Before buying Ring, WEMO or Roku, consider privacy issues - <AUTHOR> https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/11/23/before-buying-ring-wemo-roku-consider-privacy-issues/4260851002/ <comment><USER2> The further down this future we travel, the less I want to do with technology. I am becoming a Luddite.

None of this crappy IOT stuff will enter my home.

<comment><USER3> My roommate has a phone. I didn't think much of it until he said "Ok Google" while cooking.

What am I supposed to say here? I don't like microphones being always on either, but it's his phone and his home too. I can't escape the millions of cameras around the city or the constant internet trackers. We should have had regulated this stuff decades ago.

<comment><USER4> i mean, is it any different than having any other conversation that potentially involves interpersonal conflict?

if it's important to you and you're willing to burn social capital on it, just politely ask that he not use it when [your boundaries here].

if you come to an impasse, then there's not much to be done other than part ways. i'd imagine this is similar to any other incompatible roommate situations, e.g. someone whose recent significant other recently started coming over and has annoying habits.

<comment><USER5> I think the idea is that, rather than fight hundreds of small battles like this every day, we should collectively agree (through democratic political means) what's acceptable without explicit permission.

<comment><USER6> Well if you care about it so much, contribute either money or code and create ecosystem with the same level of layman UX. It's difficult to get legislation when you cannot demonstrate alternatives that do not severely reduce convenience. This is a forum of overpaid software engineers. Distributed neural network training isn't science fiction anymore. Go ship or pay others to do so.

Brave and DuckDuckGo built entire businesses on the premise of privacy. Many an arrogant reader here HN have no qualms claiming that they can replicate Facebook in a weekend.

Go forth and walk the talk. Yet another Mastodon client is cool, but do you know what's cooler? A production quality OCR competitive with Google Cloud Vision API, voice transcription on par with AWS Transcribe, or personal assistants with the ubiquity of Siri.

<comment><USER5> I care about it enough to contact my local representative (my MP because I'm in the UK) and he agrees with me that there should be explicit legislation to control the use of these technologies. The EU's GPDR is a step in that direction when it comes to things like automated decision-making. Open source is not a solution here, and to suggest otherwise seems like it misses the wood for the trees. Besides which, I hardly think that restricting the use of cameras on doorbells (which is what this sub-thread is about) is "severely reducing convenience."

<comment><USER7> Don't want a camera on your doorbell? Don't install one. I would like to have the freedom to decide differently.

<comment><USER8> Do I have the freedom not to be filmed by your doorbell and have it sent to the police without even your permission to be processed and stored for however long they want and possibly used against me at a later date for something that isn't even a crime now?

<comment><USER7> Sure. Just stay off my porch.

<comment><USER9> And don't walk by my house? For that matter, don't bother visiting me?

<comment><USER7> If you're walking by my house, you're in public, and you have no expectation of privacy. (Actually, that's not true -- my house isn't visible from the street, so if you're on my cameras, you're definitely on my property.)

If you're visiting me, you're on my property, ditto.

Any attempts to "fix" this will only make the world worse in the end. The people you empower to enforce your opinions about privacy in (semi-)public places will begin by exempting themselves from whatever well-intentioned rules you have in mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow...that Mozilla page that rates a bunch of products by how creepy they are [1] is very confusing. The first time I looked at it, I got the impression that it was telling me that Ring, for example, is rated "Not creepy!" when in fact it rates it "Very creepy!".

There are two ways it can mislead.

1\. It appears that the items are sorted by creepiness, but in the table of products there is no indication of how creepy the product is. Instead, they have an indicator above the table that starts out "Not creepy!" and as you scroll down through the table that indicator goes through various levels of creepiness.

So let's say you are wondering about Ring--you are ready to buy but first want to see what Mozilla says. You go to the page, see "Not creepy!" and an array of products. As you scroll through the products looking for Ring, the only indication that the creepiness level is changing is that indicator at the top. If you don't notice that it changes, it is easy to assume the whole array is the "Not creepy!" section. Then you hit Ring, think it is "Not creepy!", and head over to Amazon to buy one.

I only noticed that this was not how it works because I scrolled to the end of the page, didn't see another array for the more creepy products, and only then realized what is going on.

2\. Changing the filter settings does not change the creepiness indicator. If it is showing "Not creepy!" products, and you go change the filter settings to only show more creepy products, it shows those products, but still says "Not creepy!". It only updated the "Not creepy!" to whatever the creepiness level is for the shown products when you next scroll.

This page would work a lot better if it simply had separate sections for "Not creepy!", "A little creepy!", and so on.

[1] [https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/](https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/)

</comment><comment><USER11> > Wemo says it encrypts all communication between the app, cloud and device > and takes privacy and security "seriously."

Consider 1) the multiple security breaches that pop up every week, usually following quite dumb holes (unprotected elastic search, unencrypted reset commands, etc.). I have 0 trust in how these companies store my data. 2) the relative longevity (lack thereof) of these companies that still function on investors money, which means that best case scenario your device is now a brick, worst case your data now belongs to a company the likes of Google that doesn't care (or are planly hostile) for your privacy.

My wife reaaaally wanted cameras in our house, I took ubiquity and didn't connect it to their "cloud", that's the only thing I somewhat trust

<comment><USER12> Do you have a smart phone? If so I have bad news for you.....

<comment><USER13> Whataboutism, giving up on personal freedom or privacy, because it takes effort is not helpful. Your handle betrays you.

<comment><USER12> Oh I haven't given up at all. My cell phone service expires Dec 10 never to be renewed.

The massive amount of data your phone collects about you is quite relevant. Thanks for the downvotes which have now throttled my new account, and given me a bit of a bad impression of the community here.

Can you explain what you mean by "your handle betrays you?"

<comment><USER8> You're new here. I suggest you read the rules of you haven't (it's to get an idea for how comments are handled and expectations). Comments tend to get downvoted if they do not add to the conversation. I'd give it a bit of time to learn how HN works before making up your mind. I get downvoted all the time, but if you're posting comments of value you can expect your karma to increase over time.

<comment><USER12> Been lurking and reading the articles for 3 years.

<comment><USER14> such a young soul...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > "Customers have to consent to allow Ring to share the doorbell footage with > law enforcement, but "once they have access, they can save it indefinitely," > says Rebecca Ricks, a Mozilla researcher who worked on the report."

Sure, but once the bits exit a closed network, how do you have any idea where they go?

Even if encrypted, there is no way to prevent the recording of data for some future brute-force attack.

Probably the basis for a great thriller novel.

<comment><USER16> > there is no way to prevent the recording of data for some future brute-force > attack

Ideally, your encryption would be resistant to a brute-force attack…

<comment><USER15> What does "resistant" mean?

<comment><USER17> I'm guessing OpenSSL, which has never had a security breach...

<comment><USER15> Which is great, as far as it goes.

Likely more a question of when, and how feasible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm confused about the issue with Ring here. The primary complaint seems to be that users can share data with police if they want and that police can then save that data. Ultimately that's product agnostic; someone could easily take footage from any camera and show it to police voluntarily, and users could always be compelled to hand over footage of a crime with a warrant. People have zero control over how neighbors use their personal cameras and I don't see why that should impact personal buying decisions, even if you decide to never share data with police. What's the problem?

<comment><USER19> This is like vaccination

Why I have to vaccinate if measles already defeated?

Why I have to fear that all my neighbors send* all video to someone?

* because you do not know that "some corporation" do not sell your video feed to anyone

<comment><USER18> That's not my point. If we want to talk about the societal impact of mass security camera adoption, fine, but that has little to do with picking a Ring camera for personal use specifically. The only thing that differentiates this from other security camera products is that it's marginally more convenient for police to get access to data if the user wants to submit it. The advice in the article is silly because it doesn't say "don't get a camera because it's helping to create a police state", it's saying "just don't get this one camera".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> During Halloween I was rather concerned while taking my kids to homes with Ring.

Luckily in most cases the kids had masks, but still.

Next Halloween those homes will be in my do-not-visit list.

<comment><USER21> Genuine question, what scenario are you trying to avoid?

<comment><USER20> My minor kids' photos in some company's database, tagged with neighborhood data which points to where they live, correlated with what characters they like based on costumes, correlated with their age based on their height and so and so forth..

Now if the said company can connect my kids' photos with their identity based on some other database, it will have a lot more info on them to sell ads and for other nefarious purposes.

Just one scenario I can think of... There may be others.

<comment><USER22> Do you actually believe this is happening? No offense, but what you're describing sounds like a paranoid fantasy. Moreover, I'm sure your kids value candy more than privacy.

Also your kids have probably been caught on video hundreds of times at convenience stores, streets, wherever. If you actually wanted to avoid them being on camera at all, you would have to lock them in your house and things would turn out like the movie Dogtooth.

It's not possible to completely protect your privacy unless you make some very hard and costly choices like moving into a cabin in the woods or living a completely isolationist life without internet or contact with the outside world. Unless you want to make these sacrifices for a very dubious benefit, it would probably be better to just worry about something else.

