X plans to collect biometric data, job and school history

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-31/x-plans-to-collect-user-biometric-data-job-and-education-history

by ushakov • 3 years ago

51 219 3 years ago

bloomberg.com

archo• 3 years ago

https://archive.is/ASJpK

bastardoperator3• 3 years ago

Who wants to get doxxed?

sschueller• 3 years ago

"Assassination coordinates"...

tux3• 3 years ago

Twitter needs its Wayland.

Zambyte2• 3 years ago

https://wayland.social ?

avarun• 3 years ago

These posts from this and other servers in the decentralized network are gaining traction on this server right now.
Nothing is trending right now. Check back later!

Incredibly popular server.

SkyMarshal3• 3 years ago

You mean a modern rework that doesn't quite take off and takes a decade or more to achieve broad usage and acceptance, while a large part of community still sticks with the old version for specific reasons not supported by the new one?

Honestly it seems like it already has that with all the other half-baked microblogging services.

rrdharan• 3 years ago

X is X and Wayland is Mastodon ?

cozzyd• 3 years ago

They need their XWayland?

bluescrn• 3 years ago

Weyland-Yutani?

calvinmorrison• 3 years ago

Leyland, the notorious banker who ran off with Jaret Redick's girlfriend in the hit Bowling For Soup song "Ohio"?

water-data-dude• 3 years ago

that was my first thought too, lol

semi-extrinsic• 3 years ago

Not joking, my first reaction to the title was absolute shock, thinking this is about the X window system.

Fortunately it is only about the text-first social media platform turned dumpster fire.

morkalork• 3 years ago

Employment history? What's the plan, a corporate owned social credit score?

nerdponx• 3 years ago

Or they want to compete with Linkedin.

ryanSrich2• 3 years ago

Musk has been open about this being the goal.

"Musk wants X to become more like Tencent Holdings Ltd.'s WeChat, a messaging service turned super-app that offers everything from social media and video games to fintech. X Chief Executive Officer Linda Yaccarino has said X will include features such as payments and banking."

If that doesn't scream social credit score then you're intentionally ignoring it.

robg3• 3 years ago

So like authoritarian governments? Seems like the exact opposite of free speech absolutist…

hooverd3• 3 years ago

I thought I recalled there becoming some sort of "anti-woke" LLM service in the mix too.

pier252• 3 years ago

How can X become a super app when it can't even be a social media and chat app right?

dehrmann• 3 years ago

The problem is Twitter doesn't have a critical mass of users or government support to make these invasive requirements actually happen.

bozhark• 3 years ago

So he’s a chinussian puppet. Got it.

gorwell• 3 years ago

You have to assume they would want to limit their audience, which why would they?

They would prefer everyone using their app and not artifically limiting to a subset.

That's only something governments or captured corporations do and Twitter/X is neither. Although that could change and worth raising the possibility. Is there any way they could institute a hard constitution-like policy that could prevent it from ever sliding down that slope?

pelorat2• 3 years ago

The only reason it works in China because it disallows the competition and also lets the government spy on everyone through a single app. In China the Internet might as well be WeChat. Twitter, sorry "X", is in for a rude awakening unless Elon pulls the app from the EU.

tempodox• 3 years ago

Many an American is green in the face with jealousy about the total control that China has.

__derek__• 3 years ago

X Chief Executive Officer Linda Yaccarino has said X will include features such as payments and banking.

With an ad exec at the helm?

throwaway20222• 3 years ago

I am no longer a Twitter user, but if I remember correctly, a recent musk tweet was talking about how bad LinkedIn was and that the new X app should go after that market.

Maybe that?

bastardoperator3• 3 years ago

He just assumes X will disrupt everything, and it won't. It's already on life support, dude can't even pay his bills for office space he still occupies.

somenameforme• 3 years ago

It's says on the page:

"Job Applications / Recommendations. We may collect and use your personal information (such as your employment history, educational history, employment preferences, skills and abilities, job search activity and engagement, and so on) to recommend potential jobs for you, to share with potential employers when you apply for a job, to enable employers to find potential candidates, and to show you more relevant advertising."

Basically, LinkedIn.

mtmail• 3 years ago

Job matching probably "This strategic move comes after Twitter’s acquisition of Laskie, a job-matching tech startup, in May."

From the article "Twitter is testing a job board feature on profiles of verified organisations" https://thetechportal.com/2023/07/21/twitter-job-listings/

cratermoon2• 3 years ago

Where did 𝕏 get the money to buy a startup? The stories I've found said it was acquired for cash and equity, and Laskie had been funded to the tune of $6 million. https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2023/05/16/twitter...

delfinom• 3 years ago

Kinda exists already. Google TheWorkNumber owned by Equifax. They most likely have your data too as every single major HR payroll processor sends your data to them without permission.

tomxor• 3 years ago

If the web was your kitchen...

