Facebook's Plans to Integrate WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger Is a Privacy and Anti-Trust Disaster Waiting to Happen
Facbook's family of apps just got a little more closer. As the case for breaking up Facebook strengthens in the wake of one privacy calamity after other, the social networking giant, which also happens to own three of the world's largest communication platforms WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger, has said it's working to "integrate the social network's messaging services," according to The New York Times.
"The services will continue to operate as stand-alone apps, but their underlying technical infrastructure will be unified, said four people involved in the effort. That will bring together three of the world's largest messaging networks, which between them have more than 2.6 billion users, allowing people to communicate across the platforms for the first time," the report added.
While ensuring interoperability between three of its apps, especially when they offer a lot of similar features, is a good thing, the development also raises serious privacy and antitrust concerns, not to mention new avenues to monetarily profit off WhatsApp and Instagram.
Two years ago, Facebook's decision to link WhatsApp user data (the phone number and the last time they used it) with its parent company for improving its People You May Know feature and targeting users with better ads came under much scrutiny, forcing it to halt the data transfer between the two services in the European Union until after the general data protection regulation (GDPR) came into force on 25 May 2018. Facebook's increased intervention in Instagram and WhatsApp's affairs have also costed it dearly, with founders of both platforms leaving Facebook under mysterious circumstances last year.
Matthew Green, a cryptography professor at Johns Hopkins University, said the "move could be potentially be good or bad for security/privacy," in addition to cautioning users that they be ready to take their conversations off the platforms citing possible weakening of security, unless Facebook intends to upgrade all of its services to have mandatory end-to-end encryption (E2EE), a secure communication mechanism that protects the messages from being viewed by other parties, including telecom carriers, ISPs, and even the provider of the communication service, other than the participants in the conversation.
It's not just that. With WhatsApp primarily relying on phone numbers for authentication (it bears repeating at this stage that phone numbers have become more than a way to contact someone, they have turned out to be a startlingly effective way to identify users), the proposed cross-app communication makes it easier for Facebook to link users across three services (it makes it dead simple if you have already provided your phone numbers on Facebook or Instagram, for purposes for two-factor authentication or otherwise, and have used the same number to register for WhatsApp), in turn making it even more difficult for those users who want to keep their identities in each of the app separate.
On the other hand, this sort of identification can allow Facebook to spot patterns in the spread of misleading and dangerous misinformation that has led to lynchings and violence in Myanmar, India and elsewhere, giving it crucial insight into malicious players who are abusing the platforms with an insidious intent to harm individuals or disrupt democratic processes.
Although Facebook has attempted to quell privacy/anti-trust worries by stating "there is a lot of discussion and debate as we begin the long process of figuring out all the details of how this will work," it doesn't preclude the fact that there should have been far more regulatory oversight during the social network's acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.
The idea that tech companies be left free of regulation to innovate is dangerous, and it's this very sentiment that has led to the Big Five (including Microsoft) expanding their reach on a colossal scale, with seemingly nothing to stop them on their tracks. If there were any doubts before, this app-integration effectively signals an end to the autonomy Instagram and WhatsApp enjoyed under Facebook, while subtly erecting a new barrier against calls for a breakup.
Facebook's Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg recently penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (paywall) ahead of the company's fifteenth anniversary next month, saying "We don't sell people's data, even though it's often reported that we do. Facebook also doesn't deliberately share clickbait ('it's not what people want') or deliberately leave harmful content up to drive up engagement ('advertisers don't want their brands anywhere near it')."
It's an appreciable sentiment, but Facebook's repeated failure to come clean about its wide-ranging data collection practices is a clear sign that it will be business as usual, as it continues to fully exploit its ubiquity as "the" social network to keep users coming back to it no matter the egregiousness of the violation. Facebook, after all, didn't splurge billions of dollars to leave them alone forever.
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| Image: xdadevelopers |
"The services will continue to operate as stand-alone apps, but their underlying technical infrastructure will be unified, said four people involved in the effort. That will bring together three of the world's largest messaging networks, which between them have more than 2.6 billion users, allowing people to communicate across the platforms for the first time," the report added.
While ensuring interoperability between three of its apps, especially when they offer a lot of similar features, is a good thing, the development also raises serious privacy and antitrust concerns, not to mention new avenues to monetarily profit off WhatsApp and Instagram.
Two years ago, Facebook's decision to link WhatsApp user data (the phone number and the last time they used it) with its parent company for improving its People You May Know feature and targeting users with better ads came under much scrutiny, forcing it to halt the data transfer between the two services in the European Union until after the general data protection regulation (GDPR) came into force on 25 May 2018. Facebook's increased intervention in Instagram and WhatsApp's affairs have also costed it dearly, with founders of both platforms leaving Facebook under mysterious circumstances last year.
Matthew Green, a cryptography professor at Johns Hopkins University, said the "move could be potentially be good or bad for security/privacy," in addition to cautioning users that they be ready to take their conversations off the platforms citing possible weakening of security, unless Facebook intends to upgrade all of its services to have mandatory end-to-end encryption (E2EE), a secure communication mechanism that protects the messages from being viewed by other parties, including telecom carriers, ISPs, and even the provider of the communication service, other than the participants in the conversation.
It's not just that. With WhatsApp primarily relying on phone numbers for authentication (it bears repeating at this stage that phone numbers have become more than a way to contact someone, they have turned out to be a startlingly effective way to identify users), the proposed cross-app communication makes it easier for Facebook to link users across three services (it makes it dead simple if you have already provided your phone numbers on Facebook or Instagram, for purposes for two-factor authentication or otherwise, and have used the same number to register for WhatsApp), in turn making it even more difficult for those users who want to keep their identities in each of the app separate.
 |
| Image: Panoptykon Foundation |
On the other hand, this sort of identification can allow Facebook to spot patterns in the spread of misleading and dangerous misinformation that has led to lynchings and violence in Myanmar, India and elsewhere, giving it crucial insight into malicious players who are abusing the platforms with an insidious intent to harm individuals or disrupt democratic processes.
Although Facebook has attempted to quell privacy/anti-trust worries by stating "there is a lot of discussion and debate as we begin the long process of figuring out all the details of how this will work," it doesn't preclude the fact that there should have been far more regulatory oversight during the social network's acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.
The idea that tech companies be left free of regulation to innovate is dangerous, and it's this very sentiment that has led to the Big Five (including Microsoft) expanding their reach on a colossal scale, with seemingly nothing to stop them on their tracks. If there were any doubts before, this app-integration effectively signals an end to the autonomy Instagram and WhatsApp enjoyed under Facebook, while subtly erecting a new barrier against calls for a breakup.
Facebook's Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg recently penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (paywall) ahead of the company's fifteenth anniversary next month, saying "We don't sell people's data, even though it's often reported that we do. Facebook also doesn't deliberately share clickbait ('it's not what people want') or deliberately leave harmful content up to drive up engagement ('advertisers don't want their brands anywhere near it')."
It's an appreciable sentiment, but Facebook's repeated failure to come clean about its wide-ranging data collection practices is a clear sign that it will be business as usual, as it continues to fully exploit its ubiquity as "the" social network to keep users coming back to it no matter the egregiousness of the violation. Facebook, after all, didn't splurge billions of dollars to leave them alone forever.
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