<comment><USER23> From yesterday on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21606415](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21606415)

Personal and social information of 1.2B people discovered in data leak

Fourth paragraph of the story:

 _For a very low price, data enrichment companies allow you to take a single piece of information on a person (such as a name or email address), and expand (or enrich) that user profile to include hundreds of additional new data points of information. As seen with the Exactis data breach, collected information on a single person can include information such as household sizes, finances and income, political and religious preferences, and even a person's preferred social activities._

 _Each time a company chooses to "enrich" a user profile, they are also agreeing to provide what they know about the person to the enriching organization (thereby increasing the validity of the organization's future results). Despite efforts from social media organizations like Facebook, the resulting data continues to be compounded, creating a situation with no oversight that ultimately allows all of a person's social and personal information to be easily downloaded._

[https://www.dataviper.io/blog/2019/pdl-data-exposure- billion...](https://www.dataviper.io/blog/2019/pdl-data-exposure-billion- people/)

Extrapolate present AI, facial-recognition, location tracking (cell phones), voice-recognition, and integrated databases. You're already 99% of the way there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Most of this tracking can be blocked with something like a pi hole: [https://pi-hole.net/](https://pi-hole.net/)

<comment><USER25> Pi-hole is great, but it's not going to help if the designed purpose of the device is to send data to external servers, or if the device bypasses the network's DNS server, especially with the advent of DoH.

<comment><USER26> The right way to do this is set up a VLAN that can't get out to the Internet and is segregated from your own devices except via inbound connections from a Firewall. I've done this with cheap Chinese IP Cams and much other IOT garbage that has either been reverse engineered and/or presents some form of local network access.

<comment><USER27> Sounds great -- Any recommended how-to guides for those of us new to VLANs?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I recently bought a house and it came with a Ring doorbell. I dont care for it. I would of never bought one. I do have additional Wyze cams though for my blind spots and the back of the house. I definitely dont ever want to see activity back there.

The Wyze cams app is somewhat similar to the Ring app you can see videos people share with Wyze but thing is they have to email those videos in. Wyze says they End-to-End encrypt videos they upload to their cloud. If you dont trust them you can buy surveilance SD cards and use those instead. For $20 a pop though they are great. I only use them facing outside my house. I only put one facing the inside when out of town.

My alternative was going to be Raspberry Pi Zero W's and EyeMotionOS if anybody is interested in alternatives. Only reason I didnt get those is cause I couldnt decide on the camera to get and also I had a suspicious person (realize now they were likely just lost) stop partially on my driveway. So I bought a bunch of Wyze cams.

Another neat thing about thr Wyze cams is they shove an AI into a $20 camera to detect people. Their video on the matter can be seen on YouTube. It is impressive.

<comment><USER29> This comment reads like an ai was given context from the article and told to spit out a response.

<comment><USER28> Well I have been sick all week so I am not surprised. But no I have been on HN for a while.

<comment><USER29> I'm sorry Gian, I was having some fun at your expense. Hope you have a great weekend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> >Speaking of Amazon, one of the longest-running and popular tech products, the Kindle e-reader, got called out in the report for not having a lock-screen. Anyone can pick up a Kindle and get right into it.

Amazon kindle has a lock screen...

</comment><comment><USER31> "We take your privacy seriously" has replaced "Don't be evil" as one of the greatest laugh-out-loud lies in tech.

<comment><USER32> It's most hilarious when the statement is made by some fly-by-night startup with no real assets or obligation to perform.

It's seconded only by "Don't worry, I won't put this on the internet."

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I don't understand the issue here, and it frankly feels like a manufactured outrage from a minority group of activists. If customers voluntarily release a segment of video to law enforcement, so what? That's their right. People do so in the interest of preventing crime. I don't have any cameras myself but I completely sympathize with neighbors who have Ring cameras given the huge uptick in property crime here in the last five years. I'm all for amazon building in facial recognition that works across their network of Ring customers and their cameras.

As for the indefinite retention - what do you think happens if you were to give the police evidence that helps nab a criminal in a non-IoT world? They store it and retain it. Why would this be any different?

<comment><USER34> I have access to my neighbors ring doorbell so I can keep an eye on my home.

It tells me about all the local crime and tries to make me afraid. People report door to door salesmen as suspicious. Get real.

The real crime here is fear mongering presumably to sell more security products.

<comment><USER26> You don't need a Ring, you can set up your own IP cams and there is plenty of software out there. While I don't think it is necessary for everyone I've caught tons of stuff on video, including neighbors snooping in my back yard, cops walking around the property, neighborhood cats using the yard as a toilet, the county inspector doing a tax inspection, and more than one person walking up to the camera, seeing it, and then turning around. This was in an average neighborhood in northern California so YMMV if you live in a different area.

<comment><USER34> Yes, I have full ONVIF camera coverage of my property with local storage and s3 as a backup. If something happens including theft of my NAS i am covered. I don't want to be afraid. I do the best I can. I accept 20/20 hindsight.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How I can charge so much - <AUTHOR> http://eikonoklastes.org/articles/2007/09/26/how-i-can-charge-so-much

<comment><USER2> I've known more than a few 20-somethings who charge over $100/hour and a couple that are around the $200/hr mark. There's no correlation between expertise and hourly rate in my experience. Some of them are ripping people off and some are undercharging.

The reason this works is that person writing the check is usually not spending their own money, or if they are it's a drop in the bucket for them and $5k or $15k isn't much of a difference. They've probably already wasted $100k+ in salary over time having their employees try to handle the same task before deciding to bring in someone new. The other factor is the (mistaken) thinking that if you charge a lot you must be worth a lot.

At most companies the idea of giving one of their own programmers a $20k cash bonus to do a 10 week project in 1 week is out of the question, but paying a consultant to do the same thing is no big deal.

The Expensive Consultant idea is what IBM basically lives off of these days. In their case I think it's pretty unethical, but for individuals who are truly qualified it's a win-win situation and I highly recommend it as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's math behind the "If half the people don't say 'fuck you', you're charging too little" principle. If you double your prices, you're taking in twice as much revenue. You can afford to lose half your customers, and you'll still be making the same amount. However, you'll spend half as much energy doing so.

It's more striking if you have overhead. Say you charge $5000 for some job, but have expenses of $4000 for it. If you double your prices, you now make $10K, but your expenses remain constant at $4K. Your profit has gone from $1K to $6K. You could afford to lose 5/6 of your customers and still break even.

My mom charges $80/hour for elementary-school tutoring, up about $10-15/hr from when she started tutoring. None of her clients have ever blinked at a price increase. I know 20-somethings who tutor high-school math and make over $100/hr.

</comment><comment><USER4> Constantly increasing your prices is a pretty fun game.

I did some basic Windows consulting a few years ago; you know, spyware removal, installing hard drives, etc. My initial rate was $50 / hour, and I was charging $90 by the end of the summer. No one so much as batted an eye at whatever number I gave them. Not a single person tried to negotiate.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I did the same with my web app scalability contracting work...started at $95/hr, and kept that rate for years, but then when I started getting sick of the business, I started cranking it up. By the end I was charging $150/hr for local work and $3k/day minimum for "have to fly to get there" jobs, and hadn't lost any customers--I was still saying, "No, I can't get out to see you until the week after next, but I'll fix the particular problem you've mentioned remotely tonight when I get back into the office."

<comment><USER6> Why did you stop at $150/hr if it didn't drop any customers?

<comment><USER5> I instead just stopped. That's when I went full-time working on Virtualmin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice post. I especially like the "F*ck you" part. I never quite heard it said like that, but I agree.

Lessons learned from mistakes I made (and you shouldn't):

1\. If they say they won't engage you because of your price, it's not because of your price. Find out the real reason.

2\. If they're shopping on price, let them. You don't want them.

3\. If you won't compromise your quality, then you shouldn't compromise your price.

4\. If they legitimately can't afford it, then reduce scope, not price.

5\. If you charge top dollar, you better deliver top quality. Otherwise, don't be surprised when word gets around and the well dries up.

</comment><comment><USER8> Welcome to the crack cocaine of geekdom.

Once you figure out you can bill whatever you can negotiate, it makes it really hard to do startup work. The most dangerous part about it is that you always know you can pick up a bag of cash if you need it. When you've always got an attractive and easy "out", it's always out there calling to you. Yet another reason to do your startup when you are as young as possible.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. My girlfriend thought I was crazy when I started turning down $1000/day local contracts and $3000/day "get on a plane" contracts to instead work on Virtualmin (for no money for the first several months, and until recently very little money).

<comment><USER8> We should talk. I'm in need of some kind of 12-step group.

Seriously. I'd like to hear more about how you managed to quit.

<comment><USER5> The addiction wasn't so much mine as my clients. I had to wean them...and with enough time for them to hire someone to take my place. In the case of my biggest customer, they hired a full-time employee for the role.

I think the impetus I needed was the right business. I'd been working on Virtualmin for fun for two years...somehow it never occurred to me to make it a business for most of that time. When it finally did, it all seemed inevitable: it really felt like, from day one, that as long as I worked hard, it could not possibly fail (and that initial gut feeling is turning out to be right a couple of years later).

