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WhatsApp to move ahead with privacy update despite backlash

615 points by sidcool 6y ago

pmlnr 6y ago
The funny thing is: they are now forced to highlight the differences between business and "private" chats, especially that business chat contents are _not_ private.
lnl 6y ago
The relevant blog post, that the article doesn't link to: https://blog.whatsapp.com/more-information-about-our-update https://blog.whatsapp.com/more-information-about-our-update Goes into slightly more detail then the article, and also takes obvious jabs at Telegram and Signal.
Bluestein 6y ago
They waited 'till the news cycle waned, and then did whatever they pleased anyway. Par for the course ...
- ineedasername 6y ago
  Yeah, pretty much PR Crisis Communications 101. I'm at some point they were also deeply concerned and promised that they would conduct a thorough investigation
- qznc 6y ago
  My hope is that this triggers a second backlash.
  - Bakary 6y ago
    But we just got proof that backlashes can be ignored, so what's the point?
    - qznc 6y ago
      Ignored? Lots and lots of people installed Signal or Telegram. Some of them will stay.
      - Bakary 6y ago
        If Fb is going forward with the change, then they've realized that those people are a rounding error.
        CTOSian 6y ago
        exactly, how many people care about the TOS? most of the people I know use their phones like zombies, just clicking on the apps and to any "OK" button they see...
        Bakary 6y ago
        Over time, I've come to progressively reject the "zombie/sheeple" criticism of that behavior. People just want to live their lives, and we should focus our attention on the rent-seeking tech companies that try to cynically exploit us instead of victim-blaming. It's true that people could try to be more aware of what is going on, but we ought to work towards a world where we aren't nickel-and-dimed every second of the day by massive corporations.
saddlerustle 6y ago
It's absurd this article doesn't try to describe what the changes actually are. The privacy policy change doesn't functionally change anything about what data is collected or shared with Facebook. Metadata collection for ad targeting has been allowed by the privacy policy since 2016.
- capableweb 6y ago
  I think we're long past the idea that general, global news producers are trying to stay factual and provide information to their readers. It's all about generating outrage as it's much easier to get people hooked on outrage than the boring truth and impartial reporting.
- majke 6y ago
  More than that. (1) The policy differs per country. But how is it different in practice between the EU and USA and Brasil? It's not public knowledge. (2) It's absurd the policy doesn't describe anything useful. I tried to find if the contact book is being sent to facebook and if so, for how long. The wording is so opaque it's impossible to figure out. https://twitter.com/majek04/status/1348574409968275456 https://twitter.com/majek04/status/1348574409968275456
  - yuriko_boyko 6y ago
    The contacts have been shared since 2016. You can get your account info in the Account option, but they make it a pain to get it. Mine took 3 days for an HTML page.
    - majke 6y ago
      I did that. It doesn't answer the question - is my contact book on facebook servers? If so, how it is processed and for how long.
- pedrocr 6y ago
  The article is a short piece that basically says "Remember that kerfuffle about Whatsapp TOS that lead Facebook to put it on hold? It's back on". For that purpose the paragraph it does include describing the kinds of changes at stake should be enough. It's not an in-depth piece explaining the nature of the changes and in which cases they are indeed just "clarifications" as Facebook claims.
popol12 6y ago
Meanwhile I've switched my family and friend to Signal with great success.
- VMG 6y ago
  Do you still have Whatsapp installed? I have seen family and friends _add_ Signal but few actually _removing_ Whatsapp from their phone. Which is not a success.
  - samizdis 6y ago
    > Which is not a success. That depends on your aims. I announced to family/friends that I was deleting WhatsApp and asked them to install Signal, and they have done, and message me via that. My aim was to ensure that I could still converse, but not have to use a service with which I had become disenchanted. It isn't my business whether they continue to use WhatsApp or whether they delete it.
  - another-dave 6y ago
    I don't think it's possible for most people to make this a one-pass activity without it causing a lot of friction for them, but over time you can build a critical mass of your social circle on non-FB platforms that allow you to _then_ delete WhatsApp with less friction. Step 1 for family & friends is being available on multiple platforms, because that in turn gives _their_ circle less tie-in to WhatsApp. It's only when their circle also make themselves available that they would have a painless option to remove WhatsApp, but IMO, that's OK. It is a success, but playing the long game.
- sumanthvepa 6y ago
  I've done that too. But for some reason, my business communication still happens on WhatsApp. Until that happens Facebook is safe.
  - buro9 6y ago
    that is the one I found easiest to move. Business is already conducted well on email, and if it needs sync chat for larger orgs then Slack steps in, and if it needs personal private sync chat then Signal steps in.
imwillofficial 6y ago
Well of course they are
KDJohnBrown 6y ago
People have been raising the alarm about governmenral big brotherism for aeons .. and we willingly accept 24/7 surveillance by big tech. The internet was by far the worst infringement on freedon humanity ever created. The worst part is we all submit to this willingly, without so much as raising a fist in defense.
mfer 6y ago
In the book, "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism"[1], it talks about the MO for the big tech companies. How they push and often subtly change things slowly. The book provides a number of examples of this. I never expected FB to walk back the privacy change. I even expect their full expectations to be in place in a couple years. It's what they have successfully done in the past. [1] https://bookshop.org/books/the-age-of-surveillance-capitalism-the-fight-for-a-human-future-at-the-new-frontier-of-power/9781541758001 https://bookshop.org/books/the-age-of-surveillance-capitalis...
- Person5478 6y ago
  In the book "ordinary men" it describes a group of conscripted soldiers during the nazi regime. They were former police for Poland, so not even German Nazi's, but by the end they were doing things like taking pregnant women out in fields and shooting them. The takeaway from the book is that you can get ordinary people to do extraordinarily evil acts by asking them to do more heinous things in small steps. The gist is that anyone who thinks they COULDN'T do horrible things is the most at risk of this type of manipulation. The idea of a slippery slope is a very real thing. edit: One of the most harrowing descriptions from the book imo is a description of an event where they were killing so many jews it eventually turned night and they attempted to use lights from cars to keep going, but that proved unsuccessful so they were FORCED to wait until the next day to finish up. Until you read things like that you don't fully grasp just how horrific the holocaust was. We all know it was horrible in an abstract way, but those stories really bring it home in a more concrete manner.
- musha68k 6y ago
  Indeed, a powerful trick out of the manipulator’s playbook. Also thinking of “Death by a thousand cuts”, “slowly boiling a frog”, etc. “Creeping normality (also called gradualism, or landscape amnesia[1]) is a process by which a major change can be accepted as normal and acceptable if it happens slowly through small, often unnoticeable, increments of change. The change could otherwise be regarded as objectionable if it took place in a single step or short period.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creeping_normality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creeping_normality
znpy 6y ago
I always denied consent to the requests from whatsapp, and it's still working. I wonder if they're doing a meh and surveilling me anyway.
- perryizgr8 6y ago
  They extended the cutoff date to few months later.
egwor 6y ago
I'm so disappointed in this. Whatsapp is a functional tool. It was successful since it worked. Facebook has entirely failed to utilise it - to allow external systems to connect in so that businesses can do business on there. The voice calls are also a disaster. They've now come along to start messing with the privacy to start selling ads. It is insane that they're able to make such a mess of this. Is there a word for anti-innovation? Considering that they're linking Facebook ad platform with the chats, and they're forcing this upon everyone, why isn't this covered by the monopoly laws? Most of us paid some money for the app.
- leephillips 6y ago
  I agree with you completely, but “Most of us paid some money for the app”: I didn’t know it was possible to pay for WhatsApp. On what platforms does it cost money?
  - PetitPrince 6y ago
    Initially WhatsApp (before Facebook acquisition) had a (cheap!) one time fee.
    - leephillips 6y ago
      Oh, I guess I was late to the party.
    - RobertoG 6y ago
      I think that was only true for the Apple store, not for Android.
    - vxNsr 6y ago
