Mastodawn

Eugen Rochko May 15, 2020

So every time someone posts a #Giphy GIF in a chat and every time you open Giphy in your app / keyboard, Facebook will get data on you, did I get that right? Is that why a GIF collection was worth $400M?

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berkes 🐝 🚐 🏄 🌱May 15, 2020

@Gargron apparently not on Signal: https://twitter.com/signalapp/status/1261364662840385536?s=20

They've spent time and effort to avoid exactly what you describe.

Signal on Twitter

“Giphy was just acquired by Facebook, but GIF searches in Signal have been protected by a privacy-preserving proxy from the very beginning. The Giphy SDK isn't included in the app at all. You can read more about our approach to handling animated GIFs here: https://t.co/FoxQjFKWf9 https://t.co/HRReSqKjDO”

Twitter

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Vincent Cloutier

@berkes @Gargron Unfortunately, giphy still knows about the aggregated usage of all of Signal. They can probably estimate how many users they have, where they are using search timestamps, and their interests. What Signal has done helps a lot still though!