10 ms·

In fairness, Meta has said the same thing re: WhatsApp, so while Apple deserves _some_ credit here for sticking to their principles, they're not exactly leading

by Doches 3y ago

In fairness, Meta has said the same thing re: WhatsApp, so while Apple deserves _some_ credit here for sticking to their principles, they're not exactly leading the pack. Which brings home the point that if _Meta_ isn't onboard with your privacy-obliterating proposal then you know you've really lost the plot...

hbn 3y ago
If anything that's a bolder move considering everyone uses Whatsapp there and barely anyone uses iMessage
- iainmerrick 3y ago
  Both are very popular in the UK.
  - joshuaissac 3y ago
    WhatsApp is used by 78% of the users in the UK, and iMessage is used by 25%. https://www.statista.com/forecasts/997945/most-used-messenger-by-brand-in-the-uk https://www.statista.com/forecasts/997945/most-used-messenge... (non-free link)
    - thejohnconway 3y ago
      25% of the entire population is a pretty popular application! Not “hardly anyone”. Also, I’d like to know the volume of messages shared, I have WhatsApp, but wouldn’t miss it it it disappeared. iMessage disappearing would be very inconvenient.
      - Reason077 3y ago
        I'm surprised it's even 25% in the UK, and I wonder how that's measured. Maybe the 25% includes things like "opening the iMessage app to read SMS messages sent by two-factor authentication services" etc.
        thejohnconway 3y ago
        I’m not surprised, SMSing people is still common, and sliding from that to iMessage is totally frictionless for iPhone users. With iOS market share being around 50%, I’m surprised (skeptical even!) that it’s not closer to 50%.
    - vxNsr 3y ago
      But who is that 25%? iPhone users have money. I’m sure there is some significant overlap between iMessage and WhatsApp users (I know I and everyone I know use(s) both). But if you threaten politicians with losing their blue bubbles they’re gonna fall in line.
      - XajniN 3y ago
        No one in Europe cares about the blue bubbles. I prefer iMessage over the other messengers, but I still haven’t met anyone who cares. A lot of people don’t even know why the bubbles are sometimes green.
        scarface_74 3y ago
        Yet, the EU have their panties in a knot about having it be interoperable…
      - joshuaissac 3y ago
        > But if you threaten politicians with losing their blue bubbles they’re gonna fall in line. This is not a thing outside the United States, and I doubt that most British politicians are even aware of 'blue bubbles'. For example, the recent controversy regarding the release of Covid-related government communications was centred on WhatsApp, with no reference to other platforms like iMessage. https://news.sky.com/story/politicians-are-drawn-to-whatsapp-and-it-threatens-us-ever-knowing-the-whole-truth-12894737 https://news.sky.com/story/politicians-are-drawn-to-whatsapp...
- wintermutestwin 3y ago
  I've noticed that too and it is super annoying having family in the UK that will only communicate via Whatsapp. Is this because cell providers outside the US charge for SMS? Even the ones who have iPhones end up using it because it is too much of a pain to use separate messaging apps.
  - rejectfinite 3y ago
    The opposite is more annoying... Whatsapp works on PC, Mac, Android and iOS iMessage only works on Apple devices.
  - dtech 3y ago
    SMS is cheap now but wasn't universally when Whatsapp gained critical mass. Nowadays it's mostly about convenience and features compared to SMS, and iPhone has a much smaller marker share in Europe so iMessage isn't a thing.
    - meling 3y ago
      I beg to differ. iMessage is definitely quite common in Europe as well.
      - dtech 3y ago
        iPhone has like a 33% market share so I wouldn't call it common if you can't reach 2 out of 3 people on it at least. In contrast, in many European countries Whatsapp has 90%+ penetration [1]. Even where it's relatively unused it's more common than iMessage. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1311229/whatsapp-usage-messaging-app-users-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1311229/whatsapp-usage-m...
