I'm not even trying to be snarky, it just seems like every single thing Facebook is doing lately is tainted with misinformation, corruption and spin. Just endless spin and lies.
This looks equally bad on the EU, that they lacked the foresight to see that phone numbers in the WhatsApp database could be matched with phone numbers in the Facebook database.
This quote sticks out as a bit of an exaggeration regarding the difficulty of this operation:
"Notably, integration of WhatsApp's and Facebook's networks would require matching WhatsApp users' profiles with their profiles on Facebook (or vice versa). This would be complicated without the users' involvement since Facebook and WhatsApp use different unique user identifiers: Facebook ID and mobile phone number, respectively."
However, after reading this I feel like the decision focused mostly on the possibility of Facebook merging WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger into a unified communications platform. This feels different to me than merging user-ids over platforms to improve targeted ads. But IANAL, and there are probably documents that I have missed.
The quote basically says that this task is complicated because it requires an equivalent of a SQL one-liner that any CS undergrad should be able to write. Where would Facebook/WhatsApp find experts that good?
Select *
from fb_users
join wp_users
on wp_users.id = fb_users.phone_number
A really basic query that will give you all the fb users who have listed their phone number.
Also i just realized while typing this, i think fb started allowing logging in using your phone number around the time they bought whatsapp. So even the profiles that didn't give their phone number to fb, they could get it via this logging system. ( I guess i was a victim of that)
And that's why i said users who have listed their phone number.
They can get phone number from users who use their phone number to log in but not have listed it in their profile (me), people who have enabled 2FA or from messenger. It's just a simple sql join. Ofcourse not at FB scale but this is me thinking about this problem for 10 seconds and also i'm in probably not even as intelligent as the dumbest guy working at fb.
And then there are people who just use a Google Voice number on Whatsapp instead of a real phone number, and many don't even have a phone number listed on Facebook. I'm actually surprised that anybody would give their real phone number to Facebook, Whatsapp, or any of the other "social networks"...
But you can give Whatsapp a Google Voice number instead of your real phone number. That way if they decide to sell it as part of your profile, you can easily change/cycle it (or apply better filtering, DND, etc.)
And you're basing this on... what? Facebook nags you EVERY TIME you login for your phone number. EVERY TIME. I can tell you every last one of my friends who is non-technical has put in their phone number simply to get rid of the nag message. While my evidence is anecdotal, it flies in the face of yours. So I assume you have a citation for your "most users" comment.
So i did some search. Facebook app is installed 1 billion - 5 billion times on android alone. Facebook app has access to your contact card, your contacts and bunch of other stuff. Now let's say there are 20% of people who review these permissions and don't give fb access to everything. Even with that it leaves ~800 million apps with access to phone numbers. And this is Android alone.
I would be pretty surprised if evgen had same views if he wasn't working at fb.
Have left and have been working on my own startup for several months now, but I am aware of how some of the data is siloed at FB and also that WhatsApp was run very independently (as in, almost no operational contact between the two companies) up until the summer at least. I don't doubt that FB can tie a specific FB user id to a WA user id, and if they tried hard they could tie a large fraction together using a variety of data sources (certainly not a 'one-line SQL query') but between 10-25% would fail due to bad data on either the FB or WA end. A partially complete data set is not as useful as you might think...
I think more than half of the FB users also use the app or facebook messenger, which gives them access to their phone number through app permissons alone. Additionally they have access to the contact lists of both apps and can correlate names and phone numbers from there. Even if someone doesn't use the FB app and hasn't listed his phone number in FB - if any friend has him as contact in FB and Whatsapp it's quite trivial to match the IDs.
Yeah, this would be really simple, and even without this, I do not believe that fingerprinting the phones and using that as an ID to join identities is that complex these days?
> This would be complicated without the users' involvement since Facebook and WhatsApp use different unique user identifiers: Facebook ID and mobile phone number, respectively.
For some time now, facebook has been requiring a phone number to register. In some cases, they don't ask for one until you try to add people, or something alike.
If you use Facebook Messenger (with no facebook account), you can sign up using ONLY you phone number.
Oh, the EU knew it could happen; they were told it wouldn't happen. We need to operate on some basic level of common trust. If you wanna do business in the EU, you need to play by the rules.
