I want to leave Facebook but I can't give up such an amazing chat experience that keeps me connected to my family and close friends. Even if I got my immediate family to use a different app, I'd have to keep Facebook for old friends :( .
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Facebook will buy because it’s profitable to buy. Monopoly power is a known mode of market failure. (Note: you don’t need 100% of a market for the deleterious effects of monopoly power to manifest.)
The only solution is blocking future acquisitions and breaking up Facebook.
Same applies with photos in my experience. I’d assume voice notes,location pins, etc are also subject to this as well.
If you forward already converted media it will be taken from the gallery in it's compressed, substantially smaller version.
They can of course still track meta data, e.g. tailor your ads based on interest of contacts. But if you only use whatsapp (ad free), they own't make any money with it.
They're still siphoning their data. Just refuse WhatsApp access to your phone's address book, and see how it outright punishes you for doing that. Most of my WhatsApp contacts maintain their own names in their profiles, yet WhatsApp stubbornly shows their phone number as contact name. I usually identify contacts by looking at the profile picture (or by the conversation history if they changed that recently). Then again, I only have 3-4 contacts on WhatsApp. I would be less willing to put up with this if there were dozens of active contacts in there.