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There are 3 billion users of FB/WhatsApp/Instagram combined, most people don't give a shit and are just trying to minimize cognitive effort. My elderly parents

There are 3 billion users of FB/WhatsApp/Instagram combined, most people don't give a shit and are just trying to minimize cognitive effort. My elderly parents would absolutely love if someone would just tell them what to do and eat every day because it would mean less planning.

lxgr 28d ago
WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted, so I'm not trusting Meta with much, and it's the only way I can reach quite a lot of people. A lot of people I know trust them begrudgingly (primarily with Instagram, because all of their friends are on it as well). People don't need to love a company to use its products. The perceived benefit merely needs to be bigger than the perceived cost.
- cyanydeez 28d ago
  someone's questioning that claim legally: https://www.pcmag.com/news/lawsuit-alleges-that-whatsapp-has-no-end-to-end-encryption https://www.pcmag.com/news/lawsuit-alleges-that-whatsapp-has...
  - lxgr 28d ago
    And has a verdict been reached? Otherwise, people are pursuing all kinds of outlandish claims legally.
  - Egrodo 28d ago
    I work there. The claims made in this article are just blatantly false, and so obviously so to any employee I'm not sure how this hasn't been thrown out.
    - cyanydeez 27d ago
      I agree, it should be rediculously easy to demo it's real e2e capabilities. to everyones benefit
- augment_me 28d ago
  This assumes completely techo-rational actors that continuously monitor cost-benefit analysis, other alternatives and switch products when one outweights the others. This is even further away from the reality where people have breakdowns because their app icon moved location and is not in the usual spot. The average person is optimizing towards energy use minimization by default because life is already hard enough with plans, kids, etc. Use incentives and we will arrive at closer truths than by claims and expressions.
  - lxgr 28d ago
    Slightly different lens, same outcome: It's there, it lets people do what they want to do with acceptable effort/other negative consequences, so they use it.
  - larodi 28d ago
    People have breakdowns because they are left without mobile reception for a few hours. Indeed this IS happening and I would expect people soon to have breakdowns, because they lack access to AI.
- bossyTeacher 28d ago
  > WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted, - Meta data of your messages is not encrypted so meta can make a graph of who you talk to and when - backups are not encrypted by default so plaintext of your private chats can be obtained - even if you enable encryption for backups all it takes is for the other person in your private convo (or a person in a group chat) to not enable it for your messages to be available in plaintext
  - lxgr 28d ago
    > - backups are not encrypted by default so plaintext of your private chats can be obtained Yes, but importantly not by Meta themselves. > - Meta data of your messages is not encrypted so meta can make a graph of who you talk to and when Fair enough and worth mentioning. I'm personally fine with it. > - even if you enable encryption for backups all it takes is for the other person in your private convo (or a person in a group chat) to not enable it for your messages to be available in plaintext Yes, but how would you prevent that even in principle? I can't control what the people I'm messaging do with their copy of my messages. As long as there isn't unnecessary non-repudiation (e.g. by the sender cryptographically signing all outbound messages, which the Signal protocol intentionally avoids), I think this is fair as well. I do agree that e.g. vanishing chats with a short timeout/"view only once" images should probably not be included in backups, though; last time I checked, I think they were.
    - cobbzilla 27d ago
      > Yes, but importantly not by Meta themselves. Don’t they save backups to Meta? Even if not, they can read whatever’s (unencrypted) on your phone if they really want to.
      - lxgr 27d ago
        They currently go on iCloud on iOS and Google Drive on Android. There are rumors about a first-party backup service, which would obviously change that calculus, but nothing concrete yet.
  - addandsubtract 27d ago
- jcgl 27d ago
  WhatsApp is E2EE, but Meta controls both ends. Instead of reading your plaintext on the server, they read it on the client. Not that tricky. I presume the hardest part would be avoiding detection via decompilation and other reverse engineering techniques. Not familiar with that space (can anyone here shed some light?), but it seems likely that an entity with Meta’s resources would be able to figure that out. E2EE probably protects well against bulk data collection (traffic analysis would sniff out sending 2x volume of data pretty quickly). But something more subtle and targeted, smuggled out in various fields of various protocols, would be hard to detect.
  - lxgr 27d ago