Some things I did to make it clear to myself that I was done with that old business:

1\. Gave up my downtown Austin office. (Corner of 6th and Congress, Bank of America building...best location in the whole city.)

2\. Took down the old business website. I left up all of the support materials and such (and it still gets thousands of hits per day), but I removed all contact information.

3\. Gave myself deadlines for launching the new business. "The website will be launched on X, and we'll be selling products by Y."

4\. Did Y Combinator. Not everybody gets to do that, but it triggered a number of changes that made the break between the old life and the new one very dramatic and difficult to go back on: I sold my 350Z and had a huge garage sale to get rid of a lot of my stuff, moved to the Valley (the getting rid of stuff is enforced when moving to the Valley--I couldn't afford as much space out here as in Austin), and didn't keep my old phone numbers.

The last one has probably been the most effective. I was still occasionally taking jobs when friends asked when I still lived in Austin. The thought process is, "Hey, what can a couple of days hurt? It'll give the new company more runway." But it slows you down, and gives you a safety net. Once I didn't have the safety net, I started thinking a lot faster and lot harder about how to increase revenues to a livable amount (I've never had a lot of big expenses, even the Z, so I had enough savings to last quite a while, but moving to the Valley dips into that pretty quickly).

NOTE: I don't have a family to feed and house. My co-founder kept his full- time job throughout all of this, because he has a family. I'm not saying the dramatic "drop everything and get serious" is the right path for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My experience is that your billing rate is more based on your domain experience than your education/work experience. We bill around this much and have only once had anybody complain, and I'm far from an "oldster".

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, we talked a bit about this at RailsConf. Experience still helps, but far more 20-somethings (especially on this forum) have the chops to justify much higher rates. I'm hoping to encourage more of them to be like you, and screw up the courage to charge more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance > downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.

Holy cow, did they get slashdotted by news.yc?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, I took this high-profile opportunity to geek out and fix the HTML validation down to the character encoding level, in case anyone checked. Then I accidentally committed a slightly broken version, and it took the entire site down. Then, in my panic, my darcs-fu failed me, and I couldn't get the patches to unpull properly.

Moral: even someone who looks great on paper can do something unbelievably stupid. (At least I wasn't charging anyone $100/hr. for it!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Thanks. I'll probably double my per-unit commission cost for my startup product, per your inspiration.

</comment><comment><USER12> Thank you. That was very informative. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> You're welcome, aptly named QuestionBoy. Thanks for asking the question in the first place. :-)</comment></comment>


National Lawyer COnvention on the creation of ACTA and IP Law - <AUTHOR> http://youtu.be/AHanA0J3y9Q?t=1h20m9s

<comment><USER2> I haven't watched the video, but viewers should understand that the Federalist Society, organizers of this convention, are firmly on the right wing of the political spectrum. That doesn't make them right or wrong, but this isn't an insight into what the average lawyer (if there is such a thing) thinks or understands about IP.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Adherence to border media screening forms is from pre-implementation of this "trade agreement."</comment>


Tell HN:Sold my first android app - <AUTHOR>

Only 5 bucks and after Google's commission I am left with $3.50...but hey it is a start:)<p>Bringing Rhythmbox to Windows and Mac users: http://code.google.com/p/rhythmote/ <comment><USER2> Great start! You had an idea and was motivated enough to follow through. I wish you the best and hope your app is a big success. I'm going to go take a look at it now in support a fellow HN message board member.</comment>


Zuckerberg denies knowledge of Facebook shadow profiles - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/11/facebook-shadow-profiles-hearing-lujan-zuckerberg/ <comment><USER2> > Lujan: It may surprise you that we've not talked about this a lot today. > You've said everyone controls their data, but you're collecting data on > people who are not even Facebook users who have never signed a consent, a > privacy agreement.

> And it may surprise you that on Facebook's page when you go to "I don't have > a Facebook account and would like to request all my personal data stored by > Facebook" it takes you to a form that says "go to your Facebook page and > then on your account settings you can download your data."

This is typically something Facebook should be prepared for considering it's one of the use case of the GDPR.

It's highly likely they are prepared for that but won't show it before the storm.

<comment><USER3> Congressman Costello from Pennsylvania asked if AI will be used to recognize the faces of "non-FB users".

Combined with the shadow profiles question by Congressman Lujan from New Mexico, some of these questions are getting closer to what people need to know and understand. Unfortunately, a lot of the rest of questioning seems like blind man's bluff / Marco Polo [0].

It'd be nice if Congress can be asked to host a debate between subject matter experts in the privacy domain (who are knowledgeable and can effectively communicate this knowledge and their concerns to lay people) and tech company C-level executives like Zuckerburg.

2:50 PM EDT: Congressman Duncan from North Carolina is going to give Zuckerburg a small copy of the US Constitution.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_man%27s_buff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_man%27s_buff)

2:59 PM EDT - Edited to add "to lay people".

3:02 PM EDT - Added "Marco Polo". Thanks to caabalis for the reminder.

<comment><USER4> > 2:50 PM EDT: Congressman Duncan from North Carolina is going to give > Zuckerburg a small copy of the US Constitution.

Showboating... Not to defend Facebook and I admittedly have not watched any testimony or questioning, but I'm sure these politicians made no mention of FOSTA, SOPA, the PATRIOT Act, net neutrality, NSA domestic surveillance... Zuckerberg could have turned this all around on them.

<comment><USER5> there's more than a handful of things that actually did happen that Zuckerberg could have "turned around" on them. And he didn't. Don't you wonder why?

<comment><USER6> No, he is clearly in damage control mode, trying desperately to keep his monopoly without any major concessions.

Will be interesting to see how that works out for him, probably fairly well I would guess.

<comment><USER7> Really? By my read Congress is begging him to do their jobs for them, asking the fox to design the henhouse.

<comment><USER6> Indeed, They want, Facebook to "fix itself" to some meaningful degree. Except Facebook has little desire for actual change, so like I said, I imagine very little in practice will change, just a lot more "yay we <3 privacy" spam from their PR department.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some thoughts about the possiblities:

1) he's lying ... which would be dangerous since it only takes one disgruntled employee to expose emails and work projects that merged in 3rd-party data (e.g. Acxiom).

2) he's not "lying" ... by doing his version of Clinton's _" depends on what the meaning of 'is' is"_.[0] Let's say Facebook has an internal system that collects data on non-Facebook identities into a holding area. Maybe they internally call it _" deferred profiles"_ or _" pre-activated profiles"_ but not exactly _" shadow profiles"_. Well, MZ can basically interpret "do you have shadow profiles?" as a hyper-literal question and answer with a hyper- literal answer: _" no"_. Again, a Facebook insider would have to come forward and reveal what the _shadow-but-we-dont-call-it-that_ profile actually is.

3) he's telling the truth by every meaning of the question. Facebook truly has zero data on non-Facebook users.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=depends+on+what...](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=depends+on+what+the+meaning+of+is+is)

<comment><USER9> He's not under oath, so the consequences of lying are limited.

<comment><USER10> Why wouldn't they put him under oath? That just seems weird: the cost of doing it is zero.

<comment><USER11> Possible that if they did every single answer would be "I don't know the exact details, my team will get back to you"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just one question, following Zuckeberg's congress show-and-dance: are the next CEOs to be called in front of the committee the ones from Equifax, Experian and TransUnion?

Because the way I see it, they're collecting millions of "shadow profiles", with no consent, no remedy, no removal procedures. Furthermore, they sell that data to 3rd parties at will.

I'd also look into a possible connection between one of these and Facebook. I imagine if someone crosses your social profile with actual credit records, real name, address, car, etc. then you have nothing private left to protect save the thoughts in your head.

<comment><USER13> Equifax may have your bank statements, and whatever sensitive numbers they can collect, but they do not literally have have your inner thoughts, in the same way that Facebook and Google have.

That is an important distinction.

Surveillance like this is harmful, either way. Not just the leaks, but the actual data gathering itself should be criticized. Why is it that during the Equifax leak nobody criticized the data gathering in the first place? It was all about the leak. In this case I am glad that the data gathering is being put into question.

But anyway, my main point is that they are collecting different sets of private data.

<comment><USER14> Are you sure about what data those companies have? Example: it seems like you can't sign in to Starbucks wifi any more (via Google) without giving a real email address that is verified through Experian's API. There is surely more going on than consumers know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Lujan: It's been admitted by Facebook that you do collect data points on non-[Facebook users]. My question is, can someone who does not have a Facebook account opt out of Facebook's involuntary data collection?

Zuckerberg: Anyone can turn off and opt out of any data collection for ads, whether they use our services or not

Is this not just an outright lie? You literally have to use their services to turn off/opt out anything.

<comment><USER16> Its probably technically true, if you trust facebook. They might respect the DoNotTrack header. If not, most legit advertisers, including facebook, will [claim to] respect AdChoices optout flows: optout.aboutads.info. [https://www.facebook.com/help/568137493302217](https://www.facebook.com/help/568137493302217) directs you to these sites.

Now, they obviously could lie and still record things. Also, this probably doesnt include things like person A has phone number Z and person B as phone number Z so theres some sort of link there, but presumably thats not used for ads.

