Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Meta gave Netflix and Spotify access to users private messages (arstechnica.com)

submitted 8 months ago by leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

51 comments fedilink hide all child comments

in 2018, Facebook told Vox that it doesn't use private messages for ad targeting. But a few months later, The New York Times, citing "hundreds of pages of Facebook documents," reported that Facebook "gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages."

Surprising? No. Appalling? Yes.

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[–] Syn_Attck@lemmy.today 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I want to point out how similar this is to the FYES arrangement which allows close allies to spy on each other's citizens to skirt the legal blocks of a country spying on its own citizens. This allowed Facebook to honestly say (from a legal standpoint) they didn't read/use private messages for ads. Because they didn't say they didn't sell private messages to other companies for tons of $$$, and let them do the reading and advertising.

Let's not forget how similar Facebook is to a CIA program that ended from public scrutiny only a few years prior, and how much involvement Facebook now has with US Government entities.

If the CIA (or just Facebook) wanted to

Kill budding decentralization concepts and
Cause overload to the system while Facebook retains ultimate control once everyone gives up or only a few small instances are left

Threads is how it would be done. Interesting naming coincidence too, as pulling a thread causes the entire garment to become structurally compromised.