Well, I mean, nothing. Except that FaceApp is a Russian company.
What was different about Huawei? Except that it was a Chinese company.
And here's the thing, I don't even necessarily disagree with the worry around these foreign companies. They are outside of our jurisdiction and these countries have been known to use companies on the behalf of their governments to perform intelligence/psy-op activities.
Why is this different than the US? It's not. But it's like nuclear weapons, yeah? We are the only ones who can be trusted with them. Therein lies the rub, as they say.
Either you buy into post WWI America runs the world and our military prevented an apocalypse and got every American a car and garage by rigging the world markets and protecting the world with our Navy and every country has to go through us to technologically advance, or you are un-American? Tongue and cheek here, but this is seriously the proposition.
This is the exact decision that was made and accelerated by our military during wartime. This is our playbook.
Well that and they blatantly steal from other companies, disregard copyrights and patents, and have the backing of the Chinese government protecting them from any real repercussions.
They don’t even try to hide it with their product naming. Take the “MateBook X Pro” for example - https://consumer.huawei.com/en/laptops/matebook-x-pro/
Yeah, well, no, stop. Facebook and social networks are regularly taking punches in the face and the US never prevented vkontact, mastodon or other clone to develop. There isn't a moratorium on social networks and public agreement to "limit the scope of our arsenal".
Mercenary groups (ie blackwater), Palantir, for-profit prisons, Tech companies complying with federal warrants, so-on. I will give you that it's not 1:1, and I think that's a fair counterpoint to people who don't trust the US.
That's whataboutism.
i assume this is part of the tongue-in-cheek, as ours is the only country to use nuclear bombs in war, so history is against trusting "our side" (generally don't like dichotomizing, but doing so here for expediency). with that said, our political institutions have so far been resiliant enough to resist the "mad man with red button" scenario, even with some poor choices of chief executives.
in any case, i generally agree that none of these companies really deserves our trust, regardless of political or geographic affiliation. like tv/internet providers or mobile telecom, vigilance is warranted as they should be considered hostile actors (in that they don't share your interests, not literally violence).
I think journalists publish these articles not because they're (consciously) following the playbook, but because it's what sells.
Maybe people want to read stories about Russian "enemies" more than they want to see stories about American "enemies".
Or maybe journalists have the best intentions and they know the privacy battle is lost against Facebook, Instagram, Amazon. but it's not yet lost against the Russians etc.
Like bombing Japan with nuclear weapons and murdering thousands of people?
What's happening now is going on under a different set of paradigms. If you approach today's geopolitics or military considerations with a cold war mindset you will miss things out. Globalization has happened and that changes a lot of things.
This is exactly what they said before WWI.
This specific way FaceApp resonates in mass and social media is quite telling.
Can you elaborate on the IRA == state actor part?
Were you thinking the Irish Republican Army?
Of course, to do it well, you'd probably want to start doing it before anybody submitted your real photo, then just submit a fake picture at random intervals for perpetuity.
An alternate variation on this is flooding them with fake people and fake names to make their real database worth less.
As an American, it matters to me whether the company doing the spying is located in California or Russia. If you're Russian, you might particularly care if the company in question is in California instead of Russia.
Russia is a hyper regressive, anti liberal, anti democratic, low human rights, dictatorship. My interests are particularly not served by allowing companies from Russia to spy on me.
Russia is also on the other side of the globe, has a GDP that is less than Italy (despite having way more people and land), and is, essentially, irrelevant outside of online trolling and Agi-Prop.
Meanwhile the person who is going to kick down my door is a US citizen, as is the person who is going to vote to take away my healthcare.
But anyway, Russia can't hurt me as much as the US can, so I take the opposite stance from you. I'm much more wary of my own government spying on me, since they can hurt me a lot more easily than some country on the other side of the Earth.
Because they've also mishandled the private data of Americans. Similarly to the NSA stuff, Americans appear to be fine with it if it is done on their behalf to the rest of the world, but are outraged when they experience it. If FB operated differently in the US, I'm sure the US press would be much more sympathetic with regards to their shenanigans in Europe.
So if you want to teach people about how and why data is important it is easier to do so when using Russia an an example (assuming you're a Westerner). Most people still have a fair amount of trust in US companies and don't believe they would abuse their power. Call it tribalism it whatever, but that's how it is.
