3 ms·

Nitpick: Facebook bought WhatsApp, it didn't make it.

by sillywalk 3mo ago

Marsymars 3mo ago
They've also largely made WhatsApp worse.
- zer0zzz 3mo ago
  How so? Most of the hardcore encryption stuff was built at Facebook under the founder's supervision afaik for the purposes of making it harder for Zuck to inevitably ruin the privacy aspects. I personally don't use it, because it _is_ loaded with engagement bait but its not all worse and is better in some ways.
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    They added ads, an "AI companion", and backdoor logging of all chat messages
    - otterley 3mo ago
      That last one’s going to need some substantiation. “In the ordinary course of providing our service, WhatsApp does not store messages once they are delivered or transaction logs of such delivered messages. Undelivered messages are deleted from our servers after 30 days. As stated in the WhatsApp Privacy Policy, we may collect, use, preserve, and share user information if we have a good-faith belief that it is reasonably necessary to (a) keep our users safe, (b) detect, investigate, and prevent illegal activity, (c) respond to legal process, or to government requests, (d) enforce our Terms and policies. This may include information about how some users interact with others on our service. We also offer end-to-end encryption for our services, which is always activated. End-to-end encryption means that messages are encrypted to protect against WhatsApp and third parties from reading them.” (https://faq.whatsapp.com/444002211197967 https://faq.whatsapp.com/444002211197967)
      - inigyou 3mo ago
        I believe it was the automatic unencrypted weekly data upload to Google Drive
        otterley 3mo ago
        Can you post a link?
        inigyou 3mo ago
        No. It's a special arrangement between Google and WhatsApp which makes a file only visible to WhatsApp, and not appear in your regular drive so you can't do normal cloud file operations like generating public links.
        otterley 3mo ago
        Without evidence of this “special arrangement” I don’t see why anyone should believe you. You made a claim that is directly contrary to WhatsApp’s published materials and they have a lot to lose if you are correct. On the other hand, if your accusation is false, it’s tantamount to libel.
        inigyou 3mo ago
        How's this? Not sure if it's the same issue but it's much more damning than the one I knew about. https://www.techspot.com/news/112232-federal-agent-whatsapp-encryption-lie-investigation-shut-down.html https://www.techspot.com/news/112232-federal-agent-whatsapp-... You know how I found this link? Googling WhatsApp encryption backdoor. You could have too.
        otterley 3mo ago
        [dead]
        x______________ 3mo ago
  - gmerc 3mo ago
    Reconning. We made it so Zuck had plausible deniability for all the bad shit happening on WA as a direct result of anticipated regulatory pressure. There is no “make things harder for the dictator” at Meta/Fb and never has been.
  - myng111 3mo ago
    From an infrastructure PoV, I seem to recall that WhatsApp was one of the few major companies that used Erlang, and were famous for being able to run the entirety of WhatsApp on only a few servers, each of which was serving millions of concurrent connections, mostly thanks to Erlang/BEAM (at least, from what I read). When it got acquired by Facebook, they then proceeded to rewrite the entirety of the backend in C++. Seems kind of baffling to me.
  - marysol5 3mo ago
    WhatsApp encryption is Signal
    - zer0zzz 3mo ago
      Yes
- IshKebab 3mo ago
  Not yet they haven't. They've basically left it alone, with very minor UI/UX improvements. They have very recently shown signs of making it worse (the AI button), but overall I've been surprised how careful they've been about doing it slowly. We've probably got another 5-10 years of it being great before they turn it to shit.
  - LtWorf 3mo ago
    And by "UX improvements" we mean dropping support for millions of devices
  - Marsymars 3mo ago
    Yeah, I'll admit they've basically left it alone, but I'd chalk up the changes as minor UI/UX regressions that have ballooned the app size by an order of magnitude since it was acquired. And the native Windows app was a post-Facebook introduction, but it was also Facebook that canned it in favour of the current web wrapper turd.

Nitpick: Facebook bought WhatsApp, it didn't make it.

Marsymars 3mo ago

They've also largely made WhatsApp worse.

zer0zzz 3mo ago
How so? Most of the hardcore encryption stuff was built at Facebook under the founder's supervision afaik for the purposes of making it harder for Zuck to inevitably ruin the privacy aspects. I personally don't use it, because it _is_ loaded with engagement bait but its not all worse and is better in some ways.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  They added ads, an "AI companion", and backdoor logging of all chat messages
  - otterley 3mo ago
    That last one’s going to need some substantiation. “In the ordinary course of providing our service, WhatsApp does not store messages once they are delivered or transaction logs of such delivered messages. Undelivered messages are deleted from our servers after 30 days. As stated in the WhatsApp Privacy Policy, we may collect, use, preserve, and share user information if we have a good-faith belief that it is reasonably necessary to (a) keep our users safe, (b) detect, investigate, and prevent illegal activity, (c) respond to legal process, or to government requests, (d) enforce our Terms and policies. This may include information about how some users interact with others on our service. We also offer end-to-end encryption for our services, which is always activated. End-to-end encryption means that messages are encrypted to protect against WhatsApp and third parties from reading them.” (https://faq.whatsapp.com/444002211197967 https://faq.whatsapp.com/444002211197967)
    - inigyou 3mo ago
      I believe it was the automatic unencrypted weekly data upload to Google Drive
      - otterley 3mo ago
        Can you post a link?
        inigyou 3mo ago
        No. It's a special arrangement between Google and WhatsApp which makes a file only visible to WhatsApp, and not appear in your regular drive so you can't do normal cloud file operations like generating public links.
        otterley 3mo ago
        Without evidence of this “special arrangement” I don’t see why anyone should believe you. You made a claim that is directly contrary to WhatsApp’s published materials and they have a lot to lose if you are correct. On the other hand, if your accusation is false, it’s tantamount to libel.
        inigyou 3mo ago
        How's this? Not sure if it's the same issue but it's much more damning than the one I knew about. https://www.techspot.com/news/112232-federal-agent-whatsapp-encryption-lie-investigation-shut-down.html https://www.techspot.com/news/112232-federal-agent-whatsapp-... You know how I found this link? Googling WhatsApp encryption backdoor. You could have too.
        otterley 3mo ago
        [dead]
        x______________ 3mo ago
- gmerc 3mo ago
  Reconning. We made it so Zuck had plausible deniability for all the bad shit happening on WA as a direct result of anticipated regulatory pressure. There is no “make things harder for the dictator” at Meta/Fb and never has been.
- myng111 3mo ago
  From an infrastructure PoV, I seem to recall that WhatsApp was one of the few major companies that used Erlang, and were famous for being able to run the entirety of WhatsApp on only a few servers, each of which was serving millions of concurrent connections, mostly thanks to Erlang/BEAM (at least, from what I read). When it got acquired by Facebook, they then proceeded to rewrite the entirety of the backend in C++. Seems kind of baffling to me.
- marysol5 3mo ago
  WhatsApp encryption is Signal
  - zer0zzz 3mo ago
    Yes
IshKebab 3mo ago
Not yet they haven't. They've basically left it alone, with very minor UI/UX improvements. They have very recently shown signs of making it worse (the AI button), but overall I've been surprised how careful they've been about doing it slowly. We've probably got another 5-10 years of it being great before they turn it to shit.
- LtWorf 3mo ago
  And by "UX improvements" we mean dropping support for millions of devices
- Marsymars 3mo ago
  Yeah, I'll admit they've basically left it alone, but I'd chalk up the changes as minor UI/UX regressions that have ballooned the app size by an order of magnitude since it was acquired. And the native Windows app was a post-Facebook introduction, but it was also Facebook that canned it in favour of the current web wrapper turd.