Because he literally broke into a server room and installed hardware to harvest this data.
There’s no world where any organization, for profit or otherwise, would tolerate that. Even your local library would call the damn cops if you tried that.
Can we be honest about this, please?
Aaron Swartz went into a secure networking closet and left a computer there to covertly pull data from the server over many days without permission from anyone, which is absolutely not the same thing as scraping public data from the internet.
He was a hero that didn’t deserve what happened, but it’s patently dishonest to ignore that he was effectively breaking and entering, plus installing a data harvesting device in the server room, which any organization in the world would rightfully identity as hostile behavior. Even your local library would call the cops if you tried to do that.
It’s the difference between a theme park and a casino. Both are legitimate forms of entertainment for many people, and both do need income to maintain their operations.
One of them charges for entry and then you enjoy the park, only paying for additional but ultimately optional things like merchandise or food. The fun ends when you decide to leave or the park closes.
The other is designed so you have to spend small amounts consistently, and it is designed in incredibly manipulative fashion, literally employing tactics that trigger addictive responses. The fun ends when you run out of money to spend, therefore compelling you to keep spending.
The people designing the theme park are designing something entertaining, the people designing the casino are perfecting a skinner box.
One is more deserving of income than the other.
Also because the install base for mobile devices is just about everyone everywhere, and yes, a fair amount of people, particularly young people, would much rather play something on their phone than a PC or even console.
The difference in potential customer base is orders of magnitude larger.
Right but you could at least be reasonably sure it wouldn’t be outright spied on from the person you’re sending it to. Now it’s almost a guarantee.
Like if I sent something to a friend of mine, I could be fairly certain it wouldn’t end up in the wrong hands unless they got compromised or did something stupid. I could trust their competence.
Now everyone that isn’t actively managing their own windows installation is absolutely compromised, as a rule. Like I can’t just send an email to my mom anymore, from now on its always my Mom and Copilot.
Yes, and that’s a valid concern, but there’s no good answer here. That’s why it’s such a problem. From now on, one of the most widely used operating systems in the world is going to be harvesting data from any and everything that appears on it. Meaning any software you use to send any form of electronic communication, if a Windows computer opens it, and the user either hasn’t bothered or doesn’t know how to disable recall, your information has been harvested by Microsoft.
There’s just no way to limit or avoid this. We need regulation.
Basically, you’re confined to the no-fun welcome channel zone—forever in slow mode—until you prove you can behave yourself, at which point Denuvo will elevate you to “Verified Player” status and let you get into the meme, chat, and dev Q&A channels.
And this, friends, is why so many businesses are closing their forums and other public facing, indexed spaces and using Discord. It’s a black box that they can gatekeep. No complainers allowed to kill the “vibe”, no publicly searchable database that will keep track of what has been deleted, and no visibility for the negativity to the general public doing a Google search on the product.
deleted by creator
How does someone know what the main community is, whatever the platform? Looking at the number of subscribers and active members.
I don’t disagree but this is also kind of sad. We’re just recreating the same issue on Reddit of “definitive” subreddits controlled by whichever moderators were there first, and once a mass of people settles there, it becomes virtually impossible for smaller alternatives to grow.
You’re also basically just telling people to go to whichever community happens to be on Lemmy.world. Which means centralization on one instance, which is the opposite of how this place was sold.
Edit: Ignore the double comment.
Secure from what exactly? You need to have a threat model here.
Which is funny, because developers use “secure” like this all the time as a way of scaring users into compliance for any changes they implement. If they voiced aloud what the actual threat was, they’d have to admit that often its the user’s freedom they’re afraid of. The user may do something stupid, therefore their ability to do it is dangerous for everyone.
They’d remove the front door on your home and call it more secure, all because some people don’t lock it.
Teixeira worked for nearly 14 years at Microsoft in areas including developer tools and technologies, before serving as Facebook’s director of program management and design, and Twitter’s vice president of product.
According to the suit, Teixeira joined Mozilla in August 2022 with the understanding that he would ultimately be positioned to succeed Baker as Mozilla CEO.