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    It is mostly because international SMS and MMS is not free. People in the UK travel more to other countries, and communicate more with people in other countries. Not to mention MMS is vastly inferior to WhatsApp and iMessage for sharing media and other information.
frankfrank13 3y ago
I think Meta _needs_ WhatsApp to be their loss-leader (not really, but you know) when it comes to security. They always get to say "oh but WhatsApp is E2E!! We do care about security!"
- gruez 3y ago
  Messenger also has e2e, but it's opt in.
- fennecfoxy 3y ago
  I mean Apple didn't give two stones about security until it became a marketing/selling point as a counterpoint to the big G.
  - zikduruqe 3y ago
    It's called market shift. Automative manufactures didn't give a rats ass about fuel economy until customers wanted it.
  - codetrotter 3y ago
    > Apple didn't give two stones about security until it became a marketing/selling point as a counterpoint to the big G That’s not true. Apple was position itself as being better at security than Microsoft long before Google was selling devices to people. For example: https://youtu.be/VuqZ8AqmLPY https://youtu.be/VuqZ8AqmLPY
    - i_am_jl 3y ago
      Apple sold itself as having better security. It's debatable whether or not that was true, and even if you believed it it was up for another debate whether that security was by design or because Apple's vanishingly small share of the PC market made it uneconomical to write malware targeting OSX. This isn't to say that Microsoft was doing security properly back then either, they weren't.
    - elishah 3y ago
      True, but security and privacy are different things. At most, one could say that security is necessary-but-not-sufficient for privacy. Google is generally excellent at security, but that doesn't change the fact that they're a nightmare for privacy.
dagmx 3y ago
Has Meta threatened to boycott? I know Signal has, and now Apple. However my searches for Meta/WhatsApp seem to show that there’s been contention over their introduction of E2E but they haven’t actually threatened to pull out over it. That said, I’d be very happy to see that they did threaten a boycott as well.
- nani8ot 3y ago
  https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/mar/09/whatsapp-end-to-end-encryption-online-safety-bill https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/mar/09/whatsapp-... Meta: > Some countries have chosen to block it [WhatsApp]: that’s the reality of shipping a secure product. We’ve recently been blocked in Iran, for example. But we’ve never seen a liberal democracy do that. They said they won't comply. UK would have to simply block WhatsApp.
  - dagmx 3y ago
    Thanks. Hopefully they continue to stick to their guns.
j45 3y ago
WhatsApp was a little late to the encryption party
- brasic 3y ago
  What do you mean? WhatsApp rolled out E2E encryption between 2014 and 2016. It’s by far the largest messaging service that is e2e encrypted by default. I think it’s more than fair to call it ahead of the curve for a service of its size. https://www.wired.com/2014/11/whatsapp-encrypted-messaging/ https://www.wired.com/2014/11/whatsapp-encrypted-messaging/ https://blog.whatsapp.com/end-to-end-encryption https://blog.whatsapp.com/end-to-end-encryption
  - j45 3y ago
    It's a very easy search and might surprise ya. As recent as 2021, there's been questions: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/09/whatsapp-end-to-end-encrypted-messages-arent-that-private-after-all/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/09/whatsapp-end-to-end-... But, let's go to the start - WhatsApp started in 2011. Encryption arrived in varying degrees until there was some pressures to change the amount of privacy messages had for advertising purposes. Lots in the news at the time. 2018 "Another point of disagreement was over WhatsApp’s encryption. In 2016, WhatsApp added end-to-end encryption, a security feature that scrambles people’s messages so that outsiders, including WhatsApp’s owners, can’t read them. Facebook executives wanted to make it easier for businesses