>Why do they bother? Whatsapp can do all of that right now. Has done successfully for a few years. When people ask why there are so many streaming services, it

>Why do they bother? Whatsapp can do all of that right now. Has done successfully for a few years. When people ask why there are so many streaming services, it is as if to imply it would be better for everyone if Netflix had a total monopoly on streamed content. So to answer you: because not everyone uses Whatsapp and it wouldn't be great to live in a world where Whatsapp (Facebook) has a monopoly on instant messaging. >being deeply in the pocket of governments, they won't switch on E2E, just like all the intentionally vulnerable crappy mobile encryption. Whatsapp is not immune to that pressure - by the way. Also, you're way to trusting of the E2E on Whatsapp. You don't control the client-code, so you don't know the myriad of ways a private key can leak out (either by design or accidentally). For example, I'm using the web app of Whatsapp and somehow I'm able to read my entire messaging history - why? Because my mobile app transferred the private key through some mechanism to my web app, passing through Facebook servers. I'm sure you can explain to me how that can be done securely - maybe there is another key exchange, and WhatsApp messaged are encrypted once, transferred to the phone, and then encrypted again. Either way, your trust of WhatsApps E2E encryption is only as a good as Facebook's corporate polices. So at the end of the day, you are relying on Facebook's goodwill and relying on the fact Facebook doesn't issue a patch that opaquely transfer the key in a future update. >Also, being mobile carriers, they will bill huge amounts per message That may be a regional thing. Keep in mind, the world is bigger than America.