WhatsApp mandatory data sharing with Facebook
- Thread starter LiE
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Soldato
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I'm the same. I've already received messages on imessage saying 'Stop being a **** and come back to the group'
Done and dusted now as far as i'm concerned.
The funniest thing about this overblown fiasco, is that most of the "muh privacy" nerds raging about Whatsapp giving their dataz to Facebook and running to alternate messaging platforms who also record info on them, are shouting about it on Facebook, via their phones Facebook app xD
How would us privacy nerds be able to confirm your observations if we don't have Facebook accounts, because we are privacy nerds.
I don't actually think it's privacy that's the issue here, it's more the use of our data for these enormous data driven monoliths to grab even more because it makes their algorithms work better for their advertisements. Advertisements that could be political in nature that target peoples weaknesses that then could sway elections and disrupt democracy. Oh, wait, that's already happened.
I don't actually think it's privacy that's the issue here, it's more the use of our data for these enormous data driven monoliths to grab even more because it makes their algorithms work better for their advertisements. Advertisements that could be political in nature that target peoples weaknesses that then could sway elections and disrupt democracy. Oh, wait, that's already happened.
So it does appear Facebook/WhatsApp are paying for reviews on the Google Play store now.
Their rating has tanked in 2021, with a massive drop down in comparison go their rating gradually dropping since 2012:
https://www.androidrank.org/application/whatsapp_messenger/com.whatsapp
If you look at their recent reviews on Google Play, there's loads of suspicious 5* reviews from random accounts. Including very short review descriptions such as "Good" or even 'reviewers' leaving just their name in the description. There's even one example where the name being left in the description doesn't match that of the 'reviewer' leaving the review.
Their rating has tanked in 2021, with a massive drop down in comparison go their rating gradually dropping since 2012:
https://www.androidrank.org/application/whatsapp_messenger/com.whatsapp
If you look at their recent reviews on Google Play, there's loads of suspicious 5* reviews from random accounts. Including very short review descriptions such as "Good" or even 'reviewers' leaving just their name in the description. There's even one example where the name being left in the description doesn't match that of the 'reviewer' leaving the review.
Soldato
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They must be getting desperate then. Hopefully people continue to move and don't just stay because they've already got it set up and don't care.
Don't you think if they're paying for reviews, they'd want a slightly better review description than 'Good' or 'reviewer'?!
No, as it's the avg review rating number they're looking to improve. The exact same thing happened with Houseparty after they were targeted with rumours their app could steal your data - loads of 5* reviews with suspicious looking content to try and bump their rating up.
Fake reviews aren't anything new and it's a widespread issue, Amazon is rife with paid for reviews. We even employed someone from our competitor and he admitted they paid a company in Poland to put reviews onto websites, and their headoffice staff were targeted to leave a certain amount of reviews.
Soldato
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Fake reviews are all over, I prefer reading the owners responses to the fake reviews.
Nope. I've been paid to write reviews before. Depending on who's paying you, you can get paid literally pennies, like 10p-£1 per review.
Is anyone thinking of migrating to another service because of this then?
Yes, but that would cost a lot more and the main point is the rating because that's the first thing anyone looks at, the only thing most people look at and the thing that's used in advertising. "We have over x thousand 5* reviews!"
It makes more sense because it gives better ROI. It's more effective to spend money buying 10,000 fake 5* ratings with one word "reviews" than spending the same amount of money buying 1,000 fake 5* ratings with anything more than one word for the "review". Ethical considerations are irrelevant once the company has decided to buy fake reviews, so the only considerations are ROI, the chance of getting caught and the costs of getting caught. It's so normal that the costs of getting caught are usually zero, so the chance of getting caught doesn't matter. So it's all about how much fraud you can buy for a given amount of money and that's almost entirely about ratings rather than reviews.
I try to work around the fraud by first reading the lowest rated reviews and trying to judge how reasonable they are, but it's hard to get a genuine picture because ratings are given such high priority and fraud in ratings is so widespread.
I've started using Signal for the last few months, and anybody who doesn't have Signal, I still talk to on Whatsapp. As people have moved over to signal, I've only spoken to them exclusively on that platform - Whatever I can do to slowly move away from Whatsapp really. I may not leave whatsapp in the next year, but if I give them less and less of my time, it's for the better imo.
My opinion hasn't changed.
Gonna say, I'm bit actively worried I don't think? I'm already in Facebook, had WhatsApp, on various other things too....
I've heard of literally no one who has signal or telegram.
I've got Telegram, I've been using it for years. Do I count?
Of people I 'know'
Oh. Wanna meet up then?
I'm not sure where flatland is