to use its tools, and WhatsApp executives believed that doing so would require some weakening of its encryption." https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/whatsapp-founder-plans-to-leave-after-broad-clashes-with-parent-facebook/2018/04/30/49448dd2-4ca9-11e8-84a0-458a1aa9ac0a_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/whatsapp-fou... 2018 "Acton said he tried to push Facebook towards an alternative, less privacy hostile business model for WhatsApp — suggesting a metered-user model such as by charging a tenth of a penny after a certain large number of free messages were used up." https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/26/whatsapp-founder-brian-acton-says-facebook-used-him-to-get-its-acquisition-past-eu-regulators/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/26/whatsapp-founder-brian-act... 2018 "WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum quits over privacy disagreements with Facebook" https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/30/jan-koum-whatsapp-co-founder-quits-facebook https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/30/jan-koum-... 2018 WhatsApp co-founder: "I sold my users' privacy" to Facebook "https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brian-acton-whatsapp-on-facebook-forbes-interview-today-2018-09-26/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brian-acton-whatsapp-on-faceboo...
aqme28 3y ago
Interesting. I was going to say that many people use WhatsApp anyways, so if both of them go down that might actually lead to some pushback against these regulations.
viraptor 3y ago
I'm not even sure anyone apart from Signal is really sticking to any principles. This system would be annoying to implement, costly to legally manage, and introduce some ops overhead and security exposure. There's way more incentives for WA and iMessage here to oppose it than just protecting their users. But only one is a cool talking point.
ColinHayhurst 3y ago
True, but to be fair leading the pack was first Element, with Session, Threema, Viber and Signal.
glimshe 3y ago
In even more fairness, Meta has literally skipped the EU for Threads instead of increasing privacy. In their case, it's just a careful balance of virtue signaling, it had no qualms about pushing their spyware to hundreds of millions of people, violating basic human rights in the process. Check Article 12: https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  Your comment would have been stronger if you left out the piece re: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, because it's an eye roller. Article 12 is: > No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. I'm no fan of Meta or their privacy violations, but saying that voluntarily downloading an app (which by the way does clearly outline their privacy practices) is equivalent to having my humans rights violated just really waters down what "human rights" should mean.
  - _cenw 3y ago
    > voluntarily downloading an app that's all true until an app becomes the only way to interact with certain groups of people. i certainly wouldn't call my usage of Discord voluntary. it doesn't actually matter how often i read their privacy policy and shake my head. either I break off contact with a large part of the internet that's important to me or I begrudgingly agree "voluntarily" to their terms and conditions.
    - dmbche 3y ago
      May I ask, what compels you to use discord if it's not voluntary? It's absolutely impossible to use keybase or signal?
      - _cenw 3y ago
Roark66 3y ago
Is WhatsApp still requiring access to your phone's address book before it allows you to use it? It did last time I tried it. There is no chance in hell I'm giving it all the phone numbers, emails and names of people that trusted me by giving me their details. At the time I set up a virtual android environment (samsung called it knox) just to setup WhatsApp in a way it couldn't access my phone's address book. It is extremely unethical on Meta's side to continue with this requirement. So I'm dubious every te they're presented as champions of privacy protection.
- lostlogin 3y ago