I worked for an ad company that respected the optout/DNT as best we could.

<comment><USER17> When could you not?

<comment><USER16> assuming you mean respecting settings. historical data from before you blocked tracking wasnt explicitly deleted, but it was marked as ignored and rolled out of the system after a month or so(lots of caching). id guess with fb having orders of magnitude more data they do something similar.

DNT is easy, thats a header on every call so just drop it on the floor. Unfortunately firefox was always threatening to make it on by default, and IE actually did i believe...and basically all the big ad providers threatened to ignore it if it went on by default. Management basically said we'd do whatever the industry does, but is currently respected.

The problem with the opt out flow is how do you store that someone wants you not to store information about them without storing info about them. The standard way is drop a cookie that says dont track, but if you clear cookies youd have to opt out again... which is shitty UX and unexpected. also, since its cookies its opting out the browser, not the user or computer.

As a consumer, it sucks because you have no way of knowing if the ad/tracking companies are respecting any of this. And while I'm positive we tried to respect it, and im not aware of any, bugs can happen. That code was part of the most heavily tested stuff since it hit critical paths.

On most targeted ads(including but not limited to on facebook) theres a little adchoices(blue triangle) button. If you click on it you can see which company targeted you, some info on what type of targeting, and a link to optout.

<comment><USER17> Appreciate the lengthy response!

Are you still in the industry?

<comment><USER16> np - theres plenty to be upset about but the ads stuff is pretty standard for google and the like too.

I wish people were more vocal about the amount of info publishers leak by embedding fb like / g+ like / etc buttons in their sites. Dont even have to interact with it and fb gets to track that you loaded that page.

left a year or two ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Isn't anyone who has Google Analytics installed on a page collecting information and creating "shadow" profiles?

I watched the entire hearing, it was pretty interesting. I was surprised how ignorant many of the senators were of the subject matter on hand. Some of them clearly didn't understand the difference between Facebook and the Internet. Or they thought that Facebook, Google, Twitter, were all the same thing, this mysterious "Internet" and somehow Zuckerberg was in charge of it all.

Some of the questions were impossible to answer because they made no sense and they kept hammering him for not answering it.

Then there were senators basically trying to guilt trip him into endorsing their bill when he already said he supports the principle behind it but it would depend on the details.

<comment><USER19> Both Google Analytics and Facebook's interest based ads/"shadow" profiles work similarly.

You can opt out of Google's interest based ads via [https://adssettings.google.com](https://adssettings.google.com) and Facebook's interest based ads via [https://www.facebook.com/ads/settings](https://www.facebook.com/ads/settings) without having to have an account with either.

I don't believe either "shadow" profiles are every associated with an account or personal details even when you make an account on the associated service.

<comment><USER20> > I don't believe either "shadow" profiles are every associated with an > account or personal details even when you make an account on the associated > service.

Based on what? Did you talk to someone in the know? Are you just speculating?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _Zuckerberg: Congressman, I'm not, I'm not familiar with that._

 _Zuckerberg: I do not know off the top of my head._

 _Zuckerberg: Congressman, I do not know off the top of my head but I can have our team get back to you afterward._

This guy must have a whole team of people coaching him on what he can overtly lie about, what he can obfuscate - and when he can't do either, how to change the subject.

<comment><USER22> It's obvious why he's doing this: it gives him time to come up with a response, in a non public setting, with the help of his legal team. There's no reason for him to answer difficult questions while testifying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> He slipped up yesterday and opened the door to the biggest issue of them all, coersion and brainwashing of users for profit, and the Senator who caught him in a lie didn't explore it further. No wonder they were testing if they can make you happy or sad by manipulating your feed when they sell the OUTCOME not just the impression.

[https://youtu.be/6ValJMOpt7s?t=2h36m49s](https://youtu.be/6ValJMOpt7s?t=2h36m49s)

<comment><USER24> Link is dead. Can you post what lie it was?

<comment><USER23> He was maintaining that all Facebook does is sell innocent ads. Then was asked if Facebook gets a cut of 3rd party business or if they get paid based on outcomes. He said no, but his example revealed that in fact they do sell outcomes, which is what makes them so compelling to companies who bid. It's in Facebook's financial interest to gain as much power of its users as possible in order to achieve higher success rates for its customers.

This something the vast majority of users don't understand. The Facebook experience is engineered to make you do things in a much more sophisticated way than any other advertising business to date. They can recursively manipulate your emotions to drive up their outcome compensation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I find it incredible how many congressmen seem interested in Facebook implementing a rich person mode where you pay them money to not share your data. They aren't worried so much about Facebook gathering data, but that there isn't an exception for the 1%.

<comment><USER26> "Listen, we've been working our asses off to create Rich/Poor tracks for the Legal system and law enforcement practices, how do we get you in on that action? Who do I have to bribe at facebook?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm glad someone is asking about the collection of non-user data and data collection outside Facebook sites, but I can't help wanting someone qualified to speak on such technical subjects that would be able to effectively question without a prepared list.

<comment><USER18> It's an important concern but anyone who has Google Analytics, or any other analytics tool, installed on their website is collecting non-user data. This happens pretty much across the board.

There's also the concern about derived data, like some kind of user embedding vector from clustering, that provides a lot of information about the user that is not available in the raw source data.

<comment><USER28> I think this is a bad analogy.

If site-usage data is being collected via use of your site, then by definition it's on users.

That's not the same thing as buying files on individuals who don't use your site from data brokers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Am I missing something or has the beacon functionality of the Like button not come up yet in the hearing? I think it's critical to note that the Like button can---and probably is---being used to build non-user profiles as well as user profiles. The critical technical thing is that the _load_ of the Like button is the critical signal; whether the user actually liked something is secondary. It seems like Senator Gardner got close yesterday but had some technical misunderstandings about just how powerful the Like button is.

<comment><USER30> It came up yesterday. A question was asked wether or not Zuckerberg thought user understood that Facebook had the ability to track every website they visit when Facebook social media icons appear on those pages.

<comment><USER29> That's what I was referring to regarding the exchange with Gardner: it was talking about users and implied that Facebook had to be open at the same time.

>> Senator Gardner: if you're logged in to Facebook with a separate browser and you log in to another — log in to another article, open a new tab in the browser while you have the Facebook tab open, and that new tab has a Facebook button on it, you track the article that your reading.

So it wasn't emphasizing that this tracking is ubiquitous and could be used to construct quire information-rich shadow profiles. I still don't think the senators are aware of this.

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- switch/wp/2018/04/10...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- switch/wp/2018/04/10/transcript-of-mark-zuckerbergs-senate-hearing)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> He also denied knowing the political orientation of his content police(during yesterday's Cruz question), however, he's Facebook, so he knows everyone's political biases.

<comment><USER32> Are you seriously suggesting Facebook use it's employee's private account data as part of hiring & performance management?

<comment><USER33> Why would they not? Any other employer is allowed to, so why not Facebook?

<comment><USER32> Facebook has a different level of access. Seems to me like that would be all kinds of unethical.

<comment><USER34> And clearly, Facebook would not use personal information for unethical purposes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The title is extreme clickbait; he _acknowledged_ the existence of nonuser data collection (and discussed one use of it), but denied knowledge of the common use of the term "shadow profiles" to refer to the data thus collected.

</comment><comment><USER36> When I google my own first and last name, the 4th result is a Facebook "public figure" page of me. I deleted my account years ago though. Creepy.

</comment><comment><USER37> Can your face be tagged when you don't have a Facebook account? I would be very upset if this is true.

<comment><USER38> Yes. Ive never used facebook in my life, yet thanks to someone sharing a picture of me 10 years ago, and tagging it, it knows my name and will auto tag me in others.

<comment><USER39> And holding data about people who never consented to it should bite them hard.

<comment><USER37> No way to remove your data is even worse. I cannot opt-out without making an account. I don't want to have a Facebook account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I sure wish Equifax were questioned about collecting information with equal outrage.

</comment><comment><USER41> Facebook OpenGraph v2 stopped the ability of api app developers from getting friend data without their consent.

For the most part 'shadow profiles' are dead as of 2013-ish when OpenGraph v2 came out. Lots of scammy Facebook companies died because of this, if you remember many game companies also suffered a bit like Zynga and threatened to leave, they were given special access to still do it for a while and I assume others like CA possibly.

With v2 they also shut off using global Facebook user ids and moved them to a per app basis so you can't correlate outside your app, you'd have to correlate with other identifiers like email or deeper data comparing.

Facebook also turned friend access into invitation lists where the other user had to agree and join the app themselves before you could pull their data.

Facebook knew about shadow profiles and they already addressed it.

<comment><USER42> > For the most part 'shadow profiles' are dead as of 2013-ish when OpenGraph > v2 came out.

> Facebook knew about shadow profiles and they already addressed it.

No, I think you're confused. IIRC "shadow profiles" are the profiles Facebook builds of non-users based on data those people didn't share, like their friend's contact lists.

The shadow profile issue has nothing to do with Facebook's public API. It's all about what data they're collecting and what they chose to do with it, regardless if the results are accessible to 3rd parties or not.