[…]
Teixeira, 52, was diagnosed in October 2023 with ocular melanoma, a rare but treatable form of cancer. He took an approved 90-day medical leave through early February under the Family Medical Leave Act, the suit says.
Shortly before Teixeira returned, in early February, Baker stepped down as CEO, returning to the role of executive chairman. Chambers, a Mozilla board member, was named to serve as CEO for the remainder of the year.
So he’s basically fine, he just missed his chance to become CEO.
Yeah, I was gonna say, holding Chrome OS above Windows because its Linux based is bizarre. That’s getting more true about Android, too. For all its faults, I can still say I’m the admin of my Windows OS (for now), and not Google.
That’s generally what you hear from people who have basic use cases and simply can’t fathom other people may want or need different things from their devices.
Which is fine, they don’t have to understand. If stock is good enough for them nowadays, more power to them.
What I’m sick of is the condescension. This bizarre thing where they somehow think a person wanting control over a device they paid for is worthy of derision or shame.
It’s like if someone who only checks their email on their laptop laughing at someone using a desktop for heavier work, for no real reason other than thinking using technology differently than themselves is silly.
That other comment is a perfect example, and indictive of this weird subculture in Android spaces that hates Google but seems to be drinking from the same user-hostile Kool aid.
Personally, I’m an odd case, in that I didn’t used to root or use custom ROMs at all until recent years. Basically since Android 10, simply to get around the needless roadblocks and restore the functions I want. I was fine with stock for a long time, until Google started becoming Apple.
Shit like this is why I can’t abide GrapheneOS or their cheerleaders.
It’s legitimately the same attitude as Google itself. This parental, condescending tone, acting as if wanting freedom to control their own devices is somehow irrational. Continuing to push this toxic idea that handcuffs are the only way to protect users. Like a sysadmin at a workplace, but without the justifiable reasons.
The notion of “summer reddit” went hand in hand with notion of “mom’s basement” and even “touch grass” in a way.
Namely, all are dated ideas from millennials that are still thinking the person on the other end of the comment is sitting in front of a computer, as the default. It ignores the simple fact we all have the internet in our pockets and can be chronically online AND actually out in the world doing things at the same time.
Why does removing them from the site also mean cutting their user count from Active Users though?
Having third party clients is not good for security.
If the first party provider told you this, you should always second guess them.
Moreover, providing an option that informed users can choose doesn’t hurt security. This idea the user can’t be trusted to use the appropriate type of messaging if provided options needs to die.
You have absolutely zero guarantees, with or without their policy on third party apps. You can not send sensitive information to someone else’s phone and tell yourself it couldn’t possibly have been intercepted, or that someone couldn’t get ahold of that phone, or that the person you’re sending it to won’t take a screenshot and save it to their cloud.
A lot of software nowadays is doing a real disservice to their users by continuing to lie to them like this by selling them the notion that they can control their information after it has been sent. It’s really making people forget basic information hygiene. No app can guarantee that message won’t be intercepted or mishandled. They can only give you tools to hopefully prevent that, but there are no guarantees.
Moreover, this policy does not exclude them from including third-party functionality and warning the user when they are communicating with somebody that isn’t using encryption.
Too many of these apps and services are getting away with the “security” excuse for what is effectively just creating a walled garden to lock users in. Ask yourself how you can get your own data out of these services when you decide to quit them, and it becomes more apparent what they’re doing.
I’d 100% donate to them if they accepted donations.
If they accepted donations, you wouldn’t want to.
The reason uBlock Origins surpasses all the others is because of who the lead dev is, what they believe, and why they do it. They are absolute hardline and believe in what they made. It’s not a job.
You don’t need to be that kind of person to be a good developer, but when it comes to something like an adblocker and privacy protection, you want people like him who won’t falter or sell out. You want those true believers.
If he accepted donations, then he wouldn’t be the kind of person that made uBlock Origins what it is.
Find me any charitable, non-profit, or community organization that wouldn’t call the cops if someone was breaking into their networking closet to install data harvesting hardware.