As it turns out, not only did it happen, the software/tech to make it happen was already ready! That makes a pretty strong case against Facebook's intentions.
I actually would agree that it was in hindsight stupid because of Facebook's business model. Why else would they want to buy WhatsApp other than profiling and spying?
Ideally, we don't even want corporations to have such huge amounts of data on us but we're not on that level yet. We're still too ignorant on that one. More Bad Things (tm) must happen first.
> ... when the Mark Zuckerberg-run company claimed that it wouldn't be able to knit together user IDs, thereby combining the data of the two services.
> ... in which it is alleged that the free content ad network failed to disclose that "the technical possibility of automatically matching Facebook users' IDs with WhatsApp users' IDs already existed" at the time of the merger.
Seems like the issue is specifically about them saying they couldn't do it, rather than wouldn't do it.
Though I would assume that a 30 min consultation with any competent technical person would give rise to a dozen different ways in which it COULD be done... device/ad ids, emails, phone numbers or even just correlating geo data over some amount of time would all be trivial ways to relate the two databases together.
> Seems like the issue is specifically about them saying they couldn't do it, rather than wouldn't do it.
Yes, I was wrong, I thought the EU was told by Facebook that Facebook would not do it, while they knew it could be done.
We are arguing semantics though. If someone asks you wether you would commit a crime (e.g. murder someone), and you reply "I can't", and then said someone lets you pass, that does not give you a blank cheque to commit said crime. "Wouldn't" makes no difference here. If anything, "couldn't" sounds more authoritative because even if you'd want to, you argue you can't whereas the other one is solely based on trust. Regardless, arguing over that attempts to draw attention away that it did happen.
Second, we must not forget the EU is not asking a random stranger about it (or well, they were, see below); they were asking those with the know-how themselves, Facebook and WhatsApp.
> Though I would assume that a 30 min consultation with any competent technical person would give rise to a dozen different ways in which it COULD be done...
Competitors and customers of Facebook and WhatsApp were broadly inquired by the EU before the acquisition was finalised [1].
"[...]
The questionnaire inquires about what a merged entity could do with customers' data, and how that could affect advertising services, in particular the effectiveness of ads over both mobile devices such as smartphones and on computers.
"In your view, what would be the likely impact on WhatsApp and its user base if post-transaction WhatsApp… were to start collecting increased amount of data about its users (e.g. user location, age, gender, message content, etc.)?" the questionnaire asks.
It also probes the growing overlap between social networks and messaging services, as companies scramble to make the most advantageous possible use of consumers' data.
"Which of the following websites/apps in your view can be described as a provider of social networking services? Please tick as many boxes as you consider appropriate," the commission asks, before listing dozens of services including Flickr, Foursquare, Google+, InterNations, LinkedIn, Myspace, Meetup, Tumblr, Twitter, Skyrock, Pinterest, Ask.FM and Spotbros.
[...]"
If your argument is that the acquisition should've never happened there have been multiple points of failure, but its too easy to point it all at the EU (if not merely for the fact that they weren't the ones who broke the law in this instance). I don't know if the details of these inquiries are public, I suspect not.
My belief in why they wanted to purchase WhatsApp was it presented a threat to fakebook [sic]. This is why they also purchased Instagram, and attempted the same for Snapchat.
If true, then WhatsApp wasn't valued at $19 billion, but rather fakebook [sic] saw that removing the perceived threat was worth the price.
What astounds me the most, is the FTC doesn't seem to investigate tech acquisitions like other industries. Especially, when it seems there is a good indication choice is being removed from the market.
Although, I've seen a few deals structured in a way to make it seem like a smaller company is buying a larger one to avoid a review [at&t <-> SBC, Sears Holdings <-> K-Mart].
Maybe it's because of the low cost of entry for competitors? If people get upset with what Facebook does to WhatsApp, many other services will spring up and people will migrate to them.
When it comes to thing like Internet service, it's not really the same situation.
Stage 1 - That doesn't make sense and will never work
Stage 2 - They turned down $1b they must be stupid
Stage 3 - It is a monopoly and needs to be stopped
Stages may vary but what remains the same is that nothing in tech is certain. Companies try really hard to create monopolies that will probably have anti-trust issues because the alternative is if they don't they will probably die (more so true after raising a lot of money and signing expensive long term office leases.)