There are multiple _separate_ problems with Facebook, Cambridge Analytica is just _one_ (and the one Zuck probably wants to focus on because it makes him look the best and is not structurally threatening to FB's business model).

<comment><USER41> > _IIRC "shadow profiles" are the profiles Facebook builds of non-users based > on data those people didn't share, like their friend's contact lists._

From a development standpoint I clearly defined the 'shadow profile' you just explained.

Facebook provides OpenGraph APIs that app developers can access personal data that is granted by a user. Previously to OpenGraph v2 you could access all friend data and pull down the whole social graph for any friend level shared data through one initial person, those were shadow profiles. For each individual permission you only needed one friend to agree to it if the other friend shared at the privacy defaults of friend access to everything.

That has been shut down at of OpenGraph v2, look back on that time where they added it, lots of scammy sites were mad they couldn't build shadow profiles anymore. I built games on Facebook at the time and this was obvious to many game companies that were just there to collect data on users to sell not about the game. Remember all the birthday apps and zombie infection games? All data syphons. Facebook shut it down back then, not really because of privacy but partly, mostly largely because they were scared other companies were getting access to the whole social graph like many did including Zynga, CA, others.

Were 'shadow users' a problem, yes, but go try to pull friend data or personal messages today, those are unique permissions you have to be granted by each user that you access and for each action, you also have to undergo a Facebook app review and justify use of them like you do with background geolocation on Apple.

Part of this attack on Facebook is to bring in the government filter and firewall [1] as an extension of FOSTA / SESTA and most of these issues are resolved at Facebook already.

If you don't want a government censorship filter [1] that the ISPs and large companies like Facebook will run, then understand that this is opening that can of worms.

[1] [https://www.wired.com/2017/04/internet-censorship-is- advanci...](https://www.wired.com/2017/04/internet-censorship-is-advancing- under-trump/)

EDIT: for the people arguing details about 'shadow profiles'

> _So what is a Facebook shadow profile, and where does yours lurk?_ [2]

> _A Facebook shadow profile is a file that Facebook keeps on you containing > data it pulls up from looking at the information that a user's friends > voluntarily provide._ [2]

> _You're not supposed to see it, or even know it exists. This collection of > information can include phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and other pertinent > data about a user that they don't necessarily put on their public profile. > Even if you never gave Facebook your second email address or your home phone > number, they may still have it on file, since anyone who uses the "Find My > Friends" feature allows Facebook to scan their contacts. So if your friend > has your contact info on her phone and uses that feature, Facebook can match > your name to that information and add it to your file._ [2]

[2] [https://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/what-exactly- is-a...](https://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/what-exactly-is-a- facebook-shadow-profile/)

<comment><USER42> > Facebook provides OpenGraph APIs that app developers can access personal > data that is granted by a user. Previously to OpenGraph v2 you could access > all friend data and pull down the whole social graph for any friend level > shared data through one initial person, those were shadow profiles.

So you're saying if someone uploaded their phone's contact list to Facebook, you used to be able to access that data (about their contacts) from Facebook's API?

Just to be clear, the person with a "shadow profile" doesn't necessarily even have Facebook account.

I still think you're mistaken and trying to map "shadow profiles" to the profile scraping that was done by Kogan and Cambridge Analytica.

<comment><USER41> 'Shadow profiles' are anything that Facebook got without asking for direct permission to get.

It could come through a friend list on Facebook back when you could do that or through harvesting the contact lists on mobile. Both are shadow profiles and both weren't granted access but Facebook got to it (or app developers did) via a friend permission or from the native mobile apps contact list harvesting and tracking.

The most you could get about a user that wasn't part of Facebook was their email, name and anything in their contact list and they probably eventually tracked that user through various means, many companies still do this and other bigs did as well such as LinkedIn. Even on LinkedIn though, one initial user had to use their app or their import feature to get to the 'shadow profiles'. Most 'shadow profiles' came from initial granting by a 'friend' or associate.

They are both 'shadow profiles', anyone that got their data pulled without being directly asked is one. Facebook shut down the friend list and global user id tracking/correlation nearly 5 years ago. Most of the problems were back in 2007-2014 when app development on Facebook was bigger and games were huge there because of this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Zs response was more to the tune that 'shadow profile' is not a term that he or Facebook uses to describe the said concept, and not denying that it may collect some data pertaining to non members.

<comment><USER7> If so, that's a pretty legalistic interpretation of the question.

<comment><USER35> No, the question was a follow-up after he explicitly acknowledged gathering non-user data; the question about that non-user data was "So these are called shadow profiles, is that what they've been referred to by some?"

It was literally a question about whether that _term_ was commonly applied to the data Zuckerberg had already acknowledged FB was gathering. Answering "I'm not familiar with that" because you aren't aware of the use of the isn't "pretty legalistic", it's the only kind of answer that makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> "So you're directing people that don't even have a Facebook page to sign up for a Facebook page to access their data"

That sounds like a simple solution. Yeah right.

</comment><comment><USER45> Can anyone find an interview or video where he (or his senior team) contradicts him?

</comment><comment><USER46> What a liar, it's getting more ridiculous every day.

</comment><comment><USER47> TLDR: Zuckerberg continues to lie to Congress

<comment><USER48> This comment breaks the site guidelines. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.

You may not owe better to Zuckerberg but you do owe better to the community here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER47> I am sorry to summarize that a billionaire is an outright liar in a congressional hearing. There is no other way to put it. He might as well say "I am not a crook"</comment></comment></comment>


Common sense and statistics - <AUTHOR> http://andrewgelman.com/2014/12/25/common-sense-statistics/

<comment><USER2> I don't understand how the author's estimate is justified. He wants to take the probability that the margin is within 2 million and then divide by two million? Maybe he is appealing to some limiting argument? But we are presumably dealing with a discrete random variable.

<comment><USER3> I think the algorithm he is suggesting is..

1\. Get empirical probability vote is within 2 million from previous N elections. (so, 1 if it is within 2 mill, and 0 of not, then average). Use it as p(vote is within 2 million). 2\. Assume that if a vote is within 2 million, then the exact number of votes is uniform between 0 and 2 million. Then, the probability of a tie, given that the vote is within 2 million is p(vote within w million) / 2 million.</comment></comment>


The System Administrator Song - <AUTHOR> http://www.deadtroll.com/sysadmin/ <comment><USER2> ..."don't piss him off, cuz he's the one that knows you've been surfing porn"...</comment>


YouTube Face is clickbait, attaining human form - <AUTHOR> https://openspace.sfmoma.org/2018/04/your-pretty-face-is-going-to-sell/ <comment><USER2> This post made me want to re-read "You Are Not a Gadget." One of Lanier's points in that book is that technology can both augment expression and bound it. The Like Button is a classic example of bounding because it reduces your thoughts and feelings about a piece of content to a thumbs up, whereas a simple textbox would let you note whatever you want about the content (text is also harder to monetize and analyze and control).

I personally have been noticing more and more how technology and algorithms seem to bounding expression online and off, particularly around content creation, but also with influencers and personal branding and so on. It feels like 90% of the shit being pumped out is super amplified to draw notice or for signaling, and while this is not a new phenomenon of course, it still feels weird to see ordinary people at restaurants taking pictures of their food, or sucking up to some corporation online for the chance to win a prize

I feel this pressure too. The pressure to get noticed. To tailor content to what will rack of the most views. To post that tweet that will make me look like a smart, funny guy who has something valuable to say and oh by the way you should totally follow me. And I hate it. And I try not to care about numbers. But it still feels really shitty when something you spent a month working on and genuinely find really cool gets a total of ten views while a picture of a goat in a sweater just when viral. And what if the audience is right?

There has to be something better. I hope that we can grow beyond changing ourselves to fit the algorithm, and re-focus on using technology to create new ways of sharing and expressing and relating to each other. One fun example of this that Lanier gave: creating technology that would let people communicate like cuttlefish (specifically the shifting skin colors and textures). That optimistic vision still feels as radical and fresh today as it did when I first read the book in 2010. I just hope it's not too late

<comment><USER3> >I hope that we can grow beyond changing ourselves to fit the algorithm

I personally think you are in for a very rude awakening. This is exactly what people are trying _not_ to do with Machine Learning. It is always, almost, about profiling you, about finding out who you are in order to offer you what you already know, to limit your horizon, to "tailor" your "experience" and the span of possibilities.

As a very technical fellow told me: "when you read three political news in a row we set a badge, you are now politically minded."

This, sadly, doesn't fit your yearning for us growing "beyond changing ourselves to fit the algorithm."

My prediction is that it will get worst before it gets any better at all.

<comment><USER4> Which makes me think... ...would someone be willing to develop a content recommendation engine that filters out all the bullshit on the web? Especially valuable would be one that is also immune to "filter bubble" effects.

<comment><USER5> I think you have to be exposed to the bullshit. I explicitly follow people on Twitter I strongly disagree with; that sometimes outright outrage and disgust me. I don't interact with them, but I read what they're saying and what people in their filter bubble say back to them. That's my best solution to trying to escape too small a filter bubble of my own.