It's like some mornings you wake up and your toaster decides it's going to try and be a washing machine, which is kind of annoying when you just wanted some toast. But it's not about what you want, it's about what the toaster wants.

It's easier if you remember it's not your kitchen, lower your expectations, or just stop easting toast, breakfast is overrated anyway.

croes6• 3 years ago

Didn't he say he want to make X to a better LinkedIn?

bl4kers• 3 years ago

Good luck with that

rgbrenner• 3 years ago

One possibility for using biometric data is enabling passwordless sign-ins.

No, in both android and ios biometric data is never given to the app for touchid/faceid. It just notifies the app if the authentication passed/failed. So they would never need biometric data to enable biometric authentication.

hef198982• 3 years ago

Well, Twitter doesn't need it, but they clearly want it! I do see synergies so in case Tesla goes 100% key-less...

polski-g• 3 years ago

Is it going to end up like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjnLYuezGm0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6STtU4vEA4

40yearoldman3• 3 years ago

I really dislike how you jumped some conclusions on implementation.

Nobody has any clue how they will gather this data or even if it is for android or iOS.

It could be part of the X phone. X could use the camera and implement their own face unlock for X. X could use voice.

callalex• 3 years ago

Can I see the announcement for this phone? Or is that also coming “early next year”?

notyourwork• 3 years ago

X phone? Twitter becomes X and now makes phones? What world am I living in?

andsoitis2• 3 years ago

No, in both android and ios biometric data is never given to the app for touchid/faceid.

…Controlled by Apple and Google.

ericmay2• 3 years ago

Don't enable it then?

traceroute66• 3 years ago

…Controlled by Apple and Google.

FFS ! Pure FUD and you know it.

I don't know about Google, but with Apple, the data necessary to validate the fingerprint is stored on the device's secure enclave[1].

Its not readable by apps on the device, let alone Apple !

(I imagine Google devices are the same, I just said "don't know" because I don't have the first-hand knowldege).

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204587

circuit• 3 years ago

…Controlled by Apple and Google.

...Both of whom manufacture hardware/phones where the local processing of biometric data takes place.

tsimionescu2• 3 years ago

It's more like Apple or Samsung or Sony or Nokia or Google or One or whatever your phone manufacturer is. There's no way around trusting your phone manufacturer with your biometrics.

Even phones that don't offer biometric devices officially need to be trusted not to have hidden fingerprint sensors or iris scanners or whatnot.

bee_rider2• 3 years ago

Twitter is some sort of weird ad and social influencing company.

Apple’s whole business model requires people placing an immense amount of trust in them.

But sure maybe they’ll burn down their trillion dollar company so that they can steal peoples biometric data and get into their twitters.

xg15• 3 years ago

Exactly. Wasn't the whole point of passkeys that all the user-facing authentication happens on the device and all the server gets to see is a signature?

chubot• 3 years ago

Also, Twitter already did this bait and switch.

https://www.cnet.com/news/social-media/twitter-to-pay-150-mi...

Twitter to Pay $150 Million Fine Over Using Phone Numbers for Targeted Ads

FTC says personal data collected by Twitter for security purposes was also used for targeted advertising.

Fool me once, ...

orzig2• 3 years ago

To be fair, the odds that the people behind that are still at the company are <<50%

I think that the better base rate would be stories from Tesla, etc. Of which I imagine there are many (I don't have time to keep up with specifics)

lfmunoz4• 3 years ago

Does this mean apple have your biometric data or is it kept on phone?

Arcanum-XIII2• 3 years ago

Only on the phone, non accessible.

lvillani• 3 years ago

It is only kept on the device.

Sources:

- https://www.apple.com/business-docs/FaceID_Security_Guide.pd...

- https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204587

- https://support.apple.com/guide/security/welcome/web

robg3• 3 years ago

Can’t be an everything app without knowing everything about you.

robg3• 3 years ago

How many hours have gone into developing technologies for better ad targeting and yet still the same playbook for social media revenues? Has the approach of sucking up more data about you changed in 10 years? I get it’s been very profitable…

willvarfar• 3 years ago

The article links to a lawsuit alleging that X does facial recognition on uploaded photos. Isn't that what FB had to give up doing?

And the employment history? Perhaps X want's to be the next Linkedin too?

neom• 3 years ago

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1695681276265845189

"People send me LinkedIn links sometimes, but the cringe level is so high that I just can’t bring myself to use it, so I ask for the resume or bio to be emailed.