    They only need to get caught doing it once to have a gigantic lawsuit on their hands. They could possibly pull it off very selectively, but doing it in a dragnet fashion seems incredibly risky.
    - netsharc 27d ago
      My suspicion is that things like URL previews, or when the app calls a handler to open a link (YouTube, browser), are still monitored. So e.g. opening a link to an Amazon product that a friend sent makes you a target for ads in that category. It's a suspicion, they'd probably argue their EULA allows this. The typical "we have to monitor links for dangerous content" is always the standard bullshit.
      - lxgr 27d ago
        This is indeed a common vector of privacy leaks on either the recipient side (to the sender, in this case, if they operate the target of the link for which a preview is being rendered) or to the platform provider (if the preview is rendered server-side). But last time I checked, in WhatsApp, URL previews are rendered exclusively on the sender side and then sent as (E2E encrypted) media to the recipient.
    - jcgl 27d ago
      What grounds would the lawsuit be based on? I can’t imagine that slurping any kind of data would be inconsistent with their EULA. The only risk would be the reputational damage. And as far as their bottom line is concerned, the impact of that would be negligible—how many of WhatsApp’s billion(?) users know that it’s supposed to be E2EE, let alone are under the illusion that Meta doesn’t have access to their data?
meowface 28d ago
Honestly I am in that camp, but Facebook is kind of a special case for me. I don't really care about giving Google or Microsoft or OpenAI or Anthropic all of my personal data, but Facebook is a bridge slightly too far.
shimman 28d ago
This comment is one of the most dystopian things I've read on this site.
- edgarvaldes 28d ago
  >My elderly parents would absolutely love if someone would just tell them what to do and eat every day I guess a lot of the AI enthusiasts are already pushing the "I automated my daily life decisions to this awesome AI. I now have more time and more brain power left to be productive!" angle.
- afavour 27d ago
  I think the phrasing is a little extreme. Rather than “tell them what to eat” I’d say something like “everyone wishes they had a personal assistant”. I could do a lot better at meal planning than I do. I rotate between relatively few dishes. An AI that finds recipes and automatically adds the ingredients to my shopping could be interesting. Technically it’s “telling me what to eat” but it’s not like I’m taking orders from it.
  - shimman 27d ago
    No, it's more like society would have failed in raising me as a human being if I'm okay with completely ignoring the people that raised + provided for me where I purposely replace human connection with a chatbot.
wnevets 28d ago
> There are 3 billion users of FB/WhatsApp/Instagram combined Is there tho? I have Facebook account but don't use it in any meaningful way. I'm certainly not feeding it any new data. I'm curious to know what percentage of that 3 billion are zombie accounts like mine.
- cillianpower 28d ago
  There almost certainly is. I think on HN people aren’t really aware that they don’t represent the median internet user super well. I would wager if you were to tally every late millennial and zoomer across the west, Instagram usage would probably be near 90%. Facebook usage among older people is also still absolutely rampant, at least anecdotally. Not to mention WhatsApp usage which is huge everywhere but the US seemingly
  - ipaddr 27d ago
    The population of the west who fit into zoomer near millennials wouldn't even be close to 500m. Maybe if we add threads bots we could get closer. Most of the accounts are bots/fake/not used anymore. 90% of zoomers don't have an account, most rarely use it and don't add more than a few photos for social proof.
    - wenc 27d ago
      > The population of the west who fit into zoomer near millennials wouldn't even be close to 500m. There are many people of all ages not in the west from very populous nations who use Insta, FB and WhatsApp. I’ve learned that US usage patterns are not representative of rest of world. More saliently, HN users’ conception of others’ usage patterns are absolutely not representative.
  - bertmuir 27d ago
    I'll take that wager! Before you look at any real statistics, how does $1000 sound?
  - dr_ 27d ago
    For anyone who has school age kids, WhatsApp usage is pretty huge in the US as well.
runjake 27d ago
3.6 billion (de-duped) daily users! https://investor.atmeta.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2026/Meta-Reports-Second-Quarter-2026-Results/default.aspx https://investor.atmeta.com/investor-news/press-release-deta...
ghostpepper 27d ago
One thing they could try eating is glue on their pizza, helps the cheese stick to the toppings

lxgr 28d ago

WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted, so I'm not trusting Meta with much, and it's the only way I can reach quite a lot of people. A lot of people I know trust them begrudgingly (primarily with Instagram, because all of their friends are on it as well). People don't need to love a company to use its products. The perceived benefit merely needs to be bigger than the perceived cost.