      And then it was an annual fee, of $1 billed to your cell service provider, people had a much easier time parting with $1 at some future point on their cellphone bill which anyways is dynamic vs $1 now in the app. for the team size the projected amount they’d make was fine. iirc it had like 500mil users and less than 50 ppl in the company.
  - 6y ago
londons_explore 6y ago
I really don't understand facebook's approach to this change... Whatsapp is part of facebook, the most data driven of companies. Surely they wrote 10 variations on the 'please accept the new T&C's' screen, and did A/B testing on each, user studies, etc. And they wouldn't have deployed if there was any risk to their business... Yet it seems the users hate it enough that there is a risk to their business... So what went wrong?
- Icathian 6y ago
  My assumption is that the cost/benefit math means that this is still worth it for them to do. Put as much lipstick as you can on that pig and go to market with it is not an internally inconsistent or illogical path. Even if it sucks for us as consumers.
  - londons_explore 6y ago
    But look at the message presented to users [1]. It is almost threatening... The deadline date at the bottom... The scary sounding phrase "partner with Facebook" without even giving an example... The simple text in bold at the top saying "Facebook never gets the contents of your messages to friends, and it never will" would have gone a long way to making most users happy. It's almost as if someone deliberately chose the text of this to make users upset... [1]: https://images.indianexpress.com/2021/01/WhatsApp_NEW_1.jpg https://images.indianexpress.com/2021/01/WhatsApp_NEW_1.jpg
- Bakary 6y ago
  They saw the number of users who actually migrated, and how the negative media reaction dissipated quickly, and realized that it was barely a blip on their radar. They have years of experience introducing changes and waiting out the scandal period. They know they can do anything without much in the way of consequences.
throwaway556179 6y ago
Sometimes, I wish someone would hack into the FB C-Levels homes and live-stream their lives to the world - like everything they say and do, just to make the world a bit more open, connected and transparent.
- uniqueid 6y ago
  A photographer claims he was accused of breaching privacy by Facebook after taking photos of Mark Zuckerberg cleaning up his dog’s poo. https://metro.co.uk/2018/04/03/pictures-mark-zuckerberg-didnt-want-see-7436124/ https://metro.co.uk/2018/04/03/pictures-mark-zuckerberg-didn...
  - gilrain 6y ago
    They should have promoted the photos instead; that's the most humanizing photo of Zuck I've ever seen. He's upgraded from "I hate everything about him" to "I hate everything about him except that he cleans up after his dog responsibly."
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  How is that in any way similar to the proposed WhatsApp changes?
  - throwaway556179 6y ago
    It concerns the generic "information asymmetry" - we want your relations, dreams, illnesses, loves, pulse, voice, basically anything we can get - but let silence be the only thing you will know about us.
ElectricMind 6y ago
Once you have monopoly then you can pretty much do anything, in America. No moral dilemma.
londons_explore 6y ago
As I understand it, the actual T&C change is pretty minor (the ability for Facebook to have the contents of your messages on their server only in the case you are talking to a business which uses Facebook for commercial messaging) Since this change seems pretty minor, why can't Whatsapp cancel the T&C changes, make a big announcement that they have caved to user demands, and then get some third party to host their commercial messaging efforts? Said third party could get permission to handle user data the way every other 'use chat for customer service' company does...
- saurik 6y ago
  Or why the hell can't all the "omg the sky is falling and Facebook is so horrible" people on this thread just understand any of the numerous places this has been explained and not make out like something of actual interest about the protocol or even the client has changed? The shear amount of misinformation being spread about this topic on Hacker News is ridiculously disappointing and entirely unbefitting of its supposedly enlightened audience, and the number of people I--as an actual privacy and security researcher--have had to talk out of switching from WhatsApp to something actually bad for their use cases due to all of this anti-WhatsApp FUD is insane.
kar1181 6y ago
I think as a starter concerned (UK) citizens should write to their MP. I wrote when the first news broke and got a pretty prompt reply it was being looked at. Then Facebook announced it's pause and the issue went silent. Now it's rearing up again we need to likewise make sure it's on the radar of our MPs.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
yalogin 6y ago
Reality is no one cares about privacy, there isn’t a dollar amount attached to it like with security. So yes people will be outraged when they are told data is collected about them but then they will see the service offered and accept the collection. The only thing this achieved is made a lot of people realize and vocalize to themselves that they don’t care about privacy. I could t even convince my own family to ditch WhatsApp. We are in the very early phase of the fight for privacy like we were in the ssl 1.0 days with security. It will happen but there is a lot of struggle left
- CubsFan1060 6y ago
  People care, but they are also unwilling to make any sacrifice. They would like more privacy, but would also like to continue using the services that steal their privacy. And they would also like to continue to use the for free. When faced with "continue using the thing I like and lose privacy" vs "Pay for a similar solution", they almost always choose the first.
  - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    That isn't a problem here. Signal is free, and already well funded.
  - themacguffinman 6y ago
    > People care, but they are also unwilling to make any sacrifice. This is also known as "not caring". "Oh yeah I really care about you babe, I just can't help you or hang out with you in any way that even slightly inconveniences me."
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  > Reality is no one cares about privacy Not so. I know several non-technical people who heard about the changes and made the switch to Signal. (Or rather, primarily Signal, but WhatsApp where necessary.) It's not just us HackerNews readers. I don't expect WhatsApp to be a deserted wasteland any time soon, but it's not the case that no one cares. > there isn’t a dollar amount attached to it like with security There isn't really a bright line between the two. Privacy has significant overlap with the C of the CIA triad of cybersecurity. > I could t even convince my own family to ditch WhatsApp. That's unfortunate, but not universal.
JohnJamesRambo 6y ago
Of course they are. Facebook doesn’t care and if you still use them or their products you are endorsing their behavior. https://signal.org/ https://signal.org/
minikites 6y ago
The free market continues to reward Facebook, so this move must be good. I can't wait to see what the free market has in store next!
- ulzeraj 6y ago
  Please refrain to use cheap politic slogans. You are not forced to use Facebook stuff. Use Signal, Threema, Telegram, Discord, Slack, Snapchat, Matrix. Create your own. As much as I don't like Facebook's wechat its not like you are forced to use their application out of obligation or lack of options.
  - minikites 6y ago
    >its not like you are forced to use their application out of obligation Can I have my aging father call you when he needs help with Signal? I don't think you understand the network effects of messaging programs.
  - Bakary 6y ago
    It's not technically forced, but in practice you are often at the mercy of specific apps for many interactions. In many regions, not having Whatsapp or Messenger or WeChat can cause you all sorts of grief and annoyances.
    - zepearl 6y ago
      I agree => I'll try to expand? In the case of WeChat, which from what I heard/read is nowadays deeply rooted in the life of Chinese people (used in China not just to "chat" but as well to perform payments, rate shops and even people, get credit ratings, maybe more), getting rid of something like that would be reaaally hard, even if officially the app is not forced on anybody. Assuming e.g. that Facebook would create its "Libra"-currency, it would then make it available at least within Whatsapp, and when people would start using it (for any reason) then it would be 1000 times harder to get rid of Whatsapp-the-chat even if it would stomp on all possible individual rights because the "need" to have that whatsapp-payment(&future rating&whatever-method) would be stronger than any potential "future" loss of privacy.
tambourine_man 6y ago
It's really hard for me to understand why and how something fails or succeeds to grab the public's attention. I've been complaining and refusing to use WhatsApp for years, mostly because it's centralized at the worst possible company. But a boycott of one is not a powerful move and no one cared. Now, for whatever reason, nothing has effectively changed and millions suddenly care. I mean, I'm glad they finally do, don't think it will make much of a difference, as network effect is a very strong pull, but I'm flabbergasted nonetheless.
- smhg 6y ago
