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That's not true. Whatsapp is a data harvesting platform for your social connections. They match it with their existing Facebook profiles/ shadow profiles to k
by nowherebeen 4y ago
That's not true. Whatsapp is a data harvesting platform for your social connections. They match it with their existing Facebook profiles/ shadow profiles to know what your political affiliations, race, gender, age are. With a big enough data set, they can infer a lot about you.
How much you chat with your friend tells me how close you are and how similar your politics and shopping habits are. Add that with your location data from your IP address (contrary to popular belief, you don't need to turn on location permission to know).
Whatsapp is the perfect power-up for platforms like Facebook. With your Whatsapp connections and Facebook profile combined, your data becomes even more valuable to advertisers. Why do you think Google and Facebook keeps on asking for your phone number?
- fshbbdssbbgdd 4y agoThis doesn’t seem related to my comment.
- nowherebeen 4y ago> There’s a popular narrative that social media companies use algorithms that intentionally favor divisive content. WhatsApp is a useful illustration of how that narrative might be wrong. You are making the argument that Whatsapp doesn't use algorithms to favor divisive content, therefore, it doesn't have malicious use. My argument is that Whatsapp still contributes to the data harvesting of Facebook because it is used maliciously to invade your privacy. It's just in a different form and just as bad. You are not looking at the whole picture and only a tiny slice.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 4y agoMany people have different problems with WhatsApp. Disagreeing with the one of them isn’t disagreeing with all of them.
- nowherebeen 4y agoFair enough. You are right.