But to us in tech it's pretty obvious that even if Snapchat or Facebook never abused their power (lol, I know) that that kind of data is likely to end up in the hands of the Russians anyway. So it's just easier to talk about data when the big bad wolf abuses it. But I'd also use this opportunity to talk to others about the parallels that we have here and the responsibility of the tech giants.
I grew up getting a lot of "evil commies" messages in US American media and I'm not even in USA (I'm from UK).
Saying this doesn't mean I condone what the US is doing with Latin Americans right now, but the way you frame it suggests that China and Russia aren't doing things that many of us in the West find reprehensible. They are authoritarian regimes after all. (Again, that's not saying the West doesn't also do these things, but I do think there is a clear difference in degrees. I don't think my belief is uncommon either).
More importantly, the comment comes off like we shouldn't criticize them. Why not? (We should also criticize the West, because frankly that an essential part of democracy)
Our greatest responsibility is our own nation. Those who try to engender righteous indignation in us about other nations are usually the ones who benefit most from our own worst deeds and practices.
And even then, the propaganda can turn on a dime. Rambo III, where Stallone more or less single-handedly beats the Russians in Afghanistan, has this message in their closing credits:
> "This film is dedicated to the gallant mujahedeen of Afghanistan"
Blatant ignorance of the divisions within the militant groups fighting Russian presence, not to mention rivalries between clan leaders who actually lived in Afghanistan and Saudi-funded foreign fighters looking to establish a foothold in the country.
After 9/11, that message was removed from VHS and DVDs of the film. I remember seeing the TV syndicated version many years back that had the message intact.
There's more than one reason for that, here is one that might be easy to overlook when someone is critizising USA with good reason:
America is not perfect but as a citizen and compared to the bad old commies it was mostly really good.
Between this:
>> ... when someone is critizising USA with good reason:
and this:
>> ... but as a citizen and compared to the bad old commies it was mostly ...
I feel my comment is still pretty safe.
You see, there is often a reason I use all those weasel words; otherwise it would be hard to poknt out that something can be far from ideal and something else can still be really much worse.
"The panic about FaceApp’s old-person filter isn’t wrong, exactly. It’s just tinged with xenophobia and devoid of context."
snap is a scarier but most people dont care since its so ingrained into their lives... for whatever reason I never understood.. but my friends used love it even while I warned them how stupid it was so use snap in the first place if you cared about privacy
what happens to snap.inc/your data when the userbase drops off completely.. inevitably like every other social media..
1. https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/17/faceapp-gets-federal-atten...
Looks like it removes geotagging en-masse but not per-application. You can also remove EXIF from specific photos but that's tedious.
“You grant FaceApp a perpetual, irrevocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, fully-paid, transferable sub-licensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, publicly perform and display your User Content and any name, username or likeness provided in connection with your User Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed, without compensation to you.”
Social media networks like Facebook and Snapchat aren't like this.
Correct. They're not that terse with their terms. You'd have to read so. many. paragraphs. to figure out they're doing the same thing.
> We do not claim ownership of your content that you post on or through the Service. Instead, when you share, post, or upload content that is covered by intellectual property rights (like photos or videos) on or in connection with our Service, you hereby grant to us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate, and create derivative works of your content (consistent with your privacy and application settings).[1]
Conversely in Russia and China they are authoritarian and the cultures don't tend to speak out as much about these things. Hence where they are at. FaceApp might just use my data for advertising, but I don't know that. It's harder to find out post hoc. There is no legal means for me to ensure things are done properly. There is no way for me to push for data to be used in better ways. There is no accountability.
And that's the big difference. Accountability.
It's just what happens when you're a new hot social app.
In my brief usage of other social media apps like Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook. Each photo you decide to share is opt-in.
The article also mentioned they run a job to continuously check in. Not sure if that’s to capture current GPS info, or to continually grab new photos. That seems a bit overzealous for what the app reportedly does. (editing pictures of your face)
Do the other social networks give themselves permission to display your photo anywhere they want? Or only via the channels you specifically request (i.e. to your friends)?
That seems like a huge difference to me.
How is FaceApp different than all other apps and social networks that are storing all your photos with location and tags to your friends except that FaceApp is a Russian company?
I'm not defending FaceApp. I don't use social networks either for the same reasons. But this double standards in media is ridiculous in my opinion.