  Over here (in Belgium and The Netherlands at least) so many neighborhoods have signs promoting local WhatsApp groups, complete with the logo [0]. Often to 'prevent crime'. Local municipalities install and pay for them. It is so awkward to see. [0] https://cdn.nieuws.nl/media/sites/305/2016/05/14195316/Borden-WhatsApp-Buurtpreventie-geplaatst-915x518.jpg https://cdn.nieuws.nl/media/sites/305/2016/05/14195316/Borde...
  - comfyinnernet 6y ago
    Someone should paste Zuckerberg's face in the middle of the logo whenever they see one of those.
  - tsukurimashou 6y ago
    I was a bit "shocked" by that when I moved to the Netherlands, everyone there uses it and the government seems to have a responsibility in that. Between the signs like you said and the possibility to contact town hall to take an appointment and other government related services via Whatsapp (I can certainly get why people use it, because it's much more convenient that having to make a phone call).
    - jcul 6y ago
      In Ireland it's the same, everyone uses WhatsApp. If I share my number with someone, it would be much stranger for me to receive an SMS from them than a WhatsApp message. If I phone a tradesman, e.g. a plumber, and they ask for a picture of a job, the photo will be sent using whatsapp. It's ubiquitous and it's assumed that if you're have a phone you have WhatsApp. The only people I can think of that don't use it are my wife's grandparents, they use Facebook messenger for that purpose. Back when people were switching to signal a lot of people cited the fact that signal needed a phone number as a reason not to use it, instead recommending session, threema, matrix. But if signal didn't tie your account to your phone number there's no way I would have convinced any of my contacts to switch. Having to exchange username or user IDs wouldn't have cut it, with whatsapp the service is deeply associated with you phone number and that's what people want.
roland35 6y ago
I deleted my account, although a big part of it was how Whatsapp was able to automatically add lots of my contacts (from my phone number I believe?) to my friends list automatically. I wasn't really excited about myself possibly being on other people's contact list without my knowledge!
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
I use Signal and I’ve encouraged my friends and family to switch as well. But let’s be honest: WhatsApp is moving forward because they aren’t threatened by this concern or losing some users to Signal. The average user doesn’t care about anything other than easily communicating with other people at this point, and news articles like this are part of the problem. Frankly, the sky-is-falling uproar about any and every privacy policy change from free services had burned people out and made them jaded. Tech media likes to portray every change as an egregious violation of personal privacy, yet most of this stuff is just mundane as targeting where the data never leaves the company. The media has become the boy who cried wolf with their attempts to present every type of data collection as bad. This article doesn’t even attempt to explain what the privacy policy changes are or what it might mean. It just implies that the reader should be angry. In 2021, everyone has heard the “if you’re not paying for it, you’re the product” line so many times that they’ve just accepted it and moved on with their lives. The media’s false equivalencies are simply accelerating it.
- lokischild 6y ago
  You seem to make many assumptions that are, AFAIK, false. The data is there and gets stored indefinitely. It is not only monetized for ADs, but for surveillance as well. Companies and state contact the company and buy that data about you.
  - PragmaticPulp 6y ago
    Do you have a source for that? Because your claims don’t match the proposed WhatsApp privacy policy changes this refers to. You can read a summary of the proposed changes here: https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/whatsapp-users-must-share-their-data-with-facebook-or-stop-using-the-app/%3famp=1 https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstechnica.com/tech-policy/202... Contrary to the public perception, Facebook isn’t in the business of selling data to other companies. The proposed changes don’t change that situation. A privacy policy isn’t going to stop the state from legally accessing data they’re legally entitled to. This is what I was trying to say with my comment above: The public perception of what these companies are doing has diverged from what they’re actually doing, and it’s making everyone so jaded that they’ve stopped paying attention to the details.
rapnie 6y ago
A question to anyone that already made the jump away from Whatsapp: Do people that used to msg me still see my entry in their own accounts list, after I closed it? And if they do, do they get notified if still sending msgs there, or are these just shown as forever unread?
- globular-toast 6y ago
  My experience with people from my own contacts disappearing is you'll still be on their contacts list and their messages will go into a black hole. If they're paying attention they will notice that all of your details, including your picture, will revert to whatever they have stored in their phone contacts list (which might be nothing).
- CTOSian 6y ago
  >Do people that used to msg me still see my entry in >their own accounts list, after I closed it? I recently asked the WhatsApp to provide me "my account info", well, on the reply (data) were OLD phone numbers from friends that they don't use anymore -closed their old WhatsApp and opened new- and belong now to other people!! what was absurd, those numbers AUTOMATICALLY were added to my contact list! I even could not remove those contacts only by block and report. Just to have an idea what data goes to the f Facebook
globular-toast 6y ago
What backlash? If they'd seen any noticeable backlash they wouldn't be going ahead.
pmlnr 6y ago
A group of my friends asked to set up a groupchat recently, our requirements varied. Among them: - needs to be simple (not all of them are techies) - need to be possible to run on desktop without any mobile need - not Facebook (my requirement) So I went and set an XMPP server up on the same machine I have my email and webserver, and wrote a quick guide on how to install blabber.im (a Conversations fork), and register on the server. With a turnserver running in the background, it can do voice/video calls as well. The room is not e2e encrypted yet - that is because I wasn't able to get the desktop person to install the omemo plugin for gajim, but that is the sole reason. We'll get there. There is no history delivered on first connect - e2e encryption would prevent that anyway, similarly to Signal or Whatsapp. PS: "Why not matrix?" Because at the moment, I despise the matrix clients, all the ones I tried, and the purple-matrix plugin for pidgin/adium/etc is long abandoned, and has no encryption support. -- EDIT OK, for those who don't understand what I wrote: I spun my OWN XMPP server. You don't have to, you can use any XMPP/Jabber server, for example any here: https://list.jabber.at/ https://list.jabber.at/ From a user perspective: get and app, register a user/password on the selected server, done. That is simple. -- EDIT2 > There is no history delivered on first connect This is a choice. The tech/option exists: https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0313.html https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0313.html
- iagovar 6y ago
  That's not my idea of simple. Telegram works for me.
  - vinay427 6y ago
    Telegram has an incredibly primitive setup for their private conversations (E2E encryption). It doesn't work at all on desktop clients, and there's no supported way to backup or transfer devices so changing or losing a phone means you lose the conversation history with no option to backup, even preemptively.
- sprkwd 6y ago
  That doesn't feel simple. I installed Signal.
ulzeraj 6y ago
I would be interested in non creepy or elitist ways to convince your colleagues to migrate to another platform. People who do not care about privacy and all. I thought I was free from Whatsuck but then I've changed jobs and the only way that I can keep in touch with my remote team outside of the corporate communicators which are separated by a 2FA Citrix Workspace login is through WhatsApp. So WhatsApp is like a lifeline where you can send a message stating that you've dropped from the Teams meeting because your power went down or your computer crashed.
- wtf_is_up 6y ago
  It sounds like WhatsApp is providing considerable value to your team.
- kevincox 6y ago
  I asked a small number of people close to me to switch to Matrix. For everyone else I am briding to other services. This means that I may not have access to every feature on the remote service (depends on the completeness of the bridge mostly) but now I only really need to check one service for all of my day-to-day chats. So now anyone that joins Matrix can find me, I can do most of my communication in the same environment and if people ask I can explain the benefits of switching to Matrix. It is by no means perfect, but I find it much more convenient than using 5 different apps and I didn't have to convince everyone that I regularly communicate to switch to get major benefits. TL;DR Matrix allows a slow-and-steady migration which seems like the best option available.
gitowiec 6y ago
I am looking for the Whatsapp chats offline viewer. I would like to store my chats on my laptop and view it without needing Whatsapp on my phone. Currently I know that chats can be viewed (and chat) on web.whatsapp.com, and I found this app https://andreas-mausch.de/whatsapp-viewer/ https://andreas-mausch.de/whatsapp-viewer/ which makes it possible on Windows (and it seems outdated because of lots of bugs on GitHub). But I would like to view chats on Linux computer, it could also be an web app. Do you know such application?
