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530 points mdhb | 7 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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brk ◴[] No.45063156[source]
I've removed all Meta apps other than Whatsapp (and I don't love that). I haven't had the Facebook app on my phone in well over a decade. Had Instagram for a while, I was casually active on it, but Meta just keeps convincing me not to be trusted.

Facebook mobile is a suboptimal experience, which is fine, it just reminds me to use it less.

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skylurk ◴[] No.45063242[source]
On iOS, whatsapp is weirdly pushy about getting unlimited access to your photo album.

They also go out of their way to make it hard to save a photo without granting full access. Creepy.

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1. vladvasiliu ◴[] No.45063267[source]
IME giving it "limited access" works well; you can save anything without issue.

What pisses me off, though, is that I didn't find a way to give a contact a name without allowing it access to the phone's contacts.

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2. skylurk ◴[] No.45063427[source]
Tested it, and yes, when I increase the access from "Add Photos Only" to "Limited Access" I can add photos again.

But now Whatsapp retains access to all the photos I added unless I go into settings and revoke access to those photos. Creepy.

And yeah the contacts thing also pisses me off. They know what they are doing.

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3. gruez ◴[] No.45063850[source]
>But now Whatsapp retains access to all the photos I added unless I go into settings and revoke access to those photos. Creepy.

Not really, given whatsapp could be theoretically keeping a local copy and the operating system can't really do anything about it. It would also be a pretty weird case to code. Imagine writing an app where if you tried to save a file, you couldn't immediately access it afterwards.

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4. skylurk ◴[] No.45064187{3}[source]
> Imagine writing an app where if you tried to save a file, you couldn't immediately access it afterwards.

It works fine in other apps such as Signal and even Teams.

I don't really want Moxie or MSFT to have persistent access to any part of my personal photo album either, no matter how good they say they'll be.

5. vladvasiliu ◴[] No.45065133[source]
> But now Whatsapp retains access to all the photos I added unless I go into settings and revoke access to those photos. Creepy.

I think this is good enough. If you consider they do shady stuff with your pictures, you might as well consider that they hold on to anything they get their hands on right away.

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6. mckn1ght ◴[] No.45066759{3}[source]
I think you meant to say you don’t think this is good enough? And I’d second that.
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7. vladvasiliu ◴[] No.45073534{4}[source]
No, I do think it's good enough.

My idea is that if WhatsApp can't be trusted, once it gets access to any file, it will hold on to it. So revoking access to something it already has won't accomplish all that much, since I've already figured that I can share that file with them.