From a longer historical perspective, nothing at all is certain. Take a look at the various office skyscrapers and stadiums in the US, the names change. Some of the giant corporations of 50 years ago may still be around in some form, but they are shadows of their former selves. The world changes fast.
That name is meaningless and generally just juvenile. It makes it hard to take you seriously when you do this.
This is also not an appropriate use of "sic".
> Although, I've seen a few deals structured in a way to make it seem like a smaller company is buying a larger one to avoid a review [at&t <-> SBC, Sears Holdings <-> K-Mart].
Smaller companies buying larger companies don't skip regulatory scrutiny. It's a fairly common practice to structure mergers this way, but not because it changes the level of regulator involvement.
I concur, even before there was widespread corporate advertising my impression of "social networking" was that it was more about advertising your personal activities and beliefs to your network than actually socializing within it.
I believe that was coined by theregister.co.uk ^1, a fine source for quality wordplay and tech news/opinion. Unfortunately fondleslab never took off for tablet.
Really, what is the longest period of time a country has existed without a repressive regime coming to power and abusing the institutions and populace?
And without a massive war? The USA has had 151 years of uninterrupted peace.
Just as an example---because the old rivalry was USA vs USSR---Russia has endured two devastating and traumatic world wars, a revolution, a civil war, and Stalin. And they still rivaled US power throughout the cold war.
I think Americans really overstate the effectiveness of their economic and political system, and understate the huge advantage they have geographically.
151 years of uninterrupted peace? I think you're forgetting about some conflicts.
Now, if you're talking just about wars that don't involve enemy attacks on American facilities, then technically World War II still counts. So no, not 151 years.
With that said, I do agree with your final sentence.
I used to work at Hyves, the biggest social network in the Netherlands at that time. Hyves started around the same time as Facebook. The company sold to a publisher and they ultimately closed it down. There are multiple reasons why Hyves failed taxation and regulatory environment is not one of them.
It only works when the laws are upheld. Facebook is a non-EU company, so their actions are purely a problem for the people locked to Facebook, not for the European economy.
The emissions excesses of diesel cars first discovered on Volkswagen were fined in the USA. Volkswagen is a non-USA company. The EU is still not taking action on the emissions because it is feared that that would impact the bottom line of the European car industry which is apparently more important than the health of the constituency.
> it being fined up to one percent of its annual turnover
Now they're fines we should be proud of. Not like the pathetic smack-on-the-wrist fines they've dished out to banks and Google that they can earn back in milliseconds.
J.P. Morgan was fined $13 billion, which is hardly a slap on the wrist. The biggest fines in corporate history have been in the US; take the big tobacco civil cases, for instance.
Civil cases sounds like - forgive me - 'The coffee is too hot, pay for me enough money to import it fresh using my private jet for the rest of my life' cases.
What I'm trying to say is: I feel there's a difference between a fine ("You're misbehaving, correct that") and greed ("You caused pain and I'm going to benefit here"). Most large-ish rulings in the US that ever reached me are part of the latter.
Then again, this is a matter of culture and might be fine (hah!) in the society that caused this and just look weird from the outside.
Mark my words:
Just as the robber barons a century ago has lead to antitrust law, today's "data" robber baron tech giants will lead us to data competitive law 15 years from now.
And just like then, the data robber barons will probably be trillionaires by the time that happens, because by then they will have used the data to create super-intelligent AI, which will then create that wealth for them. At that time it won't matter what laws will be passed. The damage will have already been done and their personal trillion dollar wealth will have already been created.
What's interesting to me is that a lot of times these things are somewhat open for interpretation depending on your definition of a monopoly, where the line is drawn between good business decisions and anti-competitive behavior, etc. In this case though it seems pretty clear cut. Facebook said they couldn't link WhatsApp and FB user ids, but then two years later they did exactly that.
Does Facebook really have any plausible response other than "oops"?
Facebook messenger even tricked people into being the default SMS app on Android... And given all the permissions they ask, they can read the phone number themselves.
75 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 95.3 ms ] threadI'm not even trying to be snarky, it just seems like every single thing Facebook is doing lately is tainted with misinformation, corruption and spin. Just endless spin and lies.
There is more to any group of people than what hits the news. (This insight is not limited to businesses.)