  > There is no chance in hell I'm giving it all the phone numbers, emails and names of people that trusted me by giving me their details. The sad thing is that all their details and yours are already known to Meta. The dozen of us who behave like you will keep trying though.
- gavinsyancey 3y ago
  I currently have WhatsApp installed without access to my address book (on Android). It doesn't require it, but it makes it harder to use and locks out some features. Among other things, you can't start a new group / direct message, but you can participate / reply if someone else messages you first.
  - bilkow 3y ago
    I use an app called "Open In WhatsApp" which lets you paste / write a phone number and it will open a conversation with that number (by using android intents). You can also share contacts from the Phone app to this App, so you don't have to copy/paste manually. https://github.com/SubhamTyagi/openinwa https://github.com/SubhamTyagi/openinwa (I recommend downloading from f-droid)
  - paulmd 3y ago
    If only there were a strong, centralized app store that could perform app review and prevent applications from degrading user experience beyond the extent actually necessary without that permission. Good thing the EU just outlawed that model and forced everyone to support "third party app stores" that are thinly-veiled shells for Facebook/Google/etc to bypass that review process. the "I wanna sideload" crowd are nothing more than allies of convenience for FB and others. Facebook was already experimenting with getting users to manually sideload the full-telemetry build and now they can just say "oops not supported on safari, install the native app". https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/facebook-and-google-offered-gift-cards-for-root-level-access-to-ios-users-data/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/facebook-and-google-...
nashashmi 3y ago
In Saudi Arabia and other places, Whatsapp is not encrypted. Otherwise those services would be banned.
- Sunhold 3y ago
  This is pure speculation. WhatsApp is banned in some authoritarian countries such as China and UAE. It probably remains unbanned in others simply because it is so important for business.
  - nashashmi 3y ago
    https://saudi.works/does-whatsapp-work-in-saudi-arabia/ https://saudi.works/does-whatsapp-work-in-saudi-arabia/ I had to look it up.
- throwaway1777 3y ago
  Incorrect. WhatsApp is encrypted in all countries.
make3 3y ago
didn't eta just move to make WhatsApp not end to end encrypted? Meta was also in the biggest mass surveillance & influence scandal of all times for a private not too long ago, please don't forget
- dspillett 3y ago
  > didn't eta just move to make WhatsApp not end to end encrypted? If so I missed the memo (that isn't unlikely, I'm not saying you are wrong!). Any references/links for that? A quick search doesn't turn up much, but Google isn't what it used to be…
- curiousllama 3y ago
  Opposite, actually. They said they're making Messenger and Instagram Direct e2ee.
wredue 3y ago
I keep writing and deleting responses. I am completely baffled. Speechless, really. You cannot actually believe that meta gives a single solitary fuck about privacy?
- slg 3y ago
  For me at least, it is the opposite. It is not that I think Facebook is principled, it is that I don't think Apple is particularly principled. They care about money. Unlike many of their competitors, they are not fundamentally an ad-tech company which means your personal data has much lower value to them. This has caused them to build their brand around privacy because that is something their competitors have difficulty doing due to their business models. Apple's pro-privacy stance is just as much a capitalistic position as a principled one.
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  This isn't Reddit, please make higher quality comments. I think the GP is likely aligned with you anyways.
starttoaster 3y ago
Didn't Facebook (now Meta) buy WhatsApp, and it was originally its own thing? I guess you can say Meta kept WhatsApp operational, but I don't necessarily consider it a privacy win for Meta to just buy up some privacy-centric technologies with their billions.

