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Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

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467 points bundie | 3 comments | 08 Jul 25 16:11 UTC | HN request time: 0.019s | source
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bix6 ◴[08 Jul 25 16:59 UTC] No.44501849[source]▶
These big tech companies are so frustrating. Why does every single aspect of our digital lives need to be monitored? It’s like whack a mole trying to get the most basic of privacy.
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Workaccount2 ◴[08 Jul 25 17:45 UTC] No.44502307[source]▶
Because people collectively vote for the ad model over the subscription model.
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93po ◴[08 Jul 25 18:17 UTC] No.44502587[source]▶
people didn't vote for shit, if they could vote they'd vote for no ads and no cost. companies like google destroyed this option on purpose. there is no reason why the vast majority of apps and services online can't be both free and ad free. if i look for tetris on the app store it's literally impossible to find a version that's both ad free and free of purchases despite the fact that i know there's at minimum 100 options that fit this criteria. google/apple just buries them and deliberately doesnt allow filtering to find them
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thfuran ◴[08 Jul 25 18:35 UTC] No.44502738[source]▶
>there is no reason why the vast majority of apps and services online can't be both free and ad free

You can give away software, but running a service costs money. P2p messaging can be free (and signal exists), but nothing like free and adless YouTube or Facebook is going to happen regardless whether google or meta do anything to prevent it.

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1. 93po ◴[08 Jul 25 19:32 UTC] No.44503246[source]▶
there are tons of free mastadon servers that cost nothing to end users and perfectly capture the functionality of twitter/facebook/whatever. yes there is root cost at its core, but its distributed across people who volunteer to pay for it on smaller scales becasue they enjoy running those services.

agreed its trickier when its gets to stuff like youtube, but piracy being free and widely spread is an example of how its possible, just not well developed right now

there's also options where it's pay-as-you-go with stuff like bitcoin (e.g. i pay $0.01 to watch a video) where it's effectively free but on large scale does cover the costs of infra

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2. 9dev ◴[08 Jul 25 21:15 UTC] No.44504140[source]▶
As much as I despise ads, this is a pretty delusional take. Mastodon was only possible because of the hard work of open source contributors with day jobs that feed them. Running and accessing these instances requires all sorts of costly infrastructure that doesn’t materialise out of the blue. And finally, there may be a handful of geeks that enjoy paying for hosting, but that only works as long as it’s a niche community. Introduce 2 billion users, and it becomes just plain impossible.

And as you cite piracy as an alternative: that’s not "free" as in software, that’s "free" as in freeloading. Someone else is paying for it, just not you. That might work to fulfil your own needs, but it’s not a viable solution for business models.

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3. 93po ◴[10 Jul 25 18:09 UTC] No.44523836[source]▶
i think you're missing the point. my point is that free software exists, and i recognize that the people who build it arent paying the bills with it. i'm saying there's no logistical reason why the vast majority of software people use cant be open source even with this being the case - it's capitalist pressures that suppress its visibility and therefore adoption.

my point with torrenting is that people offer their bandwidth for free without any real incentive to do so. if there was more systemic open source adoption and awareness of how systems like this work well when people make token donations (like with bandwidth) then i think we could be fine.