>"Parents already have those "tools""

Some of them, yes. Others no.

>"The problem is some, potentially now a majority, do not want responsibility for raising their children, and do not want the financial burden of having someone else do it for them."

Yes, that is a major problem. Perhaps *THE* major problem. Although in this case, there wouldn't be much financial burden, it is more of time/effort. I would prefer government put effort into furthering the tools for parents/agents instead of trying to strip the privacy and autonomy of adults in an effort that is not going to actually help anywhere near as much as people think.

We need to change the norms and culture. That isn't easy.

>"there really are meaningful differences between the autonomy of the four home nations of the UK and American states or Canadian provinces."

Indeed, there are differences. I am not an expert in the differences, but would guess the autonomy of a USA State is actually much greater than that of a British sub-nation. Especially true before Britain left the EU (which put yet a further authority above them). I decided to give AI a try at that and got this:

"A U.S. state generally has more autonomy than a British nation, as U.S. states have their own governments and significant powers under the federal system, while British nations (like Scotland or Wales) have devolved powers but remain under the sovereignty of the UK Parliament. This means states can enact laws and govern independently in many areas, whereas British nations have limited legislative powers."

Have no idea how accurate that is (I find AI is often wrong or "confused"), but it does agree with what I thought was the case.

>"British English"? Is that some kind of cultural genocide, robbing England of its language?"

English is the lingua franca now. There is absolutely nothing wrong with saying "British English", it is done all the time to denote the English as used by Britain vs. other countries, which have some significant variations. Nobody denies that the central development of English came from England.

>"You know that each country in Britain has their own language, and the one from England is called English."

England is no more a country than one of the States in the USA would be, or Provinces in Canada. One can argue over semantics endlessly, but effectively, Britain (Great Britain/UK/whatever) is the country, based on modern conventions.

Even Wikipedia says:

"The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in northwestern Europe, off the coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland"

I stress the "*A* COUNTRY" part, which is not a "collection of countries". And also note the use of UK and Britain is interchangeable.

I can't answer for that poster. But much of the "base issues" has to do with not interactively preparing children for what they will be exposed to. And that is difficult, especially if there are no controls. It needs to start with restricting access and then gradually giving more exposure as they mature. Instead, parents are just allowing children to have devices, with little or no controls at all.

Children shouldn't have unsupervised access to unrestricted, internet-connected devices. It goes way beyond social media. Children shouldn't be browsing the open web, sending/accepting texts/IMs/calls/photos to strangers, or using any app they want. Restrictions to those can be done by parents and their agents without trying to force the burden on a few "social media" sites which then penalize adults. That is where the effort should be focused- giving parents and their agents more effective tools and changing the social norm around children and devices.

Once there is suitable control, the parents/agents can then tweak those controls and whitelists to gradually expose the children to additional platforms. And decide which contacts children can communicate with. And as part of the lockdown, the devices can signal to platforms that they are restricted (perhaps with an actual or "mental" age) and those platforms can adjust what THEY present. All voluntary.

>"I haven't read the standard (why bother?) but I'm guessing that while the platform won't know your true identity, authorities will be able to reconstruct it when they need to. Which is what this is all about"

Bingo. You have to trust that third party is safe. Which it likely won't be. And it doesn't solve all, or even the majority of the problems....

The issue is that children shouldn't have unsupervised access to unrestricted, internet-connected devices. It goes way beyond social media. Children shouldn't be browsing the open web, sending/accepting texts/IMs/calls/photos to strangers, or using any app they want. Restrictions to those can be done by parents and their agents without trying to force the burden on a few "social media" sites which then penalize adults. That is where the effort should be focused- giving parents/agents more effective tools and changing the social norm around children and devices.

>"Also, you also don't have evidence of what you think is happening. Then, the difference between us is that I'll only believe it once I have evidence and you believe it without evidence."

Did you READ what I wrote? I never wrote or claimed I had any evidence. I never wrote that I thought they were able to break into messages or that I believed they were.

I wrote that it is POSSIBLE and we CAN'T KNOW FOR SURE because the platform and code is not open (it is closed).

People regularly pay $1000 or more for a single screen flagship. 2 screens is double, $2000. Three screens is triple, $3000. Seems like they are just doing simple math here. Of course, we know the price shouldn't scale that way, but whatever.... if it doesn't sell enough, they will lower the price or discontinue it.

