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In April, WhatsApp launched its “Advanced Chat Privacy” feature, which, once enabled, disables using certain AI features in chats and prevents conversations from being exported. Since its launch, an inaccurate viral post has been ping-ponging around social networks, creating confusion around what exactly it does.

The viral post falsely claims that if you do not enable Advanced Chat Privacy, Meta’s AI tools will be able to access your private conversations. This isn’t true, and it misrepresents both how Meta AI works and what Advanced Chat Privacy is.

The confusion seems to spawn from the fact that Meta AI can be invoked through a number of methods, including in any group chat with the @Meta AI command. While the chat contents between you and other people are always end-to-end encrypted on the app, what you say to Meta AI is not. Similarly, if you or anyone else in the chat chooses to use Meta AI's “Summarize” feature, which uses Meta’s “Private Processing” technology, that feature routes the text of the chat through Meta’s servers. However, the company claims that they cannot view the content of those messages. This feature remains opt-in, so it's up to you to decide if you want to use it. The company also recently released the results of two audits detailing the issues that have been found thus far and what they’ve done to fix it.

For example, if you and your buddy are chatting, and your friend types in @Meta AI and asks it a question, that part of the conversion, which you can both see, is not end-to-end encrypted, and is usable for AI training or whatever other purposes are included in Meta’s privacy policy. But otherwise, chats remain end-to-end encrypted.

Advanced Chat Privacy offers some bit of control over this. The new privacy feature isn’t a universal setting in WhatsApp; you can enable or disable it on a per-chat basis, but it’s turned off by default. When enabled, Advanced Chat Privacy does three core things:

Blocks anyone in the chat from exporting the chats,
Disables auto-downloading media to chat participant’s phones, and
Disables some Meta AI features

Outside disabling some Meta AI features, Advanced Chat Privacy can be useful in other instances. For example, while someone can always screenshot chats, if you’re concerned about someone easily exporting an entire group chat history, Advanced Chat Privacy makes this harder to do because there’s no longer a one-tap option to do so. And since media can’t be automatically downloaded to someone’s phone (the “Save to Photos” option on the chat settings screen), it’s harder for an attachment to accidentally end up on someone’s device.

How to Enable Advanced Chat Privacy

Advanced Chat Privacy is enabled or disabled per chat. To enable it:

Tap the chat name at the top of the screen.
Select Advanced chat privacy, then tap the toggle to turn it on.

There are some quirks to how this works, though. For one, by default, anyone involved in a chat can turn Advanced Chat Privacy on or off at will, which limits its usefulness but at least helps ensure something doesn’t accidentally get sent to Meta AI.

There’s one way around this, which is for a group admin to lock down what users in the group can do. In an existing group chat that you are the administrator of, tap the chat name at the top of the screen, then:

Scroll down to Group Permissions.
Disable the option to “Edit Group Settings.” This makes it so only the administrator can change several important permissions, including Advanced Chat Privacy.

You can also set this permission when starting a new group chat. Just be sure to pop into the permissions page when prompted. Even without Advanced Chat Privacy, the “Edit Group Settings” option is an important one for privacy, because it also includes whether participants can change the length that disappearing messages can be viewed, so it’s something worth considering for every group chat you’re an administrator of, and something WhatsApp should require admins to choose before starting a new chat.

When it comes to one-on-one chats, there is currently no way to block the other person from changing the Advanced Chat Privacy feature, so you’ll have to come to an agreement with the other person on keeping it enabled if that’s what you want. If the setting is changed, you’ll see a notice in the chat stating so:

There are already serious concerns with how much metadata WhatsApp collects, and as the company introduces ads and AI, it’s going to get harder and harder to navigate the app, understand what each setting does, and properly protect the privacy of conversations. One of the reasons alternative encrypted chat options like Signal tend to thrive is because they keep things simple and employ strong default settings and clear permissions. WhatsApp should keep this in mind as it adds more and more features.

Thorin Klosowski

[B] 入管庁の「不法滞在者ゼロプラン」により仮放免者の送還続く　クルド難民申請者への排除強まる

日刊ベリタ

2 weeks 1 day ago

仮放免中の外国人が本国に送還される事例が後を絶たない。法務省・入管庁は、今年5月に発表した「不法滞在者ゼロプラン」や、送還停止効の例外措置などを盛り込んだ「改正入管法」に基づき、仮放免中の外国人、特にクルド難民申請者らの送還を強化している。（藤ヶ谷魁）

日刊ベリタ

【‛25緑陰図書─私のおすすめ】｢個人の自律｣を侵すテクノ封建制＝内田聖子(アジア太平洋資料センターPARC共同代表）<br /><br />

日本ジャーナリストクラブ（JCJ）

2 weeks 1 day ago

　インターネットは資本主義のあり様を根本から変え、破壊的で搾取的なシステムを作り上げた。これは進歩なのか？　ギリシャ生まれの「異端の経済学者」ヤニス・バルファキス『テクノ封建制─デジタル空間の領主たちが私たち農奴を支配するとんでもなく醜くて、不公平な経済の話。』 (関美和訳集英社)は、若き日に父と交わした会話に応える形で、資本主義の醜悪な変容の本質を解題していく。　ブレトンウッズ体制崩壊後、資本主義の権力は経済圏から金融圏へ、つまり工業や商業から投資銀行家の世界へと移行..

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