- pmlnr 6y ago
  light way, but not available everywhere: export the chats one by one, as per https://faq.whatsapp.com/android/chats/how-to-save-your-chat-history/?lang=en https://faq.whatsapp.com/android/chats/how-to-save-your-chat... Saves them as text files, copy them off the phone. hard way: root the phone, copy the database, decrypt it with https://stackpointer.io/security/decrypt-whatsapp-crypt12-database-messages/559/ https://stackpointer.io/security/decrypt-whatsapp-crypt12-da... and the key on the phone. The decrypted db files are overengineered sqlite databases.
smashah 6y ago
Too big to fail. WhatsApp should be transferred to something like the UN. It is no longer a cool startup/app. It is the main communication infrastructure for the majority of the planet. Yet it's in the hand of unblinking cyborgs.
- sneak 6y ago
  > It is the main communication infrastructure for the majority of the planet. The majority of the planet doesn't use the internet. Only a slight majority of the planet even has the option to use the internet.
  - smashah 6y ago
    Sorry if I wasn't clear. I was speaking about human beings, not the planet in a celestial/natural sense. Hope that makes sense.
    - sneak 6y ago
      So was I. Only a very slight majority of human beings have an option to access the internet, and a majority of human beings do not use the internet at all.
      - smashah 6y ago
        Ah I see where the confusion lies. In this thread we are discussing a smartphone application that requires an internet connection - I extend those prerequisites/qualifiers to the word "planet".
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- hansel_der 6y ago
  > It is the main communication infrastructure for the majority of the planet. sure? afaik whatsapp is "only" domniant in five-eyes, europe and latin-america but thats not where the majority of ppl live.
bitcharmer 6y ago
That's fine, all my family and friends already moved to Signal.
bkirkby 6y ago
In the stickiness of whatsapp, I caused something of a stir with my family. After the prev announcement and having a general distrust of facebook that had grown over the years, I deleted my Facebook account and made the announcement in the family whatsapp group that I was leaving whatsapp and they could join me on signal if they wished. I then deleted my whatsapp account. There was much wailing and grumpiness and some refusals to join me because people didn't want to use a new chat app. I was genuinely surprised that whatsapp had become so sticky for these people and had to mea culpa to smooth things over.
- meibo 6y ago
  I've experienced a lot of the same. I think the main cause for this is that WhatsApp still just works for most everyone, especially non-technical people - it's still a great product with many features, there's no settings you need to change, it's very reliable, moving to a new phone is literally just entering your phone number and allowing access(no accounts), etc. Some people followed me to Signal but there really hasn't been a lot of interaction, and a few of them even moved back after the huge downtime it had right when the big news about the new policy broke.
- deanCommie 6y ago
  Honestly, it "just works". It's fast, it's simple. Its UX is "flagship" (unlike, sorry, Signal - who I'm giving a chance, but the UX is unquestionably more "open source *nix product"-adjacent) A few years back I got tired that my friends were sprawled across many different platforms, and I tried a bunch of different clients and found Whatsapp the most attractive. I made a pitch to the ones who weren't already on there to move over. And it stuck, even for my own parents.
- sneak 6y ago
  This is the correct move. Every person who stays on WhatsApp makes using WhatsApp more useful and attractive. You have to delete your account there.
- pkulak 6y ago
  Somewhat the same for me, though I'm in a bit later stage than you are. I moved my family to Signal as well, but we all got a bit frustrated with the lack of features. No (good) Chromebook support, no message editing, the HARD requirement on owning a phone (which locked out my kids), no message history or even a way to backup messages, etc. A few weeks ago I spun up a tiny EC2 instance, threw a matrix server on it, and moved us all over to that. It's been wonderful. All the features we want, plus I own the whole thing and therefor can do administrator things like reset passwords. In a year or two will I regret being forced to admin a remote server that I've since forgotten everything about? History says yes, but who knows. It's been a joy so far.
adam12 6y ago
Is this a sign that Facebook is having revenue issues? Why would a company risk the negative press and losing users to other apps like Signal if everything was going fine. Is it possible that the government is strong-arming them?
endisneigh 6y ago
I hope this is a reality check for anyone who's surprised that WhatsApp, owned by an advertising tech company, would do this.
conradev 6y ago
Does WhatsApp share a lot of data with Facebook? Yes. Does this terms of service update change anything regarding that? No. Has Facebook eroded all trust in itself such that no one really cares? Yes. https://www.wired.com/story/whatsapp-facebook-data-share-notification/ https://www.wired.com/story/whatsapp-facebook-data-share-not...
twobitshifter 6y ago
There need to be steps taken to make WhatsApp into a utility in countries where it is being used as such. If your life cannot function with WhatsApp, then governments cannot cede control to foreign corporations. In India, Brazil, and Some European countries that is the case, as public services and infrastructure have shifted onto WhatsApp. It doesn’t mean Facebook can’t make money on WhatsApp, but it does mean they can’t unilaterally change the rules.
TrianguloY 6y ago
If I don't contact any WhatsApp Business (only personal numbers from friends or relatives), I live in Europe, and I don't have Facebook: which changes will the new privacy policy imply for me? All the news I see are mixing opinions and facts, and all the official sources I check specifically say that only apply for communications with WhatsApp Business accounts, so I'm really intrigued as to what the changes really are on my situation.
drummer 6y ago
So I guess Signal is going to be offline again for a few days.
supernova87a 6y ago
Why anyone surprised? Facebook DGAF.
korijn 6y ago
Honestly, as an engineer, looking at the way FAANG are becoming middle-men in just about every part of human life, I would rather ban all social media and more generally mass communication software outright than try and regulate it. It feels to me like it's gotten to the point where this type of software is doing more harm than good. I know that the software itself is not the issue, the tech has potential to do good, but as humans we are just better off without it, if you ask me. PS. Not looking to argue. Just wanted to vent.
- pmlnr 6y ago
  I blame smartphones, the hardware. Without them, social media, the software would be MUCH less invasive.
  - korijn 6y ago
    It does certainly amplify the power of "user engagement optimization".
  - m463 6y ago
    I think they made people powerless to control their experience. Before that, people bought firewall software for their computer. After that you had to rely on the phone manufacturers to "protect you" which was a blatant conflict of interest. To attract app makers, they needed to give them incentives, which basically boiled down to data after the price of apps plummeted to zero.
- TheJoYo 6y ago
  A $5 VSP server hosts all the social networking I need and it's owned and controlled by me. I think people overestimate the value that Facebook gives them because of the social graph it holds ransom.
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
    That's a good solution for you. That's not a good solution for 99.9% of the population who have no idea what "ssh" is.
exabrial 6y ago
Here you go! https://signal.org/donate/ https://signal.org/donate/
jlengrand 6y ago
Temporize the backlash, gather the data from the disruption, take final decision. I take it not so many folks moved off in the end?
7v3x3n3sem9vv 6y ago
You forgot the post-install step of asking everyone for their username/ID. It may sound stupid, but this is a huge barrier to entry for a lot of people. It's hard to build a network when you need to ask everyone 1. If they're on a service 2. What their ID is. With Signal, friends and family just have to install it and, bam, I'm already in their contact list, along with any new person who joins.
cybert00th 6y ago
“We’ve also included more information to try and address concerns we’re hearing,” - yeah, pull the other leg, it has bells on...
blackrock 6y ago
Ugh. Facebook Messenger is an abomination. Your chats are in clear text, and Facebook mines it for advertisement to you.
frongpik 6y ago
In the next episode: fb automatically creates public fb accounts for all whatsapp users and publishes your chat messages on your timeline for everyone to see.
1ncorrect 6y ago
Stop rewarding sociopathic behaviour. Friends don’t let friends use Facebook.
ric2b 6y ago
Makes sense, the exodus of people who cared mostly already happened, tens of millions switched to Signal, and those people aren't going to come back just because Facebook decides to back down for now. So what does Facebook have to gain by backing down now?