by Doches 3y ago

hbn 3y ago

If anything that's a bolder move considering everyone uses Whatsapp there and barely anyone uses iMessage

iainmerrick 3y ago
Both are very popular in the UK.
- joshuaissac 3y ago
  WhatsApp is used by 78% of the users in the UK, and iMessage is used by 25%. https://www.statista.com/forecasts/997945/most-used-messenger-by-brand-in-the-uk https://www.statista.com/forecasts/997945/most-used-messenge... (non-free link)
  - thejohnconway 3y ago
    25% of the entire population is a pretty popular application! Not “hardly anyone”. Also, I’d like to know the volume of messages shared, I have WhatsApp, but wouldn’t miss it it it disappeared. iMessage disappearing would be very inconvenient.
    - Reason077 3y ago
      I'm surprised it's even 25% in the UK, and I wonder how that's measured. Maybe the 25% includes things like "opening the iMessage app to read SMS messages sent by two-factor authentication services" etc.
      - thejohnconway 3y ago
        I’m not surprised, SMSing people is still common, and sliding from that to iMessage is totally frictionless for iPhone users. With iOS market share being around 50%, I’m surprised (skeptical even!) that it’s not closer to 50%.
  - vxNsr 3y ago
    But who is that 25%? iPhone users have money. I’m sure there is some significant overlap between iMessage and WhatsApp users (I know I and everyone I know use(s) both). But if you threaten politicians with losing their blue bubbles they’re gonna fall in line.
    - XajniN 3y ago
      No one in Europe cares about the blue bubbles. I prefer iMessage over the other messengers, but I still haven’t met anyone who cares. A lot of people don’t even know why the bubbles are sometimes green.
      - scarface_74 3y ago
        Yet, the EU have their panties in a knot about having it be interoperable…
    - joshuaissac 3y ago
      > But if you threaten politicians with losing their blue bubbles they’re gonna fall in line. This is not a thing outside the United States, and I doubt that most British politicians are even aware of 'blue bubbles'. For example, the recent controversy regarding the release of Covid-related government communications was centred on WhatsApp, with no reference to other platforms like iMessage. https://news.sky.com/story/politicians-are-drawn-to-whatsapp-and-it-threatens-us-ever-knowing-the-whole-truth-12894737 https://news.sky.com/story/politicians-are-drawn-to-whatsapp...
wintermutestwin 3y ago
I've noticed that too and it is super annoying having family in the UK that will only communicate via Whatsapp. Is this because cell providers outside the US charge for SMS? Even the ones who have iPhones end up using it because it is too much of a pain to use separate messaging apps.
- rejectfinite 3y ago
  The opposite is more annoying... Whatsapp works on PC, Mac, Android and iOS iMessage only works on Apple devices.
- dtech 3y ago
  SMS is cheap now but wasn't universally when Whatsapp gained critical mass. Nowadays it's mostly about convenience and features compared to SMS, and iPhone has a much smaller marker share in Europe so iMessage isn't a thing.
  - meling 3y ago
    I beg to differ. iMessage is definitely quite common in Europe as well.
    - dtech 3y ago
      iPhone has like a 33% market share so I wouldn't call it common if you can't reach 2 out of 3 people on it at least. In contrast, in many European countries Whatsapp has 90%+ penetration [1]. Even where it's relatively unused it's more common than iMessage. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1311229/whatsapp-usage-messaging-app-users-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1311229/whatsapp-usage-m...
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  It is mostly because international SMS and MMS is not free. People in the UK travel more to other countries, and communicate more with people in other countries. Not to mention MMS is vastly inferior to WhatsApp and iMessage for sharing media and other information.

frankfrank13 3y ago

I think Meta _needs_ WhatsApp to be their loss-leader (not really, but you know) when it comes to security. They always get to say "oh but WhatsApp is E2E!! We do care about security!"

gruez 3y ago
Messenger also has e2e, but it's opt in.
fennecfoxy 3y ago
I mean Apple didn't give two stones about security until it became a marketing/selling point as a counterpoint to the big G.
- zikduruqe 3y ago
  It's called market shift. Automative manufactures didn't give a rats ass about fuel economy until customers wanted it.
- codetrotter 3y ago
  > Apple didn't give two stones about security until it became a marketing/selling point as a counterpoint to the big G That’s not true. Apple was position itself as being better at security than Microsoft long before Google was selling devices to people. For example: https://youtu.be/VuqZ8AqmLPY https://youtu.be/VuqZ8AqmLPY
  - i_am_jl 3y ago
    Apple sold itself as having better security. It's debatable whether or not that was true, and even if you believed it it was up for another debate whether that security was by design or because Apple's vanishingly small share of the PC market made it uneconomical to write malware targeting OSX. This isn't to say that Microsoft was doing security properly back then either, they weren't.
  - elishah 3y ago
    True, but security and privacy are different things. At most, one could say that security is necessary-but-not-sufficient for privacy. Google is generally excellent at security, but that doesn't change the fact that they're a nightmare for privacy.

dagmx 3y ago

Has Meta threatened to boycott? I know Signal has, and now Apple. However my searches for Meta/WhatsApp seem to show that there’s been contention over their introduction of E2E but they haven’t actually threatened to pull out over it. That said, I’d be very happy to see that they did threaten a boycott as well.

nani8ot 3y ago
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/mar/09/whatsapp-end-to-end-encryption-online-safety-bill https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/mar/09/whatsapp-... Meta: > Some countries have chosen to block it [WhatsApp]: that’s the reality of shipping a secure product. We’ve recently been blocked in Iran, for example. But we’ve never seen a liberal democracy do that. They said they won't comply. UK would have to simply block WhatsApp.
- dagmx 3y ago
  Thanks. Hopefully they continue to stick to their guns.

