Thank you, but I'm looking for actual arguments that would sway someone that is trying to come to a rational conclusion. "The reputation of the company is bad" is of course valid evidence, but it would be much more interesting to know what Facebook actually gains from having users on WhatsApp.
Azzu
joined 1 year ago
Other apps may have code published in a repository, but the path from repository into the Play Store onto my phone is not clear. How do I know that they don't add extra tracking code on top during the build and release to the Play Store? With for example a popular alternate app, Signal?
Are others different, like Signal and how do I know?
As a normal user I install both in exactly the same way, I have no way to verify that the code of the apk on the play store is exactly the same as the code published by Signal as open-source. How could I trust Signal more?
You're doubting the ease of implementation, but it's really not hard. It'll have to be a fairly predictable pattern from YouTube's side, which is one of the easiest to accurately detect.
Nevermind that though, it'll never be embebbed in the video stream, because it has to be accessible as well as readable. It's impossible to guarantee it to be readable without actually rendering the text in whatever client it's being viewed in. Imagine a 240p video, the text would have to take up half the screen to be readable with that low resolution.
Then how hard would it be to use some pattern-based image recognition to detect this label? Not very hard, I have a friend that does something similar at work.
suckmy.co.uk
Because those can also be skipped. They are required by law to label sections of ads. This labeling can be read to figure out how long the ads are and thus be skipped. That's how twitch ads are blocked.
That probably was the "not up-to-date filter lists" problem, or the rare "filter lists themselves not updated yet", but they are within a few hours usually.
Sure, granting view credits for ads is a little more complicated, but definitely within googles scope.
How exactly? What stops someone from creating a program that behaves like a normal user earning view credits for ads, but never showing that to the actual user, only letting Google think the user is legitimate? Afaik nothing.
Yes, turning it pay-only like Netflix would technically work, but YouTube itself only works because it's "free", so yeah.
Many people have either not up-to-date filters, or are using some other addons/features that interfere with uBlock/trigger the adblock detection.
How exactly "can" they? They've been trying pretty hard for quite a long while now and nothing has ever worked. It's also pretty logical why they can't: they don't control your device, you can do anything with it. Whatever they implement, you can always fake being a normal user. Which is exactly why no one using Firefox + uBlock sees anything of what's mentioned in this article (as long as no other addons/settings trigger the adblock detection).
Only the environment they do control is affected, which is essentially like "controlling your device": Chrome.
What use is this knowledge through metadata to them? Let's say I have no Facebook account and no other apps by Meta. There are no ads within WhatsApp. What do they gain by having this data about me?