News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Facebook being investigated in Germany for tying Oculus u... by exabrial on Thursday December 10, 2020 @10:38AM (#25374805)
Excellent. I'm hoping they have to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp.

Hoping Google experiences the same fate. Need to decouple my phone from Google assistant and many other things... for instance, you can't subscribe to a podcast in their app unless you turn on Physical Location Tracking and Web History. Android Auto no longer reads back messages to you (it used to) unless you do the same thing.

Re:Facebook being investigated in Germany for tying Oculus u... by rurp on Thursday December 10, 2020 @12:25PM (#25375990)
Google is usually savvy about their data hoarding, but they really tip their hand in cases like this where they require unnecessary permissions for basic functionality to work.

The one that gets me is adding a label to a saved place in Maps. I can save the location fine and add it to whatever list I create for it, but if I want to add a simple custom label it blocks me because I don't have Web & App Activity tracking turned on.

Re:Facebook being investigated in Germany for tying Oculus u... by FreakyT on Thursday December 10, 2020 @12:21PM (#25375939)
Reminds me of my pet peeve in Google Maps: it used to have local search history, but when they moved it to the cloud, they removed _all_ search history unless you opted into the Web History. You know, Google, there's a middle ground.
Re:Facebook being investigated in Germany for tying Oculus u... by arc0 on Thursday December 10, 2020 @12:44PM (#25376247)
Is WhatsApp a profitable business on its own? What happens if they are forced to spin out and then go bankrupt?
Re:Facebook being investigated in Germany for tying Oculus u... by fartcannon on Thursday December 10, 2020 @10:44AM (#25374879)
You can already degoogle if you choose a device that can run Lineage OS and F-Droid.