We will make sure that the X competitor to LinkedIn is cool."

hooverd3• 3 years ago

Weird, the new crop of Blue Checks exude the same smarmy cringe as LinkedIn thinkfluencers.

Zigurd• 3 years ago

That's pretty hilarious. LinkedIn will be forced to respond by attracting loud chuds writing problematic screeds and complaining that they get blocked.

philipwhiuk• 3 years ago

cool

From the guy posting 'memes' and far-right talking points.

lincon1272• 3 years ago

To be fair, I also cringe at LinkedIn links. If you're using that site for anything else other than fulfilling social obligations, you're likely in marketing eugh

HumblyTossed• 3 years ago

I can think of several reasons why Elon should never have that information.

jacquesm• 3 years ago

So, how many people will fall for it? The very last thing you want to do is to put a guy like Elon Musk (or Mark Zuckerberg, or Jeff Bezos for that matter) in charge of collecting this sort of data. Before you know it your now mandatory Twitter(sorry, X), Amazon or Facebook account is your life and these wealthy and empathy free people will be in charge of it.

This is something you do at your peril.

lincon1272• 3 years ago

Why don't we give them a pair of calipers while they're at it; maybe while they're logging all this info, they can assess how how well I fit into Musk's dystopian nightmare world he's attempting to establish.

pelorat2• 3 years ago

How to get your app completely banned in the EU?

account-53• 3 years ago

Elon wants twitteX to be the west's version of WeChat, seems like he's forgetting WeChat is practically used universally in China because it's controlled by the government and forced on people. I see no way of twittex pulling this off.

toomuchtodo• 3 years ago

He wants the power, veiled as tech innovation, as you mention by cribbing off of an authoritarian regime.

Someone should let the CFPB know.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37226812 (CFPB data broker citations)

xNeil4• 3 years ago

WeChat isn't forced on the people by the CCP by any means.

account-53• 3 years ago

Is it easy to live without it? Can you go about your business without it?

manuelabeledo5• 3 years ago

Try living in any major Chinese city without it. On top of that, pretty much every foreign competitor is functionally disabled.

Virtually all mobile payments in China are handled by WeChat/Tencent. That's not an accident.

kevinventullo• 3 years ago

Facebook wanted to do this 8 years ago. There are many, many reasons this is difficult, but for starters neither Twitter nor Facebook control a meaningful hardware platform. Apple/Google get a little closer with some of their payment stuff, but I’m skeptical they will ever displace credit cards.

croes6• 3 years ago

People like Musk love dictatorships

misiti37807• 3 years ago

You're basing this on what exactly ?

misiti37807• 3 years ago

I agree, Im a big fan of everything he does but I see zero chance that X can become the everything app.

manuelabeledo5• 3 years ago

Im a big fan of everything he does

I really hope "everything" is an exaggeration.

pengaru• 3 years ago

Elon wants twitteX to be the west's version of WeChat

It's obviously Xitter, pronounced "shitter".

catchnear43212• 3 years ago

twix?

bad for your health, and the whole left/right thing is a sham.

justrealist• 3 years ago

That is an extraordinarily unhelpful simplification of why WeChat is popular.

It's popular because it's functional, has strong network effects, and people don't care about centralization or second-order effects.

Now, in the US, we see it as the role of regulators to break up unfair monopolies, and even "fair" monopolies get a lot of scrutiny. In China, the gov doesn't really complain because they can piggyback on WeChat as a control mechanism. But the government is not why WeChat is popular. It's popular because it's good!

in the immediate, effective sense. it works and people use it.

Arcanum-XIII2• 3 years ago

It’s very much the view from cyberpunk histories where corpo are the true power, not government (behind that there are AI of course).

So Musk is dreaming of a dystopia where he is one of the power.

tivert• 3 years ago

Elon wants twitteX to be the west's version of WeChat, seems like he's forgetting WeChat is practically used universally in China because it's controlled by the government and forced on people.

I think you have some pretty serious misunderstandings. WeChat isn't popular in China because it's controlled by the government. IIRC, it's popular because it was better than other Chinese social apps. It's only controlled by the government to the extent that everything is controlled by them. It's only "forced" on people to the extent that Visa, the telephone, or Facebook is forced on Americans.

In other words: WeChat can't be lazily though of as the Chinese equivalent of Telescreen from 1984, where everyone is forced to have and use one, even through it may function similarly in other ways.

thesuperbigfrog2• 3 years ago

"X now wants your biometric data, as well as your job and education history for 'safety, security, and identification purposes'"

Also for advertising, monetization, tracking, selling services to government agencies, and training their machine learning bots.