This quote sticks out as a bit of an exaggeration regarding the difficulty of this operation:
"Notably, integration of WhatsApp's and Facebook's networks would require matching WhatsApp users' profiles with their profiles on Facebook (or vice versa). This would be complicated without the users' involvement since Facebook and WhatsApp use different unique user identifiers: Facebook ID and mobile phone number, respectively."
However, after reading this I feel like the decision focused mostly on the possibility of Facebook merging WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger into a unified communications platform. This feels different to me than merging user-ids over platforms to improve targeted ads. But IANAL, and there are probably documents that I have missed.
A really basic query that will give you all the fb users who have listed their phone number.
Also i just realized while typing this, i think fb started allowing logging in using your phone number around the time they bought whatsapp. So even the profiles that didn't give their phone number to fb, they could get it via this logging system. ( I guess i was a victim of that)
You could also complement it with phone numbers of people with 2FA enabled.
Not saying FB could not join the tables given how much data they have, but it is not nearly as simple as this.
They can get phone number from users who use their phone number to log in but not have listed it in their profile (me), people who have enabled 2FA or from messenger. It's just a simple sql join. Ofcourse not at FB scale but this is me thinking about this problem for 10 seconds and also i'm in probably not even as intelligent as the dumbest guy working at fb.
The only use for my phone number is registering for stuff like WhatsApp. Why would I want one if not for stuff like that?
(note: talking about the number itself, not a smartphone. I use a smartphone for lots of other stuff)
And you're basing this on... what? Facebook nags you EVERY TIME you login for your phone number. EVERY TIME. I can tell you every last one of my friends who is non-technical has put in their phone number simply to get rid of the nag message. While my evidence is anecdotal, it flies in the face of yours. So I assume you have a citation for your "most users" comment.
I would be pretty surprised if evgen had same views if he wasn't working at fb.
For some time now, facebook has been requiring a phone number to register. In some cases, they don't ask for one until you try to add people, or something alike. If you use Facebook Messenger (with no facebook account), you can sign up using ONLY you phone number.
This was just a plain lie.
As it turns out, not only did it happen, the software/tech to make it happen was already ready! That makes a pretty strong case against Facebook's intentions.
I actually would agree that it was in hindsight stupid because of Facebook's business model. Why else would they want to buy WhatsApp other than profiling and spying?
Ideally, we don't even want corporations to have such huge amounts of data on us but we're not on that level yet. We're still too ignorant on that one. More Bad Things (tm) must happen first.
> ... in which it is alleged that the free content ad network failed to disclose that "the technical possibility of automatically matching Facebook users' IDs with WhatsApp users' IDs already existed" at the time of the merger.
Seems like the issue is specifically about them saying they couldn't do it, rather than wouldn't do it.
Though I would assume that a 30 min consultation with any competent technical person would give rise to a dozen different ways in which it COULD be done... device/ad ids, emails, phone numbers or even just correlating geo data over some amount of time would all be trivial ways to relate the two databases together.
Yes, I was wrong, I thought the EU was told by Facebook that Facebook would not do it, while they knew it could be done.
We are arguing semantics though. If someone asks you wether you would commit a crime (e.g. murder someone), and you reply "I can't", and then said someone lets you pass, that does not give you a blank cheque to commit said crime. "Wouldn't" makes no difference here. If anything, "couldn't" sounds more authoritative because even if you'd want to, you argue you can't whereas the other one is solely based on trust. Regardless, arguing over that attempts to draw attention away that it did happen.
Second, we must not forget the EU is not asking a random stranger about it (or well, they were, see below); they were asking those with the know-how themselves, Facebook and WhatsApp.
> Though I would assume that a 30 min consultation with any competent technical person would give rise to a dozen different ways in which it COULD be done...
Competitors and customers of Facebook and WhatsApp were broadly inquired by the EU before the acquisition was finalised [1].
"[...]
The questionnaire inquires about what a merged entity could do with customers' data, and how that could affect advertising services, in particular the effectiveness of ads over both mobile devices such as smartphones and on computers.
"In your view, what would be the likely impact on WhatsApp and its user base if post-transaction WhatsApp… were to start collecting increased amount of data about its users (e.g. user location, age, gender, message content, etc.)?" the questionnaire asks.
It also probes the growing overlap between social networks and messaging services, as companies scramble to make the most advantageous possible use of consumers' data.