<comment><USER6> I do the same, and it started accidentally. I followed someone on twitter who I thought was someone else, and they are hard alt right. After getting some updates from them in my email, I realized my mistake, and went on twitter to unfollow them, and got to reading their feed was was atrocious from my viewpoint, but I saw that it was good to know how the "enemy" was thinking, what their thought process and logic trains are. So I kept following them.

At first I stopped in from time to time to get my outrage on (I never interact with them, just read) and to feel smug that I am intellectually superior to them and their followers.

But then I realized that if way back, at the very beginning of your thought process you start from a false premise, everything else can follow reasonable and logical methods. It's almost like chaos theory, small differences in the starting position can have vastly outsized differences at the end.

I've used this experience to go back and look at my "starting" positions. And I've horrified myself too. So on the whole it's been an enlightening experience.

So now I can say that I am firmly on my way to understanding them now (and myself too) even though I diagram with them vehemently.

I don't use Facebook much, but if I did, I would want to be able to tell the algorithm "take 50% of what you want to show me based on my preferences and show me the exact opposite"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of the 'Dreamworks Face' that you see on so many animated movie posters. ([http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DreamWorksFace](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DreamWorksFace))

<comment><USER8> Wow, it has a name. I have noticed that stupid expression is basically the cover of every kid's animated movie for the last decade.

<comment><USER9> I love it when people articulate/identify a pattern and coin it with something. "Dreamworks face", works for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Has anyone else noticed how much this min-maxing is effecting all different areas of the world? I played the last World of Warcraft expansion and got to the stage where I could start raiding (Blizzard is trying to make this easier to break into for casual players) and 95% of raiders only wanted to raid with those who had already done the raid before and had an item level higher than anything the raid drops!

I find this really frustrating in the arts and entertainment space - the bar for entry seems to be getting higher and higher because of these ultra competitive optimisations. I guess the difference now is that people view making video content on the internet as a career (or at least a way to make money) rather than just as a hobby.

<comment><USER11> I was talking with a colleague at the coffee machine, telling him how this weekend I went to the supermarket to do the groceries, and how it was a pain to carry bags around.

He replied 'I haven't stepped in a supermarket in months, I do all my groceries online. It is much more efficient'.

I have to admit I felt dumb for not optimising my time like he does. But reflecting on it, I feel sad that our private time is becoming a soulless corporate enterprise where everything has to be optimised.

<comment><USER12> Why soulless? Your life is what you make it. Build meaning yourself.

<comment><USER13> I've always found it a bit odd when people are singing elegies to the joys of human contact in... a supermarket checkout line. There's no point in my life in which that was a serious source of "human contact" and I think anyone who can't say that has a problem that needs immediate addressing. One that can't be fixed by complaining about how impersonal shopping is now.

I do see human contact in the grocery store... it's between the _employees_ of the store, who know each other, and actually have some sort of relationship, not with the faceless masses that transiently stream through. Of course they don't get to just chat the whole time, but humans being humans, they manage to find some time.

<comment><USER5> I don't find joy in a supermarket checkout line, but I have witnessed joy in some people (customers, mostly older, who found a way to stand out from the masses and have a face). Perhaps those who take the time to sing elegies actually do find personal joy and fulfillment even a checkout line even if you and I do not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Alternatively, it serves as a pretty good filter for content I will actively try to avoid. Playing a video and immediately hearing that "HEY GUYS" voice makes me click the back button instantly, and block the channel.

<comment><USER15> Can we perhaps combine all of the clickbait memes into a single form?

"One weird trick to find the 13 most extreme reaction faces to mundane topics (you won't believe how number 5 lets you make money from home!)"

<comment><USER16> Plus

        COPS CALLED!! (NOT CLICKBAIT)

<comment><USER17> [ALMOST DIED] GONE SEXUAL

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I find it funny that the AVGN is featured; he's been making that face since before YouTube's been monetizing. He may be the _originator_ of the phenomenon.

It used to be that in order to drive clicks you needed to have female cleavage in your thumbnail. One YouTuber (RadicalSoda) still includes an image of a cartoon woman showing generous cleavage in each of his videos, despite himself being the only person actually appearing in most of them.

And then there's YouTube _voice_. I don't even think I can imitate it but there's a distinctive cadence and inflection that YouTubers seem to have embraced. I once saw a _ten-year-old_ use it in a toy-company-sponsored video. Yes, ten-year-old kid paid to hawk toys on YouTube instead of just playing with them or whatever. Then again, we have stories of some Hackernews hearing their 3-year-old use "don't forget to like and subscribe!" as a farewell.

<comment><USER19> _YouTube voice_

There's a link in the OP to an article analyzing this: [https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/12/the-l...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/12/the- linguistics-of-youtube-voice/418962/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've been uploading more content to YouTube recently and I noticed that their AI automatically picks the video frame that has the most exaggerated facial expression and uses this as the default thumbnail. This is probably why YouTube face appears to be everywhere!

You can see it on this video: [https://youtu.be/qhV4xCmPy4g](https://youtu.be/qhV4xCmPy4g)

I didn't upload this thumbnail, YouTube picked it. If you looked through the video manually you might not even notice that such an expressive YouTube face was in there, but YouTube found it when I uploaded it and picked it as the thumbnail.

<comment><USER21> Since you can't actually see the thumbnail on the video page (at least not on the desktop version): [https://imgur.com/a/ohmLc](https://imgur.com/a/ohmLc)

<comment><USER20> Thanks, I forgot that it just starts playing without the thumbnail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The really interesting question to my mind is what comes next. This is a wildfire sweeping across previously unspoiled plains, and yes, it's very impressive and a bit destructive (fortunately these metaphorical plains aren't built up with too many valuable bits of infrastructure) and worth a story... but what comes after the fire sweeps through? What happens when the bulk of people have already clicked on their thousand videos advertised like this and realize there's no great need to click on 1,001? Obviously it doesn't mean a nirvana will arise in which people will suddenly seek out "real" content, but something will have to shift.

These YouTube thumbnails are basically pushing all the buttons in the human brain as hard as they can without getting whacked from the site. The only harder button I can think of is nudity but that won't be permitted. (In fact, if you've never thought of it this way before, consider that it won't be permitted precisely _because_ it hits the buttons too hard. There are reasons beyond stereotypical moralistic "prudery" to resist slathering public spaces in nudity and sexual content.) So once they burn out this button... which they will, eventually, though much like the market, people can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent, so to speak... what comes next? People will eventually develop a sort of mental callous around this and on one level or another resist being yanked around so casually. What will replace it?

<comment><USER5> The article points out the evolution and how we got from each prior step to this point; it gets worse and worse and worse (and worse and worse)

<comment><USER13> It can't get worse forever, because the badness is bounded by the psychology of the human brain on one side, and the YouTube-enforced standards on the other. Something will eventually have to give.

<comment><USER22> Right. It only "got worse" while people tried to figure out the new medium. Once we have a set of options that work well, I'd expect this to become a basic meta game. People will recognize the current pattern and begin to associate it with "old". Just like fashion. Probably a bit circular, aka old trends will at some point re-emerge. This assumes YT will be around for long enough, of cause.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Youtube "recommended" videos, if you open it in incognito mode are very revolting to me. This is why. The quality is so atrocious. The video recommendation in my google profile are not as bad, but every now and then it will recommend me a picture of The Donald making an ugly face.

</comment><comment><USER24> One of my favorite youtube channels does this: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO8DQrSp5yEP937qNqTooOw/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO8DQrSp5yEP937qNqTooOw/videos)

And it bothers me. Even Linus put up a video explaining that he's sorry for the annoying thumbnails but it drives views.

<comment><USER25> Here is Linus's video explaining why does "Youtube Face."

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzRGBAUz5mA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzRGBAUz5mA)

<comment><USER26> I thought that was well explained, he makes a good point. As another content creator, you gotta play the game, and a 20% lift in views is nothing to scoff at.

It's like the 90s where ads became increasingly intrusive to attract the user's attention (flash animations, games, showing some skin, etc). But then you had Google come along and say "text ads only", and that seems to have curtailed how bad ads can get.

So whatever solution happens will have to happen from the top down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's the same with App Store icons as well — [https://twitter.com/Doomlaser/status/708605183509528576](https://twitter.com/Doomlaser/status/708605183509528576)

</comment><comment><USER28> Channels that specialize in reviewing virtual reality content are especially fun. Since the head mounted display obscures the eyes, they must make up for the loss of expression with terrifyingly exaggerated gaping maws.

</comment><comment><USER29> They really are effective, though. The conscious part of me is actually turned off by videos with these kinds of title images, but they still draw my attention and produce an impulse to click.

<comment><USER30> One day, I promise I will stop clicking on thumbnails that bait me with the promise of something vaguely sexual. One day. Maybe. I hope.

<comment><USER31> Would you be interested in a training program?

<comment><USER13> I've idly wondered sometimes about the effectiveness of a shock collar sort of setup for oneself that allowed the conscious mind to hit the body with something its more primal parts understand better than the mere disapproval of the conscious mind, which it doesn't seem to much care about.