615 points by sidcool 6y ago

The funny thing is: they are now forced to highlight the differences between business and "private" chats, especially that business chat contents are _not_ private.

lnl 6y ago

The relevant blog post, that the article doesn't link to: https://blog.whatsapp.com/more-information-about-our-update https://blog.whatsapp.com/more-information-about-our-update Goes into slightly more detail then the article, and also takes obvious jabs at Telegram and Signal.

Bluestein 6y ago

They waited 'till the news cycle waned, and then did whatever they pleased anyway. Par for the course ...

ineedasername 6y ago
Yeah, pretty much PR Crisis Communications 101. I'm at some point they were also deeply concerned and promised that they would conduct a thorough investigation
qznc 6y ago
My hope is that this triggers a second backlash.
- Bakary 6y ago
  But we just got proof that backlashes can be ignored, so what's the point?
  - qznc 6y ago
    Ignored? Lots and lots of people installed Signal or Telegram. Some of them will stay.
    - Bakary 6y ago
      If Fb is going forward with the change, then they've realized that those people are a rounding error.
      - CTOSian 6y ago
        exactly, how many people care about the TOS? most of the people I know use their phones like zombies, just clicking on the apps and to any "OK" button they see...
        Bakary 6y ago
        Over time, I've come to progressively reject the "zombie/sheeple" criticism of that behavior. People just want to live their lives, and we should focus our attention on the rent-seeking tech companies that try to cynically exploit us instead of victim-blaming. It's true that people could try to be more aware of what is going on, but we ought to work towards a world where we aren't nickel-and-dimed every second of the day by massive corporations.

saddlerustle 6y ago

It's absurd this article doesn't try to describe what the changes actually are. The privacy policy change doesn't functionally change anything about what data is collected or shared with Facebook. Metadata collection for ad targeting has been allowed by the privacy policy since 2016.

capableweb 6y ago
I think we're long past the idea that general, global news producers are trying to stay factual and provide information to their readers. It's all about generating outrage as it's much easier to get people hooked on outrage than the boring truth and impartial reporting.
majke 6y ago
More than that. (1) The policy differs per country. But how is it different in practice between the EU and USA and Brasil? It's not public knowledge. (2) It's absurd the policy doesn't describe anything useful. I tried to find if the contact book is being sent to facebook and if so, for how long. The wording is so opaque it's impossible to figure out. https://twitter.com/majek04/status/1348574409968275456 https://twitter.com/majek04/status/1348574409968275456
- yuriko_boyko 6y ago
  The contacts have been shared since 2016. You can get your account info in the Account option, but they make it a pain to get it. Mine took 3 days for an HTML page.
  - majke 6y ago
    I did that. It doesn't answer the question - is my contact book on facebook servers? If so, how it is processed and for how long.
pedrocr 6y ago
The article is a short piece that basically says "Remember that kerfuffle about Whatsapp TOS that lead Facebook to put it on hold? It's back on". For that purpose the paragraph it does include describing the kinds of changes at stake should be enough. It's not an in-depth piece explaining the nature of the changes and in which cases they are indeed just "clarifications" as Facebook claims.

popol12 6y ago

Meanwhile I've switched my family and friend to Signal with great success.

VMG 6y ago
Do you still have Whatsapp installed? I have seen family and friends _add_ Signal but few actually _removing_ Whatsapp from their phone. Which is not a success.
- samizdis 6y ago
  > Which is not a success. That depends on your aims. I announced to family/friends that I was deleting WhatsApp and asked them to install Signal, and they have done, and message me via that. My aim was to ensure that I could still converse, but not have to use a service with which I had become disenchanted. It isn't my business whether they continue to use WhatsApp or whether they delete it.
- another-dave 6y ago
  I don't think it's possible for most people to make this a one-pass activity without it causing a lot of friction for them, but over time you can build a critical mass of your social circle on non-FB platforms that allow you to _then_ delete WhatsApp with less friction. Step 1 for family & friends is being available on multiple platforms, because that in turn gives _their_ circle less tie-in to WhatsApp. It's only when their circle also make themselves available that they would have a painless option to remove WhatsApp, but IMO, that's OK. It is a success, but playing the long game.
sumanthvepa 6y ago
I've done that too. But for some reason, my business communication still happens on WhatsApp. Until that happens Facebook is safe.
- buro9 6y ago
  that is the one I found easiest to move. Business is already conducted well on email, and if it needs sync chat for larger orgs then Slack steps in, and if it needs personal private sync chat then Signal steps in.

imwillofficial 6y ago

Well of course they are

KDJohnBrown 6y ago

People have been raising the alarm about governmenral big brotherism for aeons .. and we willingly accept 24/7 surveillance by big tech. The internet was by far the worst infringement on freedon humanity ever created. The worst part is we all submit to this willingly, without so much as raising a fist in defense.

mfer 6y ago

In the book, "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism"[1], it talks about the MO for the big tech companies. How they push and often subtly change things slowly. The book provides a number of examples of this. I never expected FB to walk back the privacy change. I even expect their full expectations to be in place in a couple years. It's what they have successfully done in the past. [1] https://bookshop.org/books/the-age-of-surveillance-capitalism-the-fight-for-a-human-future-at-the-new-frontier-of-power/9781541758001 https://bookshop.org/books/the-age-of-surveillance-capitalis...

Person5478 6y ago
In the book "ordinary men" it describes a group of conscripted soldiers during the nazi regime. They were former police for Poland, so not even German Nazi's, but by the end they were doing things like taking pregnant women out in fields and shooting them. The takeaway from the book is that you can get ordinary people to do extraordinarily evil acts by asking them to do more heinous things in small steps. The gist is that anyone who thinks they COULDN'T do horrible things is the most at risk of this type of manipulation. The idea of a slippery slope is a very real thing. edit: One of the most harrowing descriptions from the book imo is a description of an event where they were killing so many jews it eventually turned night and they attempted to use lights from cars to keep going, but that proved unsuccessful so they were FORCED to wait until the next day to finish up. Until you read things like that you don't fully grasp just how horrific the holocaust was. We all know it was horrible in an abstract way, but those stories really bring it home in a more concrete manner.
musha68k 6y ago
Indeed, a powerful trick out of the manipulator’s playbook. Also thinking of “Death by a thousand cuts”, “slowly boiling a frog”, etc. “Creeping normality (also called gradualism, or landscape amnesia[1]) is a process by which a major change can be accepted as normal and acceptable if it happens slowly through small, often unnoticeable, increments of change. The change could otherwise be regarded as objectionable if it took place in a single step or short period.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creeping_normality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creeping_normality

znpy 6y ago

I always denied consent to the requests from whatsapp, and it's still working. I wonder if they're doing a meh and surveilling me anyway.

perryizgr8 6y ago
They extended the cutoff date to few months later.

egwor 6y ago

I'm so disappointed in this. Whatsapp is a functional tool. It was successful since it worked. Facebook has entirely failed to utilise it - to allow external systems to connect in so that businesses can do business on there. The voice calls are also a disaster. They've now come along to start messing with the privacy to start selling ads. It is insane that they're able to make such a mess of this. Is there a word for anti-innovation? Considering that they're linking Facebook ad platform with the chats, and they're forcing this upon everyone, why isn't this covered by the monopoly laws? Most of us paid some money for the app.

leephillips 6y ago
I agree with you completely, but “Most of us paid some money for the app”: I didn’t know it was possible to pay for WhatsApp. On what platforms does it cost money?
- PetitPrince 6y ago
  Initially WhatsApp (before Facebook acquisition) had a (cheap!) one time fee.
  - leephillips 6y ago
    Oh, I guess I was late to the party.
  - RobertoG 6y ago
    I think that was only true for the Apple store, not for Android.
  - vxNsr 6y ago
    And then it was an annual fee, of $1 billed to your cell service provider, people had a much easier time parting with $1 at some future point on their cellphone bill which anyways is dynamic vs $1 now in the app. for the team size the projected amount they’d make was fine. iirc it had like 500mil users and less than 50 ppl in the company.
- 6y ago

londons_explore 6y ago

I really don't understand facebook's approach to this change... Whatsapp is part of facebook, the most data driven of companies. Surely they wrote 10 variations on the 'please accept the new T&C's' screen, and did A/B testing on each, user studies, etc. And they wouldn't have deployed if there was any risk to their business... Yet it seems the users hate it enough that there is a risk to their business... So what went wrong?

