So, Facebook is acquiring Giphy. The amount of metadata they're about to get is fucking insane.

And since I refuse to personally use anything Facebook related... I won't be able to use the GIF integration of any messenger and many more products/services anymore, I guess...

Just fucking great. Fucking die, Facebook.

Oh for fucks sake.

@PrivateGER Yeah pretty much my reaction as well 🤬

Any networking people here? I've had a project in mind for a while now which would help with this a lot I think

Next project: openGiphy then convince everyone FB is evil and have them upload to ur site instead.

Then laugh at FB paying $400 mil for a dead company.

And when they come knocking to acquire you say it's against the site's privacy policy while walking away laughing.

@billgates With the amount of shit that Facebook pulled in its entire existence, I don't see how you couldn't see Facebook as evil.

If I'd ever create a popular online service and Facebook would want to acquire it, I'd rather go bankrupt than being acquired by Facebook, that is very much an ethical choice.

@linuxxx

I am listening

@Linux Thinking about a VPN server setup in a way that domains (dns requests) can be blocked and the same with ip addresses.

With the option of connecting that VPN server to an additional VPN server (like, tunneling from your own to a provider or something like that).

Then one could setup a custom blacklist of domains/ip's and connect to their own VPN and be done!

Edit; if this exists or is insanely easy, please do let know!

@linuxxx That's doable on openwrt or with something like a pihole setup.

@linuxxx Should be possible with typical VPNs on linux.
Dns blocking is easy. Pihole for example has some good lists. I personally had some problems with it and made a script to translate their gravity list into an unbound config.

Has also the added advantage that unbound can use DoT servers (DNS over tls). The performance isn't that great though.

And finally you could probably just resolve every damn ip from that blocklist (about 200k) and add them to iptables as blocked. Though I'm not sure how iptables or performance will react to this.

@LinusCDE But how'd you force dns requests over VPN and configure the VPN server in a way that dns goes to the local dns server?

@linuxxx Signal anonymizes your Giphy search queries since late 2016: https://signal.org/blog/...

@armaged I know but as I said, i don't want to have anything to do with Facebook at all :)

@linuxxx I understand & respect that completely, but for me it's a bit over the top. I vehemently dislike Facebook, but it's the only way I can keep in touch with old friends, so I still use it in a way that makes it harder for them to correctly profile me or collect reliable data off of me.

So if Signal obfuscates my metadata when I search for GIFs, it doesn't do Giphy or Facebook any favors, right?

@armaged That's fine and your decision! Over here it's considered batshit insane not to use WhatsApp (which I don't use) and Instagram is starting to get close as well too badly.

One of my main problems is that they even get non-users data from users without consent. Example: nearly all my friends who have WhatsApp have the contact uploading enabled meaning I'm in their databases without even having a chance to say no.

But next to that, the amount of even human right infringing shit that they pull...

(https://appleinsider.com/articles/...)

As for the tracking through signal, signal makes that very hard but they could do (even on encrypted content) some form of fingerprinting, timing 'attacks' most probably and even put in metadata to try tracking as well.

So I'll not use it from now on :)

@linuxxx Unfortunately you're right. The stuff they do and get away with is unreal.

@linuxxx if fb would want to acquire ur business u would silently take the money and gtfo. Didnt believe for a second that u would stand your ground when offered an amount that would fund your few generation.

@zemaitis Well, you already made up your mind it seems so why'd I put energy into trying to convince you? I know what I stand for.

I wouldn't take the money. And if I would that'd be money short spent as the nerves from throwing all my morals/values out would cause a fatal heart attack or similar soon anyways.

@zemaitis Oh and if you believe nobody would do this;

Brian Acton, co-founder WhatsApp: "I sold my users' privacy... I live with that every day"

He could've gotten 850 million but couldn't morally live with that so he left it behind when exiting Facebook and gave the Signal Foundation 50 million as a middle finger to WhatsApp/facebook.

https://cnbc.com/2018/09/...

@rutee07 Yup that sucks! I know many people in this position.

I just cold Turkey quit WhatsApp when Facebook acquired it and by now I've gotten probably 40+ people onto signal.

I always have to explain why I don't use mass surveillance services anyways haha

google is the same brand of shit... the company I work at switched to gsuite some time ago... we use and distribute ibm stuff so i had to sign on ibm with my corporate gsuite account... that same day's evening i was browsing reddit on my personal phone with my personal gmail account and started getting ads about ibm b2b products... so they datamined the corporate gsuite account, crossreferenced and found a personal gmail under the same name, concluded it was the same person and now on my personal devices i'm getting ads about my professional activities - it's just fucking unreal the kind of surveillance state we live under

@bytewind Yup :(

@linuxxx I gotta get a proton mail account and take my private stuff outta Google at least. Escaping Facebook will be the challenge since I live in WhatsApp land... I gotta find a solution.

@bytewind May I suggest Tutanota instead of protonmail? Doesn't require a phone number either ;)

@linuxxx I hear Proton killed that requirement because tutanota was stealing their thunder 😂

@bytewind It seems that way! But then, still, I trust Tutanota more than protonmail and their interaction with the community is awesome!

@Nanos Any details? I think it's hard to come up with a Facebook alternative which would respect privacy and would be mass adopted

🤷🏻‍♂️

@Nanos wait you're building a social app around the matrix protocol?

@linuxxx what’s the plan?

@faszom As for?

@linuxxx on the top of the thread you mentioned you have a project in mind. Let’s rock!

@linuxxx

You can do that very very easy with openvpn and probably other VPNs

@FrodoSwaggins Pretty much a GIF hosting service and one of the most used ones around. It's integrates into tons of services so once again loads of non-facebook users will be 'exposed' to Facebook through Giphy this time

@Linux Any documentation? I've been searching for a while and especially the DNS, tunneling to another server (multi hop) and first-vpn-level-ip-blocks are things I can't find as good

Never liked Giphy. Was welcoming Tenor from day 1 😆

@vintprox Tenor was acquired by Google in 2018 and since Google is very close to Facebook as for their evilness imo... no tenor for me either!