"Which of the following websites/apps in your view can be described as a provider of social networking services? Please tick as many boxes as you consider appropriate," the commission asks, before listing dozens of services including Flickr, Foursquare, Google+, InterNations, LinkedIn, Myspace, Meetup, Tumblr, Twitter, Skyrock, Pinterest, Ask.FM and Spotbros.
[...]"
If your argument is that the acquisition should've never happened there have been multiple points of failure, but its too easy to point it all at the EU (if not merely for the fact that they weren't the ones who broke the law in this instance). I don't know if the details of these inquiries are public, I suspect not.
[1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/eu-sends-questionnaire-to-rivals...
What astounds me the most, is the FTC doesn't seem to investigate tech acquisitions like other industries. Especially, when it seems there is a good indication choice is being removed from the market.
Although, I've seen a few deals structured in a way to make it seem like a smaller company is buying a larger one to avoid a review [at&t <-> SBC, Sears Holdings <-> K-Mart].
When it comes to thing like Internet service, it's not really the same situation.
Stage 1 - That doesn't make sense and will never work Stage 2 - They turned down $1b they must be stupid Stage 3 - It is a monopoly and needs to be stopped
Stages may vary but what remains the same is that nothing in tech is certain. Companies try really hard to create monopolies that will probably have anti-trust issues because the alternative is if they don't they will probably die (more so true after raising a lot of money and signing expensive long term office leases.)
From a longer historical perspective, nothing at all is certain. Take a look at the various office skyscrapers and stadiums in the US, the names change. Some of the giant corporations of 50 years ago may still be around in some form, but they are shadows of their former selves. The world changes fast.
That name is meaningless and generally just juvenile. It makes it hard to take you seriously when you do this.
This is also not an appropriate use of "sic".
> Although, I've seen a few deals structured in a way to make it seem like a smaller company is buying a larger one to avoid a review [at&t <-> SBC, Sears Holdings <-> K-Mart].
Smaller companies buying larger companies don't skip regulatory scrutiny. It's a fairly common practice to structure mergers this way, but not because it changes the level of regulator involvement.
This is not what's stated in the article.
Interesting they don’t call it a ‘social network’. ‘content ad network’ is more accurate in my opinion.
^1 I may be wrong
As per the law, ads and content-snooping don't belong on it.
Facebook ? No thanks, their business is censorship business.
That reeks of a very cheap excuse to just bash HN given the dramatic generalization you're throwing around.
Really, what is the longest period of time a country has existed without a repressive regime coming to power and abusing the institutions and populace?
It's an interesting question to ponder about in your free time.
Just as an example---because the old rivalry was USA vs USSR---Russia has endured two devastating and traumatic world wars, a revolution, a civil war, and Stalin. And they still rivaled US power throughout the cold war.
I think Americans really overstate the effectiveness of their economic and political system, and understate the huge advantage they have geographically.
Now, if you're talking just about wars that don't involve enemy attacks on American facilities, then technically World War II still counts. So no, not 151 years.
With that said, I do agree with your final sentence.
Tax treatment of equity compensation varies among European nations though.
Apple managed to pay virtually nothing in EU, thanks to a deal with Ireland. Which, incidentally, also got axed by the very same Margrethe Vestager.
The emissions excesses of diesel cars first discovered on Volkswagen were fined in the USA. Volkswagen is a non-USA company. The EU is still not taking action on the emissions because it is feared that that would impact the bottom line of the European car industry which is apparently more important than the health of the constituency.
http://gerbrandy.eu/dieselgate-report-co-rapporteur-gerbrand...
Now they're fines we should be proud of. Not like the pathetic smack-on-the-wrist fines they've dished out to banks and Google that they can earn back in milliseconds.
What I'm trying to say is: I feel there's a difference between a fine ("You're misbehaving, correct that") and greed ("You caused pain and I'm going to benefit here"). Most large-ish rulings in the US that ever reached me are part of the latter.
Then again, this is a matter of culture and might be fine (hah!) in the society that caused this and just look weird from the outside.
Does Facebook really have any plausible response other than "oops"?
Facebook REQUIRES your phone number when signing up nowadays (sometimes it asks a bit later - when you try to message peolple.
On Facebook Messenger, you sign up using you phone number.
On WhatsApp you sign up using your phone number.
I think it's pretty obvious that is was trivial to connect the two accounts.