The real problem here was quoted as "misdirection of the [whatsapp] users and the public" because WhatsApp stated that there wont be any data exchange between them and facebook, when they were accuired two years ago.
German law says ToS can not contain surprising terms.
That also means if an ad says "we won’t share your data, ever", no ToS change, unless it’s more publicly published than the original ad, and as easily noticeable and understandable, can undo that.
Even people like my mother, who normally has no idea about whats going on, were worried back then but then calmed down by that statement. And the media, where this had quickly became an issue, stopped reporting, because everything seemed to turn out fine.
But now, they broke that promise and altered their product, which now results in those accusations of misdirection of the users and the public. They made that statement, people everywhere became reliant to whatsapp and now everything stated before turned out to be a lie.
It's an interesting ethical debate where the lines in the sand should be drawn (or if there should be any lines at all for that matter) but traditionally some lines exist and there are some things governments feel they need to control on behalf of consenting adults.
Additionally it's a question of discrimination laws in certain countries. If WA gave you the option of opting out but in return not being able to use their service at all that could be seen as discrimination. If you take the stance that personal information are a very essential good that isn't all that unreasonable (once again I'm not making a value judgment only a logical one).
I believe in most societies there's a somewhat solid majority support for the idea that government sets some rules for the marketplace. How many/if there should be any is open for debate but these frameworks exist and are typically backed by majority votes.
The idea that contracts between adults are sacred is basically a libertarian philosophy. Many countries (incl Germany) often limit what contracts can do.
You can also make a case that people did not "freely consent" to transferring data. A click-through multi-page legalise doesn't count as "consent"
Coming from Syria myself, I'm well aware that many countries do not respect people's freedom to contract freely. Doesn't mean that they are not tyrannies. Also, the Whatsapp TOS pretty much says that they can update their TOS whenever and however they want, so when you first try to use it, you should not expect any kind of control over your data, if you care about that, use an open source alternative. I will never understand people who consent to proprietary software TOS and then complain about these TOS changing in certain ways when this is what they are all about. I mean this has been Stallman arguments against proprietary software for like 40 years now. Want complete control? Use free/open source software. Don't care about that, use proprietary software such as Whatsapp. What makes less sense to me is using something such as Whatsapp and demand and expect what only free open source software can deliver.
In my experience, many people don't argue against the war on drugs due to being against any imposition on consensual transactions but because it harms the people intended to help. They'd be fine with it otherwise.
Personally, I have some sympathy for your view, but I'm of the opinion that contracts require meeting of the minds, and that it's plainly obvious that many, possibly most users have no real idea of what they're trading away, evidenced by the fact that the T&C conditions of these services are unreadable and not even expected to be read.
> isn't that the definition of tyranny? Seems more like just the definition of government. The German government seems like both the underdog and the less capricious actor in this case.