Not for your benefit, but for X's uses and benefits. You are the product and X wants to sell your info and attention so Elon can earn his money back.

mymythisisthis• 3 years ago

And when X goes bankrupt/sold that information will also be sold as an asset of the company.

lost_tourist4• 3 years ago

Exactly and can be sold many times over to various sources, including government sources.

xNeil4• 3 years ago

selling services to government agencies

What in the world makes you think that? Musk is pretty clearly against this government, and openly so - if he wants to sell services to government agencies, he's definitely on the wrong path.

celtoid• 3 years ago

"Musk is pretty clearly against this government"

Musk is a military and intelligence contractor. He makes bank on the government. Look at his actions, not his words.

netsharc3• 3 years ago

But he can get the government he likes into power... and then, he's golden, baby.

Hah, owning Twitter, if was competent, he could've gotten a Rupert Murdoch level of kingmaker powers. Too bad his shrewedness is as great as his level of wit: thinking that dragging in a kitchen sink into the offices is a clever pun.

multiplegeorges• 3 years ago

sell services to government agencies

This is SpaceX's entire business model, at this point. He's definitely not against it if the money is right.

thesuperbigfrog2• 3 years ago

> if he wants to sell services to government agencies, he's definitely on the wrong path.

He wants to sell advertising. "Government advertising" is a thing in some countries, or so I hear.

Surveillance and protecting the homeland from threats is also something that some governments might pay for.

yomlica8• 3 years ago

Twitter was already fined for using phone numbers provided for security purposes for ad/tracking purposes. And that was before Musk bought them.

Facebook was too. Hell, probably everyone does it.

phatfish• 3 years ago

Elon should collect all this PI, then swap user names for real names, and disable the ability to delete anything at the same time, with a ninja EULA update.

WhereIsTheTruth• 3 years ago

People who called "conspiracy theorist", as they flagged my comments, are now watching the story unfold

rsynnott7• 3 years ago

It doesn’t include any details on what kind of biometric information this includes — or how X plans to collect it — but it typically involves fingerprints, iris patterns, or facial features.

To post to Twitter, simply look at one of Sam Altman's weird orb things.

gemstones• 3 years ago

Elon’s product thinking really shines here, huh? /s

He thinks LinkedIn is cringe (fair) but has a position where he can ignore lots of professional norms. LinkedIn is cringe because people are deliberately trying to respect professional norms and post weird, sanitized, work-appropriate content.

Imagine you’re a recruiter. The selling point of X jobs is that they will give you access to people who found professional norms too hard to follow? And probably some specialists who would be hard to recruit, but maybe they get income that’s a multiple of several boutique recruiting agencies from that.

This isn’t like stackoverflow jobs where the base is correlated with technical expertise - X jobs is correlated with people who are terminally online who think being polite in their work-facing lives is something that people don’t actually want. What hiring manager wants to draw from that pool?

fhd23• 3 years ago

It's weird to admit, but ever since Twitter jumped the shark LinkedIn has become my main replacement. Closest thing to vaguely broad views and updates from people most of which I know to some degree.

It _is_ cringe, but not the stuff my "network" writes, and not really based on writing style, for the most part. It's mostly just the sponsored and boosted stuff. That also wasn't my favourite content on Twitter.

If X tries to become LinkedIn, it sounds like their major opportunity is to become the worst of both worlds. And what Elon thought was "cool" in the past was, at least in my opinion, mostly not.

chewmieser• 3 years ago

Bloomberg wrote an article on this recently:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-22/instagram...

Spooky23• 3 years ago

I'm humbled to hear that you have announced the LinkedIn has replaced Twitter as your firehose of nonsense. That is a significant shift that realigns your media consumption with strategic goals.

orzig2• 3 years ago

Yeah, me too. It's boring, but after the last decade I'm more than willing to accept that "cost" for the benefit of having a sense of what's going on with my contacts.

Does anyone know how to efficiently unfollow large numbers of people though? I was way to promiscuous in the early days and want to winnow down to someone I've actually worked/socialized with.

imbnwa• 3 years ago

If X tries to become LinkedIn, it sounds like their major opportunity is to become the worst of both worlds. And what Elon thought was "cool" in the past was, at least in my opinion, mostly not.

Wouldn't the impact largely be on how people looking for jobs on X would have to clean up their profiles/history?