Icathian 6y ago
My assumption is that the cost/benefit math means that this is still worth it for them to do. Put as much lipstick as you can on that pig and go to market with it is not an internally inconsistent or illogical path. Even if it sucks for us as consumers.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  But look at the message presented to users [1]. It is almost threatening... The deadline date at the bottom... The scary sounding phrase "partner with Facebook" without even giving an example... The simple text in bold at the top saying "Facebook never gets the contents of your messages to friends, and it never will" would have gone a long way to making most users happy. It's almost as if someone deliberately chose the text of this to make users upset... [1]: https://images.indianexpress.com/2021/01/WhatsApp_NEW_1.jpg https://images.indianexpress.com/2021/01/WhatsApp_NEW_1.jpg
Bakary 6y ago
They saw the number of users who actually migrated, and how the negative media reaction dissipated quickly, and realized that it was barely a blip on their radar. They have years of experience introducing changes and waiting out the scandal period. They know they can do anything without much in the way of consequences.

throwaway556179 6y ago

Sometimes, I wish someone would hack into the FB C-Levels homes and live-stream their lives to the world - like everything they say and do, just to make the world a bit more open, connected and transparent.

uniqueid 6y ago
A photographer claims he was accused of breaching privacy by Facebook after taking photos of Mark Zuckerberg cleaning up his dog’s poo. https://metro.co.uk/2018/04/03/pictures-mark-zuckerberg-didnt-want-see-7436124/ https://metro.co.uk/2018/04/03/pictures-mark-zuckerberg-didn...
- gilrain 6y ago
  They should have promoted the photos instead; that's the most humanizing photo of Zuck I've ever seen. He's upgraded from "I hate everything about him" to "I hate everything about him except that he cleans up after his dog responsibly."
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
How is that in any way similar to the proposed WhatsApp changes?
- throwaway556179 6y ago
  It concerns the generic "information asymmetry" - we want your relations, dreams, illnesses, loves, pulse, voice, basically anything we can get - but let silence be the only thing you will know about us.

ElectricMind 6y ago

Once you have monopoly then you can pretty much do anything, in America. No moral dilemma.

londons_explore 6y ago

As I understand it, the actual T&C change is pretty minor (the ability for Facebook to have the contents of your messages on their server only in the case you are talking to a business which uses Facebook for commercial messaging) Since this change seems pretty minor, why can't Whatsapp cancel the T&C changes, make a big announcement that they have caved to user demands, and then get some third party to host their commercial messaging efforts? Said third party could get permission to handle user data the way every other 'use chat for customer service' company does...

saurik 6y ago
Or why the hell can't all the "omg the sky is falling and Facebook is so horrible" people on this thread just understand any of the numerous places this has been explained and not make out like something of actual interest about the protocol or even the client has changed? The shear amount of misinformation being spread about this topic on Hacker News is ridiculously disappointing and entirely unbefitting of its supposedly enlightened audience, and the number of people I--as an actual privacy and security researcher--have had to talk out of switching from WhatsApp to something actually bad for their use cases due to all of this anti-WhatsApp FUD is insane.

kar1181 6y ago

I think as a starter concerned (UK) citizens should write to their MP. I wrote when the first news broke and got a pretty prompt reply it was being looked at. Then Facebook announced it's pause and the issue went silent. Now it's rearing up again we need to likewise make sure it's on the radar of our MPs.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

yalogin 6y ago

Reality is no one cares about privacy, there isn’t a dollar amount attached to it like with security. So yes people will be outraged when they are told data is collected about them but then they will see the service offered and accept the collection. The only thing this achieved is made a lot of people realize and vocalize to themselves that they don’t care about privacy. I could t even convince my own family to ditch WhatsApp. We are in the very early phase of the fight for privacy like we were in the ssl 1.0 days with security. It will happen but there is a lot of struggle left

CubsFan1060 6y ago
People care, but they are also unwilling to make any sacrifice. They would like more privacy, but would also like to continue using the services that steal their privacy. And they would also like to continue to use the for free. When faced with "continue using the thing I like and lose privacy" vs "Pay for a similar solution", they almost always choose the first.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  That isn't a problem here. Signal is free, and already well funded.
- themacguffinman 6y ago
  > People care, but they are also unwilling to make any sacrifice. This is also known as "not caring". "Oh yeah I really care about you babe, I just can't help you or hang out with you in any way that even slightly inconveniences me."
MaxBarraclough 6y ago
> Reality is no one cares about privacy Not so. I know several non-technical people who heard about the changes and made the switch to Signal. (Or rather, primarily Signal, but WhatsApp where necessary.) It's not just us HackerNews readers. I don't expect WhatsApp to be a deserted wasteland any time soon, but it's not the case that no one cares. > there isn’t a dollar amount attached to it like with security There isn't really a bright line between the two. Privacy has significant overlap with the C of the CIA triad of cybersecurity. > I could t even convince my own family to ditch WhatsApp. That's unfortunate, but not universal.

JohnJamesRambo 6y ago

Of course they are. Facebook doesn’t care and if you still use them or their products you are endorsing their behavior. https://signal.org/ https://signal.org/

minikites 6y ago

The free market continues to reward Facebook, so this move must be good. I can't wait to see what the free market has in store next!

ulzeraj 6y ago
Please refrain to use cheap politic slogans. You are not forced to use Facebook stuff. Use Signal, Threema, Telegram, Discord, Slack, Snapchat, Matrix. Create your own. As much as I don't like Facebook's wechat its not like you are forced to use their application out of obligation or lack of options.
- minikites 6y ago
  >its not like you are forced to use their application out of obligation Can I have my aging father call you when he needs help with Signal? I don't think you understand the network effects of messaging programs.
- Bakary 6y ago
  It's not technically forced, but in practice you are often at the mercy of specific apps for many interactions. In many regions, not having Whatsapp or Messenger or WeChat can cause you all sorts of grief and annoyances.
  - zepearl 6y ago
    I agree => I'll try to expand? In the case of WeChat, which from what I heard/read is nowadays deeply rooted in the life of Chinese people (used in China not just to "chat" but as well to perform payments, rate shops and even people, get credit ratings, maybe more), getting rid of something like that would be reaaally hard, even if officially the app is not forced on anybody. Assuming e.g. that Facebook would create its "Libra"-currency, it would then make it available at least within Whatsapp, and when people would start using it (for any reason) then it would be 1000 times harder to get rid of Whatsapp-the-chat even if it would stomp on all possible individual rights because the "need" to have that whatsapp-payment(&future rating&whatever-method) would be stronger than any potential "future" loss of privacy.

tambourine_man 6y ago

It's really hard for me to understand why and how something fails or succeeds to grab the public's attention. I've been complaining and refusing to use WhatsApp for years, mostly because it's centralized at the worst possible company. But a boycott of one is not a powerful move and no one cared. Now, for whatever reason, nothing has effectively changed and millions suddenly care. I mean, I'm glad they finally do, don't think it will make much of a difference, as network effect is a very strong pull, but I'm flabbergasted nonetheless.