j45 3y ago

WhatsApp was a little late to the encryption party

brasic 3y ago
What do you mean? WhatsApp rolled out E2E encryption between 2014 and 2016. It’s by far the largest messaging service that is e2e encrypted by default. I think it’s more than fair to call it ahead of the curve for a service of its size. https://www.wired.com/2014/11/whatsapp-encrypted-messaging/ https://www.wired.com/2014/11/whatsapp-encrypted-messaging/ https://blog.whatsapp.com/end-to-end-encryption https://blog.whatsapp.com/end-to-end-encryption
- j45 3y ago
  It's a very easy search and might surprise ya. As recent as 2021, there's been questions: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/09/whatsapp-end-to-end-encrypted-messages-arent-that-private-after-all/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/09/whatsapp-end-to-end-... But, let's go to the start - WhatsApp started in 2011. Encryption arrived in varying degrees until there was some pressures to change the amount of privacy messages had for advertising purposes. Lots in the news at the time. 2018 "Another point of disagreement was over WhatsApp’s encryption. In 2016, WhatsApp added end-to-end encryption, a security feature that scrambles people’s messages so that outsiders, including WhatsApp’s owners, can’t read them. Facebook executives wanted to make it easier for businesses to use its tools, and WhatsApp executives believed that doing so would require some weakening of its encryption." https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/whatsapp-founder-plans-to-leave-after-broad-clashes-with-parent-facebook/2018/04/30/49448dd2-4ca9-11e8-84a0-458a1aa9ac0a_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/whatsapp-fou... 2018 "Acton said he tried to push Facebook towards an alternative, less privacy hostile business model for WhatsApp — suggesting a metered-user model such as by charging a tenth of a penny after a certain large number of free messages were used up." https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/26/whatsapp-founder-brian-acton-says-facebook-used-him-to-get-its-acquisition-past-eu-regulators/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/26/whatsapp-founder-brian-act... 2018 "WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum quits over privacy disagreements with Facebook" https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/30/jan-koum-whatsapp-co-founder-quits-facebook https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/30/jan-koum-... 2018 WhatsApp co-founder: "I sold my users' privacy" to Facebook "https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brian-acton-whatsapp-on-facebook-forbes-interview-today-2018-09-26/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brian-acton-whatsapp-on-faceboo...

aqme28 3y ago

Interesting. I was going to say that many people use WhatsApp anyways, so if both of them go down that might actually lead to some pushback against these regulations.

viraptor 3y ago

I'm not even sure anyone apart from Signal is really sticking to any principles. This system would be annoying to implement, costly to legally manage, and introduce some ops overhead and security exposure. There's way more incentives for WA and iMessage here to oppose it than just protecting their users. But only one is a cool talking point.

ColinHayhurst 3y ago

True, but to be fair leading the pack was first Element, with Session, Threema, Viber and Signal.

glimshe 3y ago

In even more fairness, Meta has literally skipped the EU for Threads instead of increasing privacy. In their case, it's just a careful balance of virtue signaling, it had no qualms about pushing their spyware to hundreds of millions of people, violating basic human rights in the process. Check Article 12: https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
Your comment would have been stronger if you left out the piece re: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, because it's an eye roller. Article 12 is: > No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. I'm no fan of Meta or their privacy violations, but saying that voluntarily downloading an app (which by the way does clearly outline their privacy practices) is equivalent to having my humans rights violated just really waters down what "human rights" should mean.
- _cenw 3y ago
  > voluntarily downloading an app that's all true until an app becomes the only way to interact with certain groups of people. i certainly wouldn't call my usage of Discord voluntary. it doesn't actually matter how often i read their privacy policy and shake my head. either I break off contact with a large part of the internet that's important to me or I begrudgingly agree "voluntarily" to their terms and conditions.
  - dmbche 3y ago
    May I ask, what compels you to use discord if it's not voluntary? It's absolutely impossible to use keybase or signal?
    - _cenw 3y ago

