4 ms·

If I'm a business why would I allow Facebook to use data from chats with my customers to help them identify (eg) the most profitable ones and potentially make t

If I'm a business why would I allow Facebook to use data from chats with my customers to help them identify (eg) the most profitable ones and potentially make that identification available to competitors?

saurik 6y ago
If you don't want to do that you don't have to, as far as I understand (and if I am wrong here, that is what I think would be particularly fascinating); you can instead use the (existing) WhatsApp Business API "client"--which you would have to host yourself, coming up with your own mechanism for sharing access to it within your organization, and handling your own security and durability measures for the keys involved--rather than using the (as yet unreleased) Facebook hosted client feature they want to role out for the large number of businesses that probably don't want to deal with all of that. As far as I understand (and I would be fascinated to learn I was wrong here), using the API client means your communications with your customers would be end-to-end encrypted. Here is the (afaik, prior) documentation for the (afaik, secure) feature that they are seemingly having a hard time getting people to adopt: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/getting-started https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/getting-starte...
- klelatti 6y ago
  Fair enough but how long will the existing API client last for. Completely consistent with previous behaviour to try to get businesses used to using WhatsApp and then withdraw this client. I don't think its controversial to say Facebook have a big (and increasing) trust issue.
  - bryan_w 6y ago
    That's fair. I will say that unlike previous APIs, Facebook looks to be dotting their i's and crossing their t's so that everyone is on the same page. A reason a lot of the previous APIs were removed was because the New York Times learned that they could frame them as "Data Sharing Agreements" and have a litany of BS hit pieces that people would eat up no matter how privacy aware they were being. I remember even a piece about gmail plugins being framed as Google selling your email to third parties.

saurik 6y ago

If you don't want to do that you don't have to, as far as I understand (and if I am wrong here, that is what I think would be particularly fascinating); you can instead use the (existing) WhatsApp Business API "client"--which you would have to host yourself, coming up with your own mechanism for sharing access to it within your organization, and handling your own security and durability measures for the keys involved--rather than using the (as yet unreleased) Facebook hosted client feature they want to role out for the large number of businesses that probably don't want to deal with all of that. As far as I understand (and I would be fascinated to learn I was wrong here), using the API client means your communications with your customers would be end-to-end encrypted. Here is the (afaik, prior) documentation for the (afaik, secure) feature that they are seemingly having a hard time getting people to adopt: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/getting-started https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/getting-starte...

klelatti 6y ago
Fair enough but how long will the existing API client last for. Completely consistent with previous behaviour to try to get businesses used to using WhatsApp and then withdraw this client. I don't think its controversial to say Facebook have a big (and increasing) trust issue.
- bryan_w 6y ago
  That's fair. I will say that unlike previous APIs, Facebook looks to be dotting their i's and crossing their t's so that everyone is on the same page. A reason a lot of the previous APIs were removed was because the New York Times learned that they could frame them as "Data Sharing Agreements" and have a litany of BS hit pieces that people would eat up no matter how privacy aware they were being. I remember even a piece about gmail plugins being framed as Google selling your email to third parties.