cyanydeez 28d ago
someone's questioning that claim legally: https://www.pcmag.com/news/lawsuit-alleges-that-whatsapp-has-no-end-to-end-encryption https://www.pcmag.com/news/lawsuit-alleges-that-whatsapp-has...
- lxgr 28d ago
  And has a verdict been reached? Otherwise, people are pursuing all kinds of outlandish claims legally.
- Egrodo 28d ago
  I work there. The claims made in this article are just blatantly false, and so obviously so to any employee I'm not sure how this hasn't been thrown out.
  - cyanydeez 27d ago
    I agree, it should be rediculously easy to demo it's real e2e capabilities. to everyones benefit
augment_me 28d ago
This assumes completely techo-rational actors that continuously monitor cost-benefit analysis, other alternatives and switch products when one outweights the others. This is even further away from the reality where people have breakdowns because their app icon moved location and is not in the usual spot. The average person is optimizing towards energy use minimization by default because life is already hard enough with plans, kids, etc. Use incentives and we will arrive at closer truths than by claims and expressions.
- lxgr 28d ago
  Slightly different lens, same outcome: It's there, it lets people do what they want to do with acceptable effort/other negative consequences, so they use it.
- larodi 28d ago
  People have breakdowns because they are left without mobile reception for a few hours. Indeed this IS happening and I would expect people soon to have breakdowns, because they lack access to AI.
bossyTeacher 28d ago
> WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted, - Meta data of your messages is not encrypted so meta can make a graph of who you talk to and when - backups are not encrypted by default so plaintext of your private chats can be obtained - even if you enable encryption for backups all it takes is for the other person in your private convo (or a person in a group chat) to not enable it for your messages to be available in plaintext
- lxgr 28d ago
  > - backups are not encrypted by default so plaintext of your private chats can be obtained Yes, but importantly not by Meta themselves. > - Meta data of your messages is not encrypted so meta can make a graph of who you talk to and when Fair enough and worth mentioning. I'm personally fine with it. > - even if you enable encryption for backups all it takes is for the other person in your private convo (or a person in a group chat) to not enable it for your messages to be available in plaintext Yes, but how would you prevent that even in principle? I can't control what the people I'm messaging do with their copy of my messages. As long as there isn't unnecessary non-repudiation (e.g. by the sender cryptographically signing all outbound messages, which the Signal protocol intentionally avoids), I think this is fair as well. I do agree that e.g. vanishing chats with a short timeout/"view only once" images should probably not be included in backups, though; last time I checked, I think they were.
  - cobbzilla 27d ago
    > Yes, but importantly not by Meta themselves. Don’t they save backups to Meta? Even if not, they can read whatever’s (unencrypted) on your phone if they really want to.
    - lxgr 27d ago
      They currently go on iCloud on iOS and Google Drive on Android. There are rumors about a first-party backup service, which would obviously change that calculus, but nothing concrete yet.
- addandsubtract 27d ago
jcgl 27d ago
WhatsApp is E2EE, but Meta controls both ends. Instead of reading your plaintext on the server, they read it on the client. Not that tricky. I presume the hardest part would be avoiding detection via decompilation and other reverse engineering techniques. Not familiar with that space (can anyone here shed some light?), but it seems likely that an entity with Meta’s resources would be able to figure that out. E2EE probably protects well against bulk data collection (traffic analysis would sniff out sending 2x volume of data pretty quickly). But something more subtle and targeted, smuggled out in various fields of various protocols, would be hard to detect.
- lxgr 27d ago
  They only need to get caught doing it once to have a gigantic lawsuit on their hands. They could possibly pull it off very selectively, but doing it in a dragnet fashion seems incredibly risky.
  - netsharc 27d ago
    My suspicion is that things like URL previews, or when the app calls a handler to open a link (YouTube, browser), are still monitored. So e.g. opening a link to an Amazon product that a friend sent makes you a target for ads in that category. It's a suspicion, they'd probably argue their EULA allows this. The typical "we have to monitor links for dangerous content" is always the standard bullshit.
    - lxgr 27d ago
      This is indeed a common vector of privacy leaks on either the recipient side (to the sender, in this case, if they operate the target of the link for which a preview is being rendered) or to the platform provider (if the preview is rendered server-side). But last time I checked, in WhatsApp, URL previews are rendered exclusively on the sender side and then sent as (E2E encrypted) media to the recipient.
  - jcgl 27d ago
    What grounds would the lawsuit be based on? I can’t imagine that slurping any kind of data would be inconsistent with their EULA. The only risk would be the reputational damage. And as far as their bottom line is concerned, the impact of that would be negligible—how many of WhatsApp’s billion(?) users know that it’s supposed to be E2EE, let alone are under the illusion that Meta doesn’t have access to their data?

