There’s a difference between willingly handing over information and being required to by law, though, right?
I’m no Meta fan, but presumably if they were served a warrant they can’t just say no?
That’s one of the benefits of E2E encryption, where nobody but the users have the keys. The company can say no, because they simply don’t have access to see them.
Came here to say this. Without e2e encryption there’s no way for them not to. And most big companies like this are in bed with the federal government and wouldn’t really entertain that seriously.
How can we monetize the contents of people's direct messages to each other if we support encryption?
<checks notes>
Oh. We can't. Decision made, then.
Right. They could implement E2E encryption, they just don’t want to - entirely plausible it’s because they don’t want to say no.
More likely it’s because they want the data :)
Signal protocol for all the things.
Only, then you can't get paid for snitching... (You get to charge the government for all those requests... and you basically get to set the price.)
Ah yes. All those fines and laws they regularly break, of course now is the time they'd be law abiding executives. Only when it means selling out some pleb and it doesn't hurt their profits. Then of course John Doe here who gets $0 for representing Meta on the web comes for the rescue of our great benefactors.
You’re straw manning. I didn’t say they act in good faith, but it’s important to make a distinction between them handing over the information and being made to.
For all I known they do hand it over willingly. I don’t know.
A lot of folks here seem concerned with it being lawfully ordered or voluntarily handed over. Which is kinda outside the point in my humble opinion. It's tantamount to asking if a slave catcher had a license.
Both the government and Meta are in the wrong here. And it's a very shitty moment for Meta to start caring about fines and regulations.
Every large company complies with data requests from the government. It is required and the fines for non-compliance are large. The only way around it is not storing anything at all.
It's absolutely not outside the point and a totally relevant question. Regardless of your stance on the issue, compliance with legal procedures is absolutely essential to a functioning society. Calls for companies to defy the law just to support your favored political position are asinine and dangerous.
Or they could have... You know, foreseen their responsibility in safeguarding their users data, implemented end to end encryption and not mishandled their users data in the first place.
Data privacy and human rights are my favored political positions to be fair, so I do view the acts of the government and Meta to be immoral. And as such, I would say companies and governments imposing immoral laws is dangerous (and not in an asanine way).
I'm not calling for companies to defy the law to support my position anyway. I'm calling for companies to do the right thing and not store this kind of data in the first place. And I'm saying the fact that Threads does is wrong, and makes the platform not worth using regardless of if they were complying with a court order or not.
Meta sucks and they don't respect their users privacy, but really the United States are falling backwards so hard, it's incredible.
That's interesting. So what would the appropriate response for Meta be when they are officially served a warrant?
It shouldn't be possible for Meta to hand over the data. There should be a wall of privacy between Meta and its users private messages. The company I work for doesn't even have access to customer accounts without the customer's permission.
Technically, unless that data is encrypted with only the end user having access to the key or is being held/mediated by a third party, they do have access. It's only company policy that's preventing access, and a court can shred that policy with a court order on a case by case basis. Same goes for the third party. The end user has to be the only one with the key.
Have I got news for you:
https://about.fb.com/news/2023/01/expanding-features-for-end-to-end-encryption-on-messenger/
It's late, they should've implemented it back when they took WhatsApp, but it's something. Meta definitely does not want to work with local law enforcement, bad for business.
About that data I'm not sure, but I'd immediately stop collecting it.
They would need to remove a lot of features for that to work.
They say billion of users before they monetize, but with the amount of Instagram users that will most likely use threads they will reach that milestone fast and for now they are just collecting data.
This screenshot doesn't indicate whether they were complying with a lawful order or volunteered the information unprompted.
Wait until Andrea Becker finds out the nazi, TERF, transphobe shit Twitter’s up to! WOOF.