smhg 6y ago
Over here (in Belgium and The Netherlands at least) so many neighborhoods have signs promoting local WhatsApp groups, complete with the logo [0]. Often to 'prevent crime'. Local municipalities install and pay for them. It is so awkward to see. [0] https://cdn.nieuws.nl/media/sites/305/2016/05/14195316/Borden-WhatsApp-Buurtpreventie-geplaatst-915x518.jpg https://cdn.nieuws.nl/media/sites/305/2016/05/14195316/Borde...
- comfyinnernet 6y ago
  Someone should paste Zuckerberg's face in the middle of the logo whenever they see one of those.
- tsukurimashou 6y ago
  I was a bit "shocked" by that when I moved to the Netherlands, everyone there uses it and the government seems to have a responsibility in that. Between the signs like you said and the possibility to contact town hall to take an appointment and other government related services via Whatsapp (I can certainly get why people use it, because it's much more convenient that having to make a phone call).
  - jcul 6y ago
    In Ireland it's the same, everyone uses WhatsApp. If I share my number with someone, it would be much stranger for me to receive an SMS from them than a WhatsApp message. If I phone a tradesman, e.g. a plumber, and they ask for a picture of a job, the photo will be sent using whatsapp. It's ubiquitous and it's assumed that if you're have a phone you have WhatsApp. The only people I can think of that don't use it are my wife's grandparents, they use Facebook messenger for that purpose. Back when people were switching to signal a lot of people cited the fact that signal needed a phone number as a reason not to use it, instead recommending session, threema, matrix. But if signal didn't tie your account to your phone number there's no way I would have convinced any of my contacts to switch. Having to exchange username or user IDs wouldn't have cut it, with whatsapp the service is deeply associated with you phone number and that's what people want.

roland35 6y ago

I deleted my account, although a big part of it was how Whatsapp was able to automatically add lots of my contacts (from my phone number I believe?) to my friends list automatically. I wasn't really excited about myself possibly being on other people's contact list without my knowledge!

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

I use Signal and I’ve encouraged my friends and family to switch as well. But let’s be honest: WhatsApp is moving forward because they aren’t threatened by this concern or losing some users to Signal. The average user doesn’t care about anything other than easily communicating with other people at this point, and news articles like this are part of the problem. Frankly, the sky-is-falling uproar about any and every privacy policy change from free services had burned people out and made them jaded. Tech media likes to portray every change as an egregious violation of personal privacy, yet most of this stuff is just mundane as targeting where the data never leaves the company. The media has become the boy who cried wolf with their attempts to present every type of data collection as bad. This article doesn’t even attempt to explain what the privacy policy changes are or what it might mean. It just implies that the reader should be angry. In 2021, everyone has heard the “if you’re not paying for it, you’re the product” line so many times that they’ve just accepted it and moved on with their lives. The media’s false equivalencies are simply accelerating it.

lokischild 6y ago
You seem to make many assumptions that are, AFAIK, false. The data is there and gets stored indefinitely. It is not only monetized for ADs, but for surveillance as well. Companies and state contact the company and buy that data about you.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  Do you have a source for that? Because your claims don’t match the proposed WhatsApp privacy policy changes this refers to. You can read a summary of the proposed changes here: https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/whatsapp-users-must-share-their-data-with-facebook-or-stop-using-the-app/%3famp=1 https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstechnica.com/tech-policy/202... Contrary to the public perception, Facebook isn’t in the business of selling data to other companies. The proposed changes don’t change that situation. A privacy policy isn’t going to stop the state from legally accessing data they’re legally entitled to. This is what I was trying to say with my comment above: The public perception of what these companies are doing has diverged from what they’re actually doing, and it’s making everyone so jaded that they’ve stopped paying attention to the details.

rapnie 6y ago

A question to anyone that already made the jump away from Whatsapp: Do people that used to msg me still see my entry in their own accounts list, after I closed it? And if they do, do they get notified if still sending msgs there, or are these just shown as forever unread?

globular-toast 6y ago
My experience with people from my own contacts disappearing is you'll still be on their contacts list and their messages will go into a black hole. If they're paying attention they will notice that all of your details, including your picture, will revert to whatever they have stored in their phone contacts list (which might be nothing).
CTOSian 6y ago
>Do people that used to msg me still see my entry in >their own accounts list, after I closed it? I recently asked the WhatsApp to provide me "my account info", well, on the reply (data) were OLD phone numbers from friends that they don't use anymore -closed their old WhatsApp and opened new- and belong now to other people!! what was absurd, those numbers AUTOMATICALLY were added to my contact list! I even could not remove those contacts only by block and report. Just to have an idea what data goes to the f Facebook

globular-toast 6y ago

What backlash? If they'd seen any noticeable backlash they wouldn't be going ahead.

pmlnr 6y ago

A group of my friends asked to set up a groupchat recently, our requirements varied. Among them: - needs to be simple (not all of them are techies) - need to be possible to run on desktop without any mobile need - not Facebook (my requirement) So I went and set an XMPP server up on the same machine I have my email and webserver, and wrote a quick guide on how to install blabber.im (a Conversations fork), and register on the server. With a turnserver running in the background, it can do voice/video calls as well. The room is not e2e encrypted yet - that is because I wasn't able to get the desktop person to install the omemo plugin for gajim, but that is the sole reason. We'll get there. There is no history delivered on first connect - e2e encryption would prevent that anyway, similarly to Signal or Whatsapp. PS: "Why not matrix?" Because at the moment, I despise the matrix clients, all the ones I tried, and the purple-matrix plugin for pidgin/adium/etc is long abandoned, and has no encryption support. -- EDIT OK, for those who don't understand what I wrote: I spun my OWN XMPP server. You don't have to, you can use any XMPP/Jabber server, for example any here: https://list.jabber.at/ https://list.jabber.at/ From a user perspective: get and app, register a user/password on the selected server, done. That is simple. -- EDIT2 > There is no history delivered on first connect This is a choice. The tech/option exists: https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0313.html https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0313.html

iagovar 6y ago
That's not my idea of simple. Telegram works for me.
- vinay427 6y ago
  Telegram has an incredibly primitive setup for their private conversations (E2E encryption). It doesn't work at all on desktop clients, and there's no supported way to backup or transfer devices so changing or losing a phone means you lose the conversation history with no option to backup, even preemptively.
sprkwd 6y ago
That doesn't feel simple. I installed Signal.

ulzeraj 6y ago

I would be interested in non creepy or elitist ways to convince your colleagues to migrate to another platform. People who do not care about privacy and all. I thought I was free from Whatsuck but then I've changed jobs and the only way that I can keep in touch with my remote team outside of the corporate communicators which are separated by a 2FA Citrix Workspace login is through WhatsApp. So WhatsApp is like a lifeline where you can send a message stating that you've dropped from the Teams meeting because your power went down or your computer crashed.

wtf_is_up 6y ago
It sounds like WhatsApp is providing considerable value to your team.
kevincox 6y ago
I asked a small number of people close to me to switch to Matrix. For everyone else I am briding to other services. This means that I may not have access to every feature on the remote service (depends on the completeness of the bridge mostly) but now I only really need to check one service for all of my day-to-day chats. So now anyone that joins Matrix can find me, I can do most of my communication in the same environment and if people ask I can explain the benefits of switching to Matrix. It is by no means perfect, but I find it much more convenient than using 5 different apps and I didn't have to convince everyone that I regularly communicate to switch to get major benefits. TL;DR Matrix allows a slow-and-steady migration which seems like the best option available.

gitowiec 6y ago

I am looking for the Whatsapp chats offline viewer. I would like to store my chats on my laptop and view it without needing Whatsapp on my phone. Currently I know that chats can be viewed (and chat) on web.whatsapp.com, and I found this app https://andreas-mausch.de/whatsapp-viewer/ https://andreas-mausch.de/whatsapp-viewer/ which makes it possible on Windows (and it seems outdated because of lots of bugs on GitHub). But I would like to view chats on Linux computer, it could also be an web app. Do you know such application?