meowface 28d ago

Honestly I am in that camp, but Facebook is kind of a special case for me. I don't really care about giving Google or Microsoft or OpenAI or Anthropic all of my personal data, but Facebook is a bridge slightly too far.

shimman 28d ago

This comment is one of the most dystopian things I've read on this site.

edgarvaldes 28d ago
>My elderly parents would absolutely love if someone would just tell them what to do and eat every day I guess a lot of the AI enthusiasts are already pushing the "I automated my daily life decisions to this awesome AI. I now have more time and more brain power left to be productive!" angle.
afavour 27d ago
I think the phrasing is a little extreme. Rather than “tell them what to eat” I’d say something like “everyone wishes they had a personal assistant”. I could do a lot better at meal planning than I do. I rotate between relatively few dishes. An AI that finds recipes and automatically adds the ingredients to my shopping could be interesting. Technically it’s “telling me what to eat” but it’s not like I’m taking orders from it.
- shimman 27d ago
  No, it's more like society would have failed in raising me as a human being if I'm okay with completely ignoring the people that raised + provided for me where I purposely replace human connection with a chatbot.

wnevets 28d ago

> There are 3 billion users of FB/WhatsApp/Instagram combined Is there tho? I have Facebook account but don't use it in any meaningful way. I'm certainly not feeding it any new data. I'm curious to know what percentage of that 3 billion are zombie accounts like mine.

cillianpower 28d ago
There almost certainly is. I think on HN people aren’t really aware that they don’t represent the median internet user super well. I would wager if you were to tally every late millennial and zoomer across the west, Instagram usage would probably be near 90%. Facebook usage among older people is also still absolutely rampant, at least anecdotally. Not to mention WhatsApp usage which is huge everywhere but the US seemingly
- ipaddr 27d ago
  The population of the west who fit into zoomer near millennials wouldn't even be close to 500m. Maybe if we add threads bots we could get closer. Most of the accounts are bots/fake/not used anymore. 90% of zoomers don't have an account, most rarely use it and don't add more than a few photos for social proof.
  - wenc 27d ago
    > The population of the west who fit into zoomer near millennials wouldn't even be close to 500m. There are many people of all ages not in the west from very populous nations who use Insta, FB and WhatsApp. I’ve learned that US usage patterns are not representative of rest of world. More saliently, HN users’ conception of others’ usage patterns are absolutely not representative.
- bertmuir 27d ago
  I'll take that wager! Before you look at any real statistics, how does $1000 sound?
- dr_ 27d ago
  For anyone who has school age kids, WhatsApp usage is pretty huge in the US as well.

runjake 27d ago

3.6 billion (de-duped) daily users! https://investor.atmeta.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2026/Meta-Reports-Second-Quarter-2026-Results/default.aspx https://investor.atmeta.com/investor-news/press-release-deta...

ghostpepper 27d ago

One thing they could try eating is glue on their pizza, helps the cheese stick to the toppings