(I'm actually a bit concerned it might be _too_ effective. It may be the case that anyone wise enough to properly use one has already worked out other effective mechanisms to obtain the effect with less of the danger.)

<comment><USER30> Friends of mine have convinced me to donate ~$2,000 to a particularly odious political cause whenever I perform certain actions, like drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes outside of their allotted times. I have found this to be remarkably effective in speaking the unconscious brain's language.

Also, this thing exists: [https://pavlok.com/](https://pavlok.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> GuB-42 I remember seeing a tutorial on making stock pictures. Doing exaggerated expressions is their number one advise.

The idea is that these pictures will be in a library of thousands, and it has to stand out, regular faces don't. It is not a YouTube thing. It happens even in traditional newspapers as they battle against each other in the newsstand.

<comment><USER32> Newspapers did it before it was mainstream, with headlines that kept getting bigger and more screamy.

<comment><USER33> Tabloids are absolutely terrible for it. Gigantic fonts, garish colors, all caps all over the place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I did journalism in high school and in learning the art of page layout & design was taught that putting faces on stuff is always a good idea. People like faces. Faces draw readers in. It's sort of a universal idea that was inevitably going to end up applying to mediums like YouTube.

Also, I wouldn't say all of these are clickbait. The Needle Drop's videos are basically all just him making hilarious faces.

</comment><comment><USER34> We should probably expand on this notion of Clickbait that assumes readers are merely tricked into clicking. Catering to some 'lowely' urge is way we usually think about these, but there is more.

Traditionally, clickbait refers to a type of optimisation for more 'static' media outlets- those with more rigid publishing chain: writer <editor <owner.

Youtube's low barrier to publishing disrupts that, so we now have viewers assuming editor + owner role with their newfound power of directing attention. So now users demand to be catered to. Sense on entitlement is at the center of this thing.

</comment><comment><USER35> A good solution will be to go back to have the thumbnail a pick of the actual video not an over-engineered art form.

<comment><USER36> People will just go back to inserting a carefully produced image as the very first frame of their video.

<comment><USER37> Just make the algorithm select a random frame, and it will be solved.

<comment><USER38> The random frame may be a poor choice of representing the content to the point of being worse than a photoshopped thumbnail.

It's definitely a problem. Clickbait thumbnails blatantly misleading people into clicking. It comes down to poor link integrity, which Google was apparently against at one time, now they basically encourage it.

There's great stuff on youtube, but the trash pile is bigger than ever and gets more clicks.

The classic example one of the oldest custom thumbnails on youtube that I recall, is that roller-coaster in mid air. Millions of views, as people clicked to see a coaster they didn't know existed. Of course, the video has no such coaster, and as a result thousands of dislikes. But who cares about dislikes when you have 40m views and counting on a rubbish generic video with misleading thumbnail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I hate that face so much. I always assumed it appeals to a younger crowd but then I have friends my age who use similar profile pics on facebook.

<comment><USER40> That was my assumption, too - cartoon, exaggeration, caricature, baby talk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Someone should make a Terminator style film, actually a book would probably work better, where the robot apocalypse is hastened by a whole bunch of different people, some kind of skeezy and up to no good but most just trying to make an honest buck and not realising the impact of the out of control AI they are working for until it's too late.

I mean, I know we are living through basically the same thing with climate change and large corporations in reality but a novel would be cool too.

<comment><USER42> Daemon by Daniel Suarez is kind of like that, except it turns out the AI is arguably good and not exactly an AI. It's an excellent book, with an excellent sequel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Seeing that always made me think that everything would be exaggerated, and the video was likely not worth my time; I also spend very little time on YouTube, so the two are probably related (namely that I don't like video-based content)

</comment><comment><USER44> Andrew Huang immediately sprang to mind [https://www.youtube.com/user/songstowearpantsto](https://www.youtube.com/user/songstowearpantsto)

He's a musician and synthesizer enthusiast, granted electronic music and synths have taken on a pretty youthful market in recent years (thanks to cheaper products and a larger acceptance of the genre) but Andrew becoming a YouTube personality in this space was definitely met with backlash from the community.

It wasn't for the content itself, I really respect the guy as both a musician and video editor, but it's the gimmicky persona, the little "signature" things he does in his videos, the all too-perfect sheen put on top of his content, the silly faces on the video thumbnails that draw people's attention, the inauthenticity of it all. It rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, at least in the electronic music/synthesizer communities I visit (full of people who have been working with synths and modular instruments since the 70s/80s).

Now I realize it's not just his gimmick, it's everyone who hopes to ranks' gimmick!

</comment><comment><USER45> Minor correction at:

> YouTube, a subsidiary of the holding company Alphabet, Inc. — formerly > Google, Inc.

YouTube isn't an Alphabet company, but still part of Google itself.

</comment><comment><USER46> Funny how I recently started realizing how obnoxious this was. And now to see someone explicitly talking about it is really making it click into place.

Here's the exact channel that caused me to realize: [https://www.youtube.com/user/Davie504](https://www.youtube.com/user/Davie504)

</comment><comment><USER9> """Taken cumulatively, there's a surreal, Lynchian quality to the images. Few things could ever be exciting enough to elicit these kinds of reactions, and no one could possibly be this expressive. So what's wrong with these people? Were their brains tenderized?"""

This is a message I'm always teaching my kids "these are actors, they don't act like normal people, they exaggerate and pretend, are fictional, etc". They've seemed to pick up on the fact that these strange creatures before them are truly out of our everyday experience and are treated accordingly rather than taken as an actual subpopulation of folks they just haven't met yet.

</comment><comment><USER47> I've always that human form clickbait could really only be attributed to walking through Amsterdam's red light district but this guy has a point! Interesting read.

Side note is he coining the term "YouTube Face"? I've never heard that before...

<comment><USER48> Amsterdam's Red Light district has got _nothin_ on Youtube. If you merged it with Shibuya or Times Square, maybe. But what I saw there a few years ago was downright demure in comparison to the clickbaity crap people try on YouTube.

</comment></comment><comment> amiga-workbench Ah yes, the soyboy grimace.

</comment><comment><USER49> Maybe librarys would have been more popular if they had more cat books.

</comment><comment><USER50> Ironically, theres a call for please like and share at the bottom.

<comment><USER51> On a side note, do those CTAs actually work? I have a hard time believing anyone reading one and thinking "I wasn't going to like/share/comment, but I am now because of this reminder!"

<comment><USER52> Only a personal anecdote; I have about 10 videos on Youtube. Most of them have under 10k views each and not many comments. Those videos do not have any form of CTA. The one video that does get comments even now 3+ years after being posted is the one where I simply asked people to leave a comment on what their experiences with the same hardware were.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> And the YouTube Title. "You won't believe what happens next"

<comment><USER19> AND EVERYTHING IN CAPS ALWAYS

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Most captcha can be fooled with dedicated efforts.

</comment><comment><USER55> The second last paragraph is a thing of beauty.

</comment><comment><USER56> 4chan calls this the 'soyface'.

</comment><comment> cup-of-tea Interesting that it's only men shown. A quick look at popular female channels show no YouTube Face, just pretty faces.

</comment><comment><USER57> It's called acting. When people express things they have no real reason to feel, it's called acting.

AVGN makes those faces all the way throughout his videos, because he is an actor, and he is acting out an exaggeration of his frustrations with video games. If it weren't acting, then you'd see the same level of crazy in common video game review articles.</comment>


Studies find Latino toddlers lag white children in cognitive skills - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-toddlers21-2009oct21,0,200059.story <comment><USER2> "Many Latino families don't view themselves as their children's first teachers, assigning that role to schools, said study co-author Alice Kuo, a UCLA assistant professor of pediatrics."

Depending on schools would be a downfall, especially in some parts of the country observed in the reported national study. It would definitely be helpful to let more parents know how they can encourage their children's learning in early childhood.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not having read the whole article, I will point out that IQ tests generally contain cultural bias and American IQ tests generally are normed against white middle class values/people. So anyone who is Latino, black, foreign (etc) has a good chance of "performing poorly" in comparison to the population it was normed against.</comment>


Yelp to let businesses comment publicly on reviews - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/04/09/financial/f141017D04.DTL&tsp=1 <comment><USER2> They needed to throw businesses a bone.

TripAdvisor has had this feature for a while, as has RateItAll.</comment>


Ask HN: Are resold barcodes a scam? - <AUTHOR> When you want to register your product on amazon ( Europe), products require a EAN 13 code.
Officially, EAN13 is genereated by GS1 and registered there.
There are also many online companies active on "reselling" barcode. But this could just be autogenerated.
Any thoughts on how this barcode thing works? Are resellers a scam?
In theory: Resellers buy a huge ammount of barcodes and resell these.
In practise: Many sites offer barcodes. I think most of them are self generated.
How do you buy eg. Belgian barcodes ( starting with 54), that are registered offically without GS1 ( or cheaper than GS1). <comment><USER2> I am genuinely surprised to hear this. I largely thought barcodes were nonsense because in the US there isn't really any sort of standard that I've seen (I work for a POS company in the US that has to support a _lot_ of barcodes)

<comment><USER3> If there weren't standards, how could readers parse them?

