this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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[–] [email protected] 241 points 6 days ago (5 children)

I think teens abandoned Facebook like 10 years ago

[–] [email protected] 94 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Surely longer ago than that? Facebook hasn't been cool for probably over 15 years

[–] [email protected] 33 points 6 days ago (4 children)

Has FB been cool since they got rid of signups limited by .edu email addresses?

[–] [email protected] 40 points 6 days ago (1 children)

That was basically the end. When it was only friends and the feed sorted by "new,", it was super fun. When my aunts started joining it became much less fun.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 days ago

the feed sorted by “new,”

Yeah, and it went from "let's just add some stuff" to outright "we will force feed you this slop and you will like it" from there. It felt like you were a goose being prepped for Christmas' foie gras.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 days ago

That's when it was cool to teens who didn't have .edu emails addresses (but not long after).

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 days ago (2 children)

It went downhill when poking and sheep throwing went away.

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[–] [email protected] 94 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Because Whatsapp is totally not owned by FB.

[–] [email protected] 72 points 6 days ago (2 children)

It’s not about why owns it. It’s about where young people can be without getting bothered by their parents and other old people.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 6 days ago (3 children)

I'm 41.....you telling me the kids today don't think of me as the greatest person who ever existed??? Pssshhh that's malarkey! I won't hear of it! EVERYONE thinks I'm the greatest person who ever existed! My lexicon includes words like "malarkey" and "lexicon"! Kids think that's cool right???

[–] [email protected] 30 points 6 days ago

I'm 39 so I am slightly more rizz than you. I maintain my levels of brat by regularly updating my skibidi vocab.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Isn't whatsapp another data mining app for Facebook?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Yes, although to nowhere near the same extent as Facebook and Instagram.

The chats are E2EE using Signal's encryption protocol, so very good.

But they will certainly mine everything else they can get. They may not know what you're saying, but they do know who you're talking to, when you're doing it, your contacts, your profile pic, how often you send images, etc. any web links with tracking info embedded in the URL will likely be tracked too, once you open them.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 days ago

E2EE doesn't mean that the developer/company can't be a member of the "ends" in "End-to-end encryption". WhatsApp is closed-source, so nobody can really confirm which E2EE algorithm is at play. However, considering that the E2EE is the implementation of a known E2EE algorithm, such algorithms often support more than two keys (hence, more than two people), so, a third-key from Charlie can be part of the conversation, unbeknownst to Alice and Bob. If Meta would inject their own key inside every WhatsApp conversation, they could effectively read things.

For example: GPG/PGP support multiple public keys, so the same encrypted message can be decrypted by any private keys belonging to those public keys. Alice can send a message to both Bob, Charlie and Douglas, collectively specifying their public keys at the moment of the encryption. Then, the exact same payload would be sent to them, and they would use their own private keys to decrypt the message.

So, let's suppose that a closed-source messaging app company/developer had their own pair of public and private keys, and they public key is injected in every conversation made through their app. They'd also obfuscate it from the UI so the UI won't show the hardcoded "third-party". This way they could easily read every single message being exchanged through their app. It's like TSA with a "master key" that can open everyone's travelling bags, no matter where you bought the travelling bag.

Even Signal may have this. Yeah, libsignal is "open-source", but the app isn't. What if their app had some hardcoded public key from Signal team? The only trustworthy E2EE is encoding it yourself using OpenPGP and similar. And if one is more privacy-worried than me, there are projects such as the "Tinfoil Chat" which is almost-immune to eavesdropping, involving optocoupled (hence, airgapped) circuitry, separate machines for networking, decryption and encryption, Onion-routing, and so on.

In summary: nobody should trust out-of-the-box E2EE, especially those hidden within a closed-source app.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago (3 children)

This still baffles me. What's Facebook's end game here? They are built on data collection and spying, but they own an app that is E2EE.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

If you go only by the metadata, they know all your friends, their phone numbers, your location history, when do you chat, with whom, how often and how long. And I'm fairly sure they index conversation in some form.

Just location history can paint a decent picture of what you do, where do you go, what do you like, which friends are nearby, etc... and all of that was implemented like 15+ years ago, imagine what they can do today with AI. It's fair to say FB knows more about you then you do (FB, IG, Wapp...). And to be blunt, it could probably determine what ppls shit smells like, judging by all the pictures of a meal they post on IG.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Honestly, I think they just saw that Whatsapp was becoming the standard chat app for basically all of the world outside of the US and China, and just didn't want anybody else to have it.

Additionally, metadata is better than no data, I guess.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago (2 children)

The metadata. The message content is E2E, but the data about the content isn’t necessarily e2e.

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[–] [email protected] 87 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Where there any teens on Twitter? Last I was there it was full of angry middle-age men.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 days ago

before musk came it was pretty full, most of them have moved to threads

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

The Internet- where men are men...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

Men? Wait, yall aren't dogs using the internet while the humans are away at work?

Yall are dogs to right?

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

How else you gonna cyber bully the transfer student

[–] [email protected] 51 points 6 days ago (4 children)

It's pretty clear. Facebook is now full of crap created by artificial intelligence (and not only).

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Gee I wish they had just left Facebook as a way to share photos and updates with friends and family, instead of turning it into a viral content clusterfuck to capture the youth audience. It didn’t even work.

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 6 days ago

That is a weird way of describing it. Teens aren't "abandoning" FB & X; they never signed up to begin with. And why would that? They are platforms built for and filled with millennials+.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 days ago (3 children)

My family has a signal group. I started it two years ago.

Almost no one pays any attention to it, unless they accidentally open the app once a month, but they're all still there and can be spoken to.

I put a PSA out a month ago that I'll no longer respond on Facebook Messenger or SMS after the turn of the year. Tough shit. There was some groaning but, if there's no other way, either use Signal or invest in a Pigeon coop and get training.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 days ago

This is news? The article’s own graph puts this about 6 years ago

[–] [email protected] 31 points 6 days ago (2 children)

A decade ago is when teens stopped using Facebook, unless they're counting Instagram in those metrics?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 days ago

then they would have to count WhatsApp too...

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

No teens on blue sky, nice

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

I had to block a few ones on Bluesky.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Okay? But what does Whatsapp has anything to do with the other? DM?

I don't consider WhatsApp social media.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 6 days ago (4 children)

Ok, I feel old. The only reason facebook has any relevance to me is the market place. What’s the best alternative?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 days ago

That's just it, Facebook is kinda the default option, and almost everyone has an account there. It's why so many clubs arrange everything through a Facebook page.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Weird, considering facebook does all the shit those other sites do.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 days ago

People go where their friends are. Their grandparents are on Facebook.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 days ago (6 children)

WhatsApp? The instant messenger boomers use on their phones?

Damn, who saw that coming.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 6 days ago

american, right? It's very popular in other places.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Most countries stopped using SMS ages ago. WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram are ubiquitous.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago (4 children)

I WISH signal was ubiquitous. Half of my friends are still using Facebook Messenger so I still have to resort to using SMS for them

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 days ago (7 children)

Spotted the iMessage user who routinly cries about dot colour

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

In most of Europe WhatsApp is synonymous with text messaging.

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