GaryNumanVevo• 3 years ago

LinkedIn is a perfect social media. Does exactly what it says on the box. You post a profile, and recruiters will hit your inbox. You can post if you want, and the feed is full of sometimes cringe posts, but it's not super algorithmic, they don't really care if you're spending a lot of time on the site. I've spend this last year curating my feed, muting annoying connections, following people that post genuinely interesting content. I probably check it twice a week, check in with people, then I get bored and log off.

Lolaccount• 3 years ago

Over my dead body.

bilsbie2• 3 years ago

I’m starting to think they need a seamless way to give folks two accounts.

They’re trying to be both LinkedIn and reddit. I don’t want my real name on reddit but I would for linked in.

It’s an issue they need to solve.

pohl2• 3 years ago

I'd say it's more a choice that you need to make: is what you don't want more important than being there?

bilsbie2• 3 years ago

I mean from their perspective. How can they keep both types of users.

SkyMarshal3• 3 years ago

How are they going to collect employment data? Just ask their users, or harvest it from other sources?

CamelCaseName• 3 years ago

They're using an Israeli company, AU10TIX, to collect that data.

From the platform that launched the Arab Spring.

rchaud10• 3 years ago

At this point I'm surprised they haven't simply paid Pegasus to pull all that info remotely already. There's a certain gulf prince Musk is pals with that would have their number.

pseudotrash• 3 years ago

Elon Musk would be the last person I trust with my employment history: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-elon...

Or with biometric data for that matter.

JohnFen3• 3 years ago

Or with literally anything else.

mcpackieh• 3 years ago

Stop using it. They are powerless over you if you quit.

JohnFen3• 3 years ago

They have less power over you if you quit. But Facebook shows that just not using it isn't adequate protection.

numpad05• 3 years ago

I think they're more powerless if you didn't but the rest quit. Alpha users would be disgustingly costly and disruptive to let stay.

laluneodyssee• 3 years ago

Has anyone found a way to wipe your data from Twitter/X without deleting the account? I dont trust them to do it and they seem to be rate limiting anyone who attempts to themselves

willcipriano• 3 years ago

Pretend to be the parent of the US based 11 year old who created the account and you want it closed and everything deleted. Fastest way to get any unwanted account removed.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_...

oska• 3 years ago

This may not work if your account is 10+ years old

syllablehq• 3 years ago

“X” can go F right off

lost_tourist4• 3 years ago

In the famous words of Bugs Bunny: No.

The only reason I use things like HN, reddit, twitter is relative anonymity without a lot of effort. I've used the past few months to set up my own mastodon, password server, matrix server for my friends group. I'm just waiting for everyone to start demanding ID and that will be the final nail in the coffin for this stuff and end of an era for me. I don't need anyone telling me to "end it now!", that's impractical until they force my hand, I'm a pragmatist.

rvz2• 3 years ago

No different to Meta then. Yet also you should be complaining about LinkedIn or TikTok hoovering up your data as well.

Otherwise just delete your accounts on all these social networks already rather than continuing to complain here.

cypress66• 3 years ago

Just because other's are awful doesn't make it alright.

rvz2• 3 years ago

Who said it was fine? I'm telling you (or anyone else) to delete your social media accounts on all platforms. I did that a long time ago and years before the Twitter takeover.

toss1• 3 years ago

>The new policy for the service formerly known as Twitter says it will use collected biometric data for ‘safety, security, and identification purposes.’

Clearly does NOT say safety and security of *WHOM". My first thought is the priority is the safety and security of X Corp.

Identification, yup, we're the target.

operatingthetan• 3 years ago

Hard pass!

PappGaborSandor• 3 years ago

X.com is deprecated, use Wayland.social

ActualHacker• 3 years ago

Sounds like tweety is in the Xitter

DesiLurker• 3 years ago

Yup, time to uninstall TwitX & scrub my account history. if this is not a clear indication of how pervasive this shit is going to be then IDK what is.

Lamad123• 3 years ago

what is X?

manuelabeledo5• 3 years ago

I guess this is another step towards Twitter/X as the "everything app". Honestly, I don't see this succeeding in any way or form.

Perhaps Musk expects the US government to partially subsidize this venture too...

brandonagr2• 3 years ago

This is because X will soon offer the optional ability to verify your account with government ID in addition to the current blue checkmark.

_If you want to_, the process would be take a selfie and a picture of your government issued ID, and they will use AU10TIX to verify that they match.

hendersoon• 3 years ago

I know it's generally accepted that "the guy on the street" doesn't care about privacy, but honestly this seems a step too far even for such accepting souls. I guess Musk superfans may go for it, but everybody else? Just to use twitter? C'mon.

X plans to collect biometric data, job and school history

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