Sure, but at that point, it’s a legitimate question of what goal you’re trying to satisfy with E2EE. This doesn’t prevent metadata analysis being used for marketing purposes - and if that’s something you’re strongly against, that’s perfectly fair - but it does make it completely impossible for message content to be provided to law enforcement, even in the face of a warrant. That is hugely powerful, because we’ve already seen cases of FB Messenger texts being used to go after women who get abortions, just for one example. In countries with truly oppressive governments, that benefit can’t be overstated.
Sure, Facebook will try to sell you some shit, but they’re not going to send the police to arrest you. Having E2EE is a strict improvement over the status quo, and if you do care deeply about privacy on the more commercial side, there’s always Signal or other privacy-first services.
You raise a good point, and it’s that Facebook could be doing this for benevolent reasons. But on the flip side, let’s say they are pressured by a government who wants to know about users messaging each other about abortion.
What would prevent them from being pressured into turning their client-side abuse material scanning into politically motivated client-side scanning with something as simple as a “red flag word” list update, which could be pushed exclusively to users in a particular country or state?
Maybe. To me, it looks like social media companies operate total impunity, either not getting caught at all, or getting mostly ignored if they do get caught. Between PRISM and the whistleblowing bombshell, you’d figure the company wouldn’t be the biggest social network in existence, but Facebook persists.
Sure, but at that point, it’s a legitimate question of what goal you’re trying to satisfy with E2EE. This doesn’t prevent metadata analysis being used for marketing purposes - and if that’s something you’re strongly against, that’s perfectly fair - but it does make it completely impossible for message content to be provided to law enforcement, even in the face of a warrant. That is hugely powerful, because we’ve already seen cases of FB Messenger texts being used to go after women who get abortions, just for one example. In countries with truly oppressive governments, that benefit can’t be overstated.
Sure, Facebook will try to sell you some shit, but they’re not going to send the police to arrest you. Having E2EE is a strict improvement over the status quo, and if you do care deeply about privacy on the more commercial side, there’s always Signal or other privacy-first services.
You raise a good point, and it’s that Facebook could be doing this for benevolent reasons. But on the flip side, let’s say they are pressured by a government who wants to know about users messaging each other about abortion.
What would prevent them from being pressured into turning their client-side abuse material scanning into politically motivated client-side scanning with something as simple as a “red flag word” list update, which could be pushed exclusively to users in a particular country or state?
Nothing technically would prevent that, but eventually that evidence would end up in public court and the ruse would be up.
Maybe. To me, it looks like social media companies operate total impunity, either not getting caught at all, or getting mostly ignored if they do get caught. Between PRISM and the whistleblowing bombshell, you’d figure the company wouldn’t be the biggest social network in existence, but Facebook persists.