pmlnr 6y ago
light way, but not available everywhere: export the chats one by one, as per https://faq.whatsapp.com/android/chats/how-to-save-your-chat-history/?lang=en https://faq.whatsapp.com/android/chats/how-to-save-your-chat... Saves them as text files, copy them off the phone. hard way: root the phone, copy the database, decrypt it with https://stackpointer.io/security/decrypt-whatsapp-crypt12-database-messages/559/ https://stackpointer.io/security/decrypt-whatsapp-crypt12-da... and the key on the phone. The decrypted db files are overengineered sqlite databases.

smashah 6y ago

Too big to fail. WhatsApp should be transferred to something like the UN. It is no longer a cool startup/app. It is the main communication infrastructure for the majority of the planet. Yet it's in the hand of unblinking cyborgs.

sneak 6y ago
> It is the main communication infrastructure for the majority of the planet. The majority of the planet doesn't use the internet. Only a slight majority of the planet even has the option to use the internet.
- smashah 6y ago
  Sorry if I wasn't clear. I was speaking about human beings, not the planet in a celestial/natural sense. Hope that makes sense.
  - sneak 6y ago
    So was I. Only a very slight majority of human beings have an option to access the internet, and a majority of human beings do not use the internet at all.
    - smashah 6y ago
      Ah I see where the confusion lies. In this thread we are discussing a smartphone application that requires an internet connection - I extend those prerequisites/qualifiers to the word "planet".
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hansel_der 6y ago
> It is the main communication infrastructure for the majority of the planet. sure? afaik whatsapp is "only" domniant in five-eyes, europe and latin-america but thats not where the majority of ppl live.

bitcharmer 6y ago

That's fine, all my family and friends already moved to Signal.

bkirkby 6y ago

In the stickiness of whatsapp, I caused something of a stir with my family. After the prev announcement and having a general distrust of facebook that had grown over the years, I deleted my Facebook account and made the announcement in the family whatsapp group that I was leaving whatsapp and they could join me on signal if they wished. I then deleted my whatsapp account. There was much wailing and grumpiness and some refusals to join me because people didn't want to use a new chat app. I was genuinely surprised that whatsapp had become so sticky for these people and had to mea culpa to smooth things over.

meibo 6y ago
I've experienced a lot of the same. I think the main cause for this is that WhatsApp still just works for most everyone, especially non-technical people - it's still a great product with many features, there's no settings you need to change, it's very reliable, moving to a new phone is literally just entering your phone number and allowing access(no accounts), etc. Some people followed me to Signal but there really hasn't been a lot of interaction, and a few of them even moved back after the huge downtime it had right when the big news about the new policy broke.
deanCommie 6y ago
Honestly, it "just works". It's fast, it's simple. Its UX is "flagship" (unlike, sorry, Signal - who I'm giving a chance, but the UX is unquestionably more "open source *nix product"-adjacent) A few years back I got tired that my friends were sprawled across many different platforms, and I tried a bunch of different clients and found Whatsapp the most attractive. I made a pitch to the ones who weren't already on there to move over. And it stuck, even for my own parents.
sneak 6y ago
This is the correct move. Every person who stays on WhatsApp makes using WhatsApp more useful and attractive. You have to delete your account there.
pkulak 6y ago
Somewhat the same for me, though I'm in a bit later stage than you are. I moved my family to Signal as well, but we all got a bit frustrated with the lack of features. No (good) Chromebook support, no message editing, the HARD requirement on owning a phone (which locked out my kids), no message history or even a way to backup messages, etc. A few weeks ago I spun up a tiny EC2 instance, threw a matrix server on it, and moved us all over to that. It's been wonderful. All the features we want, plus I own the whole thing and therefor can do administrator things like reset passwords. In a year or two will I regret being forced to admin a remote server that I've since forgotten everything about? History says yes, but who knows. It's been a joy so far.

adam12 6y ago

Is this a sign that Facebook is having revenue issues? Why would a company risk the negative press and losing users to other apps like Signal if everything was going fine. Is it possible that the government is strong-arming them?

endisneigh 6y ago

I hope this is a reality check for anyone who's surprised that WhatsApp, owned by an advertising tech company, would do this.

conradev 6y ago

Does WhatsApp share a lot of data with Facebook? Yes. Does this terms of service update change anything regarding that? No. Has Facebook eroded all trust in itself such that no one really cares? Yes. https://www.wired.com/story/whatsapp-facebook-data-share-notification/ https://www.wired.com/story/whatsapp-facebook-data-share-not...

twobitshifter 6y ago

There need to be steps taken to make WhatsApp into a utility in countries where it is being used as such. If your life cannot function with WhatsApp, then governments cannot cede control to foreign corporations. In India, Brazil, and Some European countries that is the case, as public services and infrastructure have shifted onto WhatsApp. It doesn’t mean Facebook can’t make money on WhatsApp, but it does mean they can’t unilaterally change the rules.

TrianguloY 6y ago

If I don't contact any WhatsApp Business (only personal numbers from friends or relatives), I live in Europe, and I don't have Facebook: which changes will the new privacy policy imply for me? All the news I see are mixing opinions and facts, and all the official sources I check specifically say that only apply for communications with WhatsApp Business accounts, so I'm really intrigued as to what the changes really are on my situation.

drummer 6y ago

So I guess Signal is going to be offline again for a few days.

supernova87a 6y ago

Why anyone surprised? Facebook DGAF.

korijn 6y ago

Honestly, as an engineer, looking at the way FAANG are becoming middle-men in just about every part of human life, I would rather ban all social media and more generally mass communication software outright than try and regulate it. It feels to me like it's gotten to the point where this type of software is doing more harm than good. I know that the software itself is not the issue, the tech has potential to do good, but as humans we are just better off without it, if you ask me. PS. Not looking to argue. Just wanted to vent.

pmlnr 6y ago
I blame smartphones, the hardware. Without them, social media, the software would be MUCH less invasive.
- korijn 6y ago
  It does certainly amplify the power of "user engagement optimization".
- m463 6y ago
  I think they made people powerless to control their experience. Before that, people bought firewall software for their computer. After that you had to rely on the phone manufacturers to "protect you" which was a blatant conflict of interest. To attract app makers, they needed to give them incentives, which basically boiled down to data after the price of apps plummeted to zero.
TheJoYo 6y ago
A $5 VSP server hosts all the social networking I need and it's owned and controlled by me. I think people overestimate the value that Facebook gives them because of the social graph it holds ransom.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
  That's a good solution for you. That's not a good solution for 99.9% of the population who have no idea what "ssh" is.

exabrial 6y ago

Here you go! https://signal.org/donate/ https://signal.org/donate/

jlengrand 6y ago

Temporize the backlash, gather the data from the disruption, take final decision. I take it not so many folks moved off in the end?

7v3x3n3sem9vv 6y ago

You forgot the post-install step of asking everyone for their username/ID. It may sound stupid, but this is a huge barrier to entry for a lot of people. It's hard to build a network when you need to ask everyone 1. If they're on a service 2. What their ID is. With Signal, friends and family just have to install it and, bam, I'm already in their contact list, along with any new person who joins.

cybert00th 6y ago

“We’ve also included more information to try and address concerns we’re hearing,” - yeah, pull the other leg, it has bells on...

blackrock 6y ago

Ugh. Facebook Messenger is an abomination. Your chats are in clear text, and Facebook mines it for advertisement to you.

frongpik 6y ago

In the next episode: fb automatically creates public fb accounts for all whatsapp users and publishes your chat messages on your timeline for everyone to see.

1ncorrect 6y ago

Stop rewarding sociopathic behaviour. Friends don’t let friends use Facebook.

ric2b 6y ago

Makes sense, the exodus of people who cared mostly already happened, tens of millions switched to Signal, and those people aren't going to come back just because Facebook decides to back down for now. So what does Facebook have to gain by backing down now?