook Messenger is now “e2ee for everyone” and none of this is affecting the main e2ee messaging apps people use - WhatsApp, Signal, and iMessage
nunobrito 1 hours ago [-]
TikTok replied recently it wouldn't encrypt its messages either, citing user security as reason.
arunc 1 hours ago [-]
Wait, people trust communication via Instagram thinking they are secure?
blitzar 1 hours ago [-]
Facebook were at both ends, the encryption was between the ends.
Rendered at 15:32:35 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47241817
Some parts of the legislation (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32...):
> 2. The personal data processed pursuant to this Regulation shall only be used for the purpose of handling the emergency situations referred to in the first subparagraph of Article 5(2).
> Manufacturers shall provide clear and comprehensive information in the owner's manual about the processing of data carried out through the 112-based eCall in-vehicle system. That information shall consist of:
> the fact that there is no constant tracking of the vehicle;
That vehicle nowadays are equipped with always-on internet and microphones is not related to remote assistance.
Your car if new enough, IS reporting its diagnostics including GPS via cell. All the time. This isn’t exactly personally identifiable so they get away with it just fine.
This is unrelated to the microphones and assistance systems.
Now it just costs them the data and development cost to maintain. Any remaining problems they'll throw some crappy AI moderator at to fix.
And I will be pushing to remove WhatsApp if that’s the case.
Instead consider using a code word or phrase to move sensitive conversations to something self hosted such as jabber using OMEMO XEP-0384 and XEP-0373 OpenPGP for XMPP and SASL SCRAM. OMEMO is an implementation of the Signal protocol on top of the XMPP protocol.
e.g. "_Expletive_! I stubbed my toe!" other-person: "lol geezer watch where you are walking." conversation quietly and temporarily moves to the pre-shared self-hosted Jabber server. Temporarily because going dark can draw attention. Feed the big chat platform boring garbage and misdirection.
Messenger has a higher expectation of privacy, Facebook is more at the "group of friends" level. While Instagram is a public restaurant, Facebook is more like a house party. WhatsApp has the highest expectation of privacy as it is designed for private, often one-to-one conversations first.