I admit, it sounds neat. But it also looks overly thick and heavy/bulky. I don't need a "super thin" phone, but I also am kinda used to not having a brick. I don't use/obsess over a stupid phone anywhere near enough to spend even $1000 on it, which is why I buy midgrades for $300 to $400. And usually keep them for 5+ years. So $3000 for a phone does seem insane to me.

>"Could youn please define "closed"? As far as I understand, WhatsApp is based on The Signal Protocol."

It can be based on anything they like. But if you are running a binary blob on your phone, you have no idea what the actual code is doing ALL the time. And you certainly don't know what their servers are doing. That is "closed".

>"Also, there are no known remote vulnerabilities to The Signal Protocol (that I'm aware of). The FBI has broken encryption on the protocol but this was done physically. This is unlike the remote access that's described in the article."

The encryption can be rock solid and unbreakable. But if their app will send them the keys if requested in some manner, then you are done.

>"Also, do you have any evidence"

Nope. I have no idea. Like I said, it is unlikely there are any shenanigans going on. But it is plausible.

>"or a conceptual idea of how WhatsApp would have "master keys present at the start"?

Yes, that is easy. Your local machine creates the private key it is going to use and the app transmits that to their servers and it is stored. Or, requested later under certain communication and it is sent at that point. Do you know their code doesn't have that ability? How would you know? Especially if it never does it unless requested in some secret way....

>"Otherwise it would be end-to-middle-to-end encryption, wouldn't it?"

Nope, that would imply it is being decrypted and then re-encrypted in the middle. That doesn't have to happen. It would still have stayed encrypted from one end (sender) to the other end (receiver). The middle can just store the message and decrypt it later, if needed, if they have access to the keys (now or later) or a weakness/backdoor.

>"The lawsuit does not provide any technical details to back up the rather sensational claims."

That is an inherent problem with closed code and closed platforms. They can claim anything they want and there isn't much way we can verify their claims. I admit, this story seems really sensational (a little hard to believe), but it is plausible.

Also, there can be word-trickery here. It is possible things can be claimed to be "end-to-end encrypted" and yet still have ways for the mothership to decrypt anything at will (by having intentional secret holes/weaknesses, by storing your or another key, or a method they can pull the key from your device through their own control over the app, or by having master keys present at the start). I think that would be a misuse of the term "end-to-end encryption", yet term use/definitions mutate all the time. Anyway this can backfire spectacularly if discovered and lead to a lot of legal issues- if they had denied law enforcement/courts access in the past with the excuse that they can't decrypt it and then it is discovered they could.

Or just don't use Snap at all, one of several reasons I run Mint on my machines. And even Mint is, unfortunately, relying on containerized packages for a significant portion of software from Ubuntu repos. But at least Mint provides native packages for all of the important stuff (Firefox, LibeOffice, GIMP, Audacity, VLC, Geeqie, Okular, Thunderbird, Pluma, Guvcview, Kdenlive, Wine, Meld, Claws, etc).

It is likely either LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) or just plain Debian is in my future, though.

>"Simple, don't give TikTok permission to use your phone's location services. Problem solved."

I was wondering that myself. But I have experience with a variety of apps and many will "request" location services and if you don't give it, then the app will simply not work at all (even though there is no reason it should stop working completely). So it really isn't a "request" or "option", it is a requirement. I believe that should be against the "rules" to program an app that way.

>"It's easy to tap "agree" and keep on scrolling through videos on TikTok, so users might not fully understand the extent of changes they are agreeing to with this pop-up. "

99.9% are going to click on agree immediately and start scrolling.

99.9% of those who actually choose to pull up the agreement don't understand it or what actually changed.

So maybe 0.01% of users might be giving informed agreement.

And yes, I just went through one of those on some other software- I was in the 0.1% who tried to read it, and in the 99.9% of those who really didn't understand a lot of it (because it was obscure and in legalese).

>"I'll make you a deal, I'll pay the same rate Elon pays. Done and done."

You forgot to create several companies producing lots of useful things that are in high demand, hire and pay a eighth of a million employees (most for decades), contribute $474 million to charities, and pay many billions in business, payroll, and other taxes.

Musk's wealth is primarily in the form of stock, which is not taxed until sold (and has no actual/real value until sold). In 2021 he paid $12 billion in income tax, alone, when he sold shares of Tesla.

The loophole that the ultra rich use is taking out loans on unrealized assets like stocks. That should be closed.

If you believe that Microsoft follows its own policies and the closed-source code is doing what you tell it to do.

It is highly probably it is, but, in the end, we really don't know 100% for certain. It might forward that stuff to 3-letter agencies without your consent or knowledge. And/or it might have some super-secret back door set of keys.