Roark66 3y ago

Is WhatsApp still requiring access to your phone's address book before it allows you to use it? It did last time I tried it. There is no chance in hell I'm giving it all the phone numbers, emails and names of people that trusted me by giving me their details. At the time I set up a virtual android environment (samsung called it knox) just to setup WhatsApp in a way it couldn't access my phone's address book. It is extremely unethical on Meta's side to continue with this requirement. So I'm dubious every te they're presented as champions of privacy protection.

lostlogin 3y ago
> There is no chance in hell I'm giving it all the phone numbers, emails and names of people that trusted me by giving me their details. The sad thing is that all their details and yours are already known to Meta. The dozen of us who behave like you will keep trying though.
gavinsyancey 3y ago
I currently have WhatsApp installed without access to my address book (on Android). It doesn't require it, but it makes it harder to use and locks out some features. Among other things, you can't start a new group / direct message, but you can participate / reply if someone else messages you first.
- bilkow 3y ago
  I use an app called "Open In WhatsApp" which lets you paste / write a phone number and it will open a conversation with that number (by using android intents). You can also share contacts from the Phone app to this App, so you don't have to copy/paste manually. https://github.com/SubhamTyagi/openinwa https://github.com/SubhamTyagi/openinwa (I recommend downloading from f-droid)
- paulmd 3y ago
  If only there were a strong, centralized app store that could perform app review and prevent applications from degrading user experience beyond the extent actually necessary without that permission. Good thing the EU just outlawed that model and forced everyone to support "third party app stores" that are thinly-veiled shells for Facebook/Google/etc to bypass that review process. the "I wanna sideload" crowd are nothing more than allies of convenience for FB and others. Facebook was already experimenting with getting users to manually sideload the full-telemetry build and now they can just say "oops not supported on safari, install the native app". https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/facebook-and-google-offered-gift-cards-for-root-level-access-to-ios-users-data/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/facebook-and-google-...

nashashmi 3y ago

In Saudi Arabia and other places, Whatsapp is not encrypted. Otherwise those services would be banned.

Sunhold 3y ago
This is pure speculation. WhatsApp is banned in some authoritarian countries such as China and UAE. It probably remains unbanned in others simply because it is so important for business.
- nashashmi 3y ago
  https://saudi.works/does-whatsapp-work-in-saudi-arabia/ https://saudi.works/does-whatsapp-work-in-saudi-arabia/ I had to look it up.
throwaway1777 3y ago
Incorrect. WhatsApp is encrypted in all countries.

make3 3y ago

didn't eta just move to make WhatsApp not end to end encrypted? Meta was also in the biggest mass surveillance & influence scandal of all times for a private not too long ago, please don't forget

dspillett 3y ago
> didn't eta just move to make WhatsApp not end to end encrypted? If so I missed the memo (that isn't unlikely, I'm not saying you are wrong!). Any references/links for that? A quick search doesn't turn up much, but Google isn't what it used to be…
curiousllama 3y ago
Opposite, actually. They said they're making Messenger and Instagram Direct e2ee.

wredue 3y ago

I keep writing and deleting responses. I am completely baffled. Speechless, really. You cannot actually believe that meta gives a single solitary fuck about privacy?

slg 3y ago
For me at least, it is the opposite. It is not that I think Facebook is principled, it is that I don't think Apple is particularly principled. They care about money. Unlike many of their competitors, they are not fundamentally an ad-tech company which means your personal data has much lower value to them. This has caused them to build their brand around privacy because that is something their competitors have difficulty doing due to their business models. Apple's pro-privacy stance is just as much a capitalistic position as a principled one.
whimsicalism 3y ago
This isn't Reddit, please make higher quality comments. I think the GP is likely aligned with you anyways.

starttoaster 3y ago

Didn't Facebook (now Meta) buy WhatsApp, and it was originally its own thing? I guess you can say Meta kept WhatsApp operational, but I don't necessarily consider it a privacy win for Meta to just buy up some privacy-centric technologies with their billions.