There are lots of different symbologies (ways to encode data), each with its own benefits and limitations. The one most familiar to U.S. consumers is the UPC code.

Most pro sports and event tickets also use barcodes. Ticketmaster and Tickets.com use different symbologies from each other.

<comment><USER2> I'm aware of the (many) standards. UPC codes are not unique and that is more what I was getting at.. it's all basically just made up with seemingly no governing body.</comment></comment></comment>


Bitcoin just jumped above $8,000 and is now up 20% in one week - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/24/bitcoin-edges-past-8000-notching-a-two-month-high.html <comment><USER2> selfish perhaps, but i just want the damn thing to settle so i can get a damn graphics card at msrp again

</comment><comment><USER3> Here we go again.

</comment><comment><USER4> But don't you know it's bound to fail?

<comment><USER5> Why?

<comment><USER4> Not what I think, but what most people here like to parrot.

I'm just trying to do like they do!</comment></comment></comment>


Voting Machines vs Las Vegas Slots - <AUTHOR> http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2006/03/16/GR2006031600213.gif <comment><USER2> This is why I don't think electronic voting is doomed in the long run. It is possible to create highly reliable, highly secure machines that are above board. The industry just got dominated by sleazy companies who have cast a bad light on the entire idea of electronic voting.

<comment><USER3> "security is a process, not a product" - Bruce Schnieir

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Recently, I saw a presentation by an voting machine auditor.

Not only were they easily hackable but they found _porn_ on them.

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting comparison.</comment>


The Bitcoin accounts used in the WannaCry ransomware attack were just emptied - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1045270/wannacry-update-the-hackers-behind-ransomware-attack-finally-cashed-out-about-140000-in-bitcoin/?n=1 <comment><USER2> Who supports the claim that north korea is behind the attack? They do not provide a source for such a big statement so I wonder if anyone here could provide me with a TL;DR or some links?

Does OP work for QZ.com? By the posting it seems likely. :)</comment>


Show HN: iBurn 2015 – Open Source iOS and Android App for Burning Man - <AUTHOR> https://www.iburnapp.com

<comment><AUTHOR> We put a lot of work into it this year.. really hope people find it useful!</comment>


Ask HN: Need a Reliable Cloud PBX Phone System, Not MightyCall - <AUTHOR>

We've been struggling heavily with MightyCall the last few weeks. I found out last week that their entire dev team is outsourced and calls have been dropped, merged, and it's just been general chaos.
Who is a reliable Cloud PBX company that won't break the bank? They were charging us $99/month for unlimited minutes and seats. We have 12 employees.
Features that are important to us: - The ability for anyone to call from the web or from an app and make it look like it's coming from our mainline - Management of business hours and times when we want to go direct to voicemail - Ability to "transfer" inbound calls to other "lines" which are really just employee mobile phones.
Thanks for your ideas! <comment><USER2> AT&T and some of the CLECs like Windstream offer a product called Centrex that might be what you're looking for. In terms of reliability and call quality, it's pretty much at the top of the stack. Generally speaking, you have to call for pricing, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! That sounds awesome but might be a little bit too much for us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How about something like RingCentral or Packet8 on the higher end or there is something like Grasshopper, but I am not sure they will have what you are looking for. Or you could get really creative and build your own using Twilio.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Have you tried any of these solutions personally?

<comment><USER3> Have used Packet8 years ago. It was good, no problems, but rather expensive. I think they have changed their pricing model since then and are more competitive. When I used them VoIP was just starting to gain more mainstream traction.

Currently am using Grasshopper and have to say it works well for the basics. I was looking for something inexpensive that could connect multiple remote team members to one number. With Grasshopper you can have multiple team members with their own extensions or groups (i.e. support) that rings multiple lines. Doesn't require any hardware expense. Has call screening and fax to email built in. Easy to use control panel.

<comment><AUTHOR> Grasshopper seems like the most close thing to MightyCall as far as UX goes so I might check them out.

Either way, thanks for the feedback!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Inner Workings of Wikileaks - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2010/12/01/131733481/The-Inner-Workings-Of-WikiLeaks

<comment><USER2> this is clearly a prominent endorsement of wikileaks as a legitimate player in the cycle of information dissemination, don't you think?</comment>


The story of Telegram or "Why you shouldn't listen to Hacker News" - <AUTHOR> http://paulmillr.com/posts/the-story-of-telegram/ <comment><USER2> I don't have flesh in this game one way or another, but when I read the article, it seemed to be a pretty damning indictment on Telegram, probably not what the author was trying to communicate.

I think the gap in understanding here, is that when it comes to security, cryptography in particular, it's not the case that the critic has to demonstrate where something is broken , the responsibility is on the part of the developer to prove that, in every possible manner, the system is secure.

The telegram people, on the surface, don't appear to be familiar with the crypto-community best practices, and, as a result, are unlikely to have made a product that would survive any real scrutiny, and highly unlikely to survive any actual attack on their protocol, should any adversary desire to do so.

<comment><USER3> It's not some third party adversary to be worried about, but an internal adversary who might harbor ill intent (or even if they mean well, might be forced to become evil under secret court orders.)

Telegram are advertising a system which they claim is encrypted end-to-end, which means that even with physical access to the servers which are routing messages, one would not be able to perform MITM attacks. However, the contest is an obvious farce because they're asking only to demonstrate flaws which can be done externally without the same access to servers that Telegram have.

It's obviously simpler for someone knowledgeable in cryptography to be critical in a few sentences than to demonstrate vulnerabilities with actual proof of concepts which require lots of work for no apparent gain other than to make a point. If Telegram were offering $100k for every flaw found in their system though, you can bet that there would be less mouthing on HN, because people would direct their effort at demonstrating the flaws.

<comment><USER2> Right - in this scenario, a user should absolutely consider Telegram to be the adversary. If they can read a message that is sent from one use to another, then the system is broken.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So in sum:

\- Telegram said they were super-secure

\- A bunch of skeptics on HN posted long comments saying why Telegram wasn't actually secure

\- A few days later, someone broke Telegram

\- Therefore, don't listen to HN?

<comment><USER5> I feel a little bad for Telegram, but at this point, I think what they have is marketecture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You shouldn't listen to Hacker News because I might write a 1000 word comment about message authentication codes and RSA padding? Ok.

<comment><USER7> Where's your math PhD???? Posting about why there are huge inherent issues in someone's brand new protocol and having a wealth of experience in the crypto world means nothing... Apparently?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _" Go make your own stuff and don't listen to HN or any other skeptical community."_

This is fine in art, but it runs into problems when you start doing engineering and it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever in cryptography.

</comment><comment><USER7> You're joking right? Also, telling TextSecure to go make their protocol better... Have you even seen their new ratchet? It's awesome. I think you have no idea what you're talking about... I'm sick of attempting to show people like the OP why they're wrong, why Telegram is currently dangerous to rely on for anything secure, and why TextSecure isn't. Also, the smug crap at the end, real classy. Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER9> Yes, god forbid you actually listen to people in the field who have been working on what you're trying to do longer than you when they say you're not able to promise what you're trying to promise.

This piece is garbage with a very clear undertone of bitterness that is completely unrelated to Telegram.

</comment><comment><USER10> This bs reminds me of my year working in the US ..everybody tries to burst your bubble/project. I'm not saying everybody but in my experience i have never seen a bigger group of [ Koolaid chugers , one uppers , non-sense speakers , ass kissers (cause im afraid of getting sacked) ] like the ones i saw during that massively painful year in the US.

</comment><comment> vezzy-fnord This entire article is such a gigantic and painful straw man that I'm not sure if the people behind Telegram had any influence behind it.

</comment><comment><USER11> sounds like cheap, very cheap Telegram promo. Nothing but marketing.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> So this thread disappeared from the top and all pages besides Newest.

But I see post on page 3 from 3 hours ago with 3 upvotes so this should be somewhere on 1-2nd page.

HN mods don't like criticism?

<comment><USER12> >TextSecure folks: instead of ranting that "our stuff exists already, but we got no money and we got no cross-platform support Y U NO USE our protocol?" and using political tricks, go make better protocol and market yourself better.

As DanBC posted[1] in the other thread:

>>You seem to be mistaken about why they do this. It's nothing to do with pushing their app or their approach. They'd welcome good well-formed apps to compete with them. But when they see an app that claims to be secure they have an ethical duty to let people know if it is obviously not secure.

>>Most people are not bashing just for the sake of bashing. Some people need good cryptography software to avoid imprisonment, or torture, or state- killing. This isn't about stopping someone's teen-angsty poetry from being discovered by a sibling, it's about protecting political dissidents from an oppressive regime. In that context pointing out that a software is broken is not mindless bashing, it is a crucial part of the cryptography process.

>Go make your own stuff and don't listen to HN or any other skeptical community.

Unproven cryptographic systems masquerading as secure need to be criticized. It is very, very dangerous when non-crypto people pretend to be crypto people and call their systems secure.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6949842](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6949842)</comment></comment>