The 37th Block: What's up, WhatsApp?
How many phone numbers of your personal contacts do you remember by heart?
On data collection and message security
Debashis Sarkar has the detailed breakdown for GadgetsNow comparing how WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Facebook Messenger and Apple iMessage collect data. Ben Thompson of Stratechery additionally compared message security between the five behind a paywalled post ($). In summary, Thompson ranked Signal at the top and Apple’s iMessage at the bottom in terms of message security, whilst data harvesting is ranked as follows:
Signal: phone number only
iMessage: phone number and email address
Telegram: phone number and contact list
WhatsApp: Unless opted out in 2016, Facebook collects all of the above and whatever else it can, including device information, contact list and location
Messenger: Same with WhatsApp, but with ads
I just redownloaded Telegram, having had Signal for a while because of work, but Naomi Wu has fervently cautioned against trusting Signal too much, considering weaknesses in its keyboard interface, which has allowed the Chinese government to intercept and detain Chinese dissidents. She proposed an audited Open Source keyboard to be bundled in to address the issue.
Both Signal and EFF, the foundation overseeing digital rights, in response, said that the keyboard leakage isn’t within their purview but Wu said message security cannot operate within an insecure environment, thus should not be marketed as such without disclosing the limitations imposed by that environment.
However, she clarified that this issue specifically concerns activists and those whose work draws the attention of the authorities, and that the app is still the best choice for the general population. In fact, she added, the mass migration to Signal “makes activists and dissidents safer by taking away the stigma the app might have as something that is only used for nefarious purposes.”
Meanwhile, Facebook has cancelled its February 8 deadline for Whatsapp users to agree to its new terms and will instead “go to people gradually to review the policy at their own pace before new business options are available on May 15.”
On its 20th birthday, Wikipedia might be the safest place online
The world’s largest online encyclopedia has learned lessons from fighting misinformation for two decades, writes Heather Kelly for Washington Post. Here’s some excerpts:
Wikipedia still has its share of errors and incorrect information, though it says most “vandalism” is removed within five minutes.
The site has also struggled with diversity among its editors, who skew largely white and male for English-language entries. But it doesn’t face the same kinds of issues with disinformation that the big tech companies do.
While also populated entirely with content from users, Wikipedia has a number of things on its side when it comes to moderation. One of its key advantages is that there is only one page for each subject, and duplicates are removed by editors, meaning it is not set up in a way that lets things go viral.
People who frequently make false edits can be banned. Editors follow policies meant to keep out anything untrue, such as requiring sources for all claims. And when it comes to those sources, there is of course a Wikipedia that lists sources and rates them according to how reliable they are. Still, the site is open about not wanting to be a reliable source.
Raise your hand if you’ve completed your school or work assignment thanks to Wikipedia: ✋🏽
Censorship, Parler and antitrust
On his blog, author, activist and journalist Cory Doctorow connects antitrust with democracy as one of the implications of the extensive deplatforming of Donald Trump and his supporters:
There’s an obvious, trivial point to be made here: Twitter, Apple and Google are private companies. When they remove speech on the basis of its content, it’s censorship, but it’s not government censorship.
[…]
It’s true that no one violates the First Amendment (let alone CDA 230) (get serious) when Parler is removed from app stores or kicked off a cloud.
But we have a duopoly of mobile platforms, an oligopoly of cloud providers, a small conspiracy of payment processors. Their choices about who make speak are hugely consequential, and concerted effort by all of them could make some points of view effectively vanish.
This market concentration didn’t occur in a vacuum. These vital sectors of the digital economy became as concentrated as they are due to four decades of shameful, bipartisan neglect of antitrust law.
And while failing to enforce antitrust law doesn’t violate the First Amendment, it can still lead to government sanctioned incursions on speech.
What I read, watch and listen to…
I’m reading Jack Healy’s article for NYT about how the coronavirus pandemic has killed tribal elders at especially high rates in the US, causing a cultural crisis for Native Americans.
I’m watching a CBC Marketplace investigation on forced labour in Malaysian PPE factories.
I’m listening to to this audio-accompanied longform by Huw Lemmey on gay stories for straight allies. I’m looking at you, Queer Eye. 👀
I’m playing the 2020 Game, where we revisit all the major events of 2020 starting from the Australian wildfires to the US elections. It didn’t take many tries nor was it too long a game to complete, but I did spend a long time in the TikTok box for the Doja Cat song.
By the way, welcome to Smithsonian Open Access, if you haven’t. You can literally download, share and reuse 2.8 million Smithsonian digital items – from photos and texts, audio and video files, to research data, 2D, and 3D objects – without permission or attribution, even for commercial use.
Chart of the week
The online far-right is moving deeper underground, Kyle Daly and Sara Fischer write for Axios, showing the growth in messaging app downloads in the days between January 5th and 10th using data from Apptopia:
