WhatsApp delays privacy changes following backlash
p.dw.com
p.dw.com
(1) claims that Facebook promised Whatsapp would not be monetised, and that Facebook and and Whatsapp's data would not be combined. This information was also provided to European antitrust regulators
(2) missed out on $850 stock option grants vesting by quitting early over disputes with Facebook about monetisation strategy involving advertising
(3) promoted #deletefacebook on Whatsapp following the Cambridge Anlalytica scandal
(4) Donated $50m to the non-for-profit alternative, Signal.
To the recipient.. I don't know why you'd prefer it to a (stipulation-free) donation, but in general it's probably easier to get big loans than big donations.
2068 is in 47 years. A long way away, yes, but still a big difference.
..
"In 2014, Koum and Brian Acton agreed to sell WhatsApp to Facebook for approximately US$19 billion in cash and stock.[9] Forbes estimates that Acton held over 20% stake in the company, making his net worth around $3.8 billion.[12] According to Acton's personal Twitter feed, he was turned down for employment by both Twitter and Facebook in 2009."
3.8B in 5 years of work? It's scarcely conceivable to me after 20 years of salaried grind. These people are well-connected (fine), but they're also geniuses at spotting opportunities.
No, they wouldn't. This thinking is what has lead the world where it is.
Say you have 2 billion (10^9) users paying $1 per year. You follow inflation. That's 2 billion a year. That covers a lot of workforce, and a lot of servers.
This idea of infinite growth boggles me - how can people with math background insist on such impossible thought?
For Christ's sake NO!
FB never charged for whatsapp for a good reason.
1. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/FB/history?p=FB
2. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SIGL/history?p=SIGL
3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25770464 <-- Suggested reading before replying ;)
Signal, the app (https://signal.org/en/), is a 501c3 nonprofit.
Even more given WhatsApp history of being a very efficient company, supporting hundreds of millions of users with 50 engineers.
The acquisition cost of WhatsApp is sunk at this point—the only thing left is to wring as much money out of it as possible.
Either ways, my WhatsApp was deleted yesterday, FB early last year...
Now I just need to wean off of Google...
(Described in my last comment if anyone knows the source)
Seemed like every attempt to better describe it as a query took me further from what I was looking for.
Results were all (from my perspective) SEO hijacking, clearly having nothing to do with my search. And that was behind the wall of advertisements and their own google cards of noise they plug up front. Going to the next page of results was surprisingly difficult.
First time I’ve considered, maybe this is the wrong tool for traversing the memory palace of one’s interactions with the internet.
I think the era of "free stuff for your data" is over. People have witnessed the true cost of a zero barrier social network services which is the division of society and people creating their own realities and clashing with others (ex. flat earthers, trump etc.)
Going forward I expect lot of these decentralized, run-by-donations services to trend upwards. We will still have FB, Google, and the likes but as they lose users their pervasiveness will have to increase to compensate for the loss in users.
This is good. This is what blockchain should've been but couldn't.
The hardest replacement for me is Maps. Their search and traffic data always work for me. They have a webapp and mobile app that are excellent. I could do without the ads but recognize it's the tradeoff for using their app. Nothing I've tried gets close to a replacement. (I've heard good things about Apple Maps on iOS, but I have an android phone)
Using Google some of the time is better that using it all of the time.
DGG has been my default search engine for years now, and like you, I occasionally need to add !g to get the answer I’m looking for. I’m fine with that. I hope DGG uses those failed search followed by a !g search to improve their stuff. (In a privacy preserving way)
That sounds tough.
Too bad google can't just change back to how they were in the beginning. At least just actually hold their old motto above greed and money every now and then.
I'm finding Gmail to be most difficult to transition off of. I do have personal domain and use Zoho with it, but I think there is this mental block.. It will happen..
Edit:
I am also using my personal domain instead of @fastmail.com You never know when / if you need to leave a service provider again, and you don‘t want to change your email address again.
I would gladly pay a subscription fee if it means Google isn't reading my emails to sell me ads.
One time my friend was driving and he asked me to navigate. The exit was coming up, meanwhile I'm stuck trying to get OSM+ to understand what rounte we are on. That was an unpleasant few minutes. Despite trying to stick with it, such moments kept coming up again and again. It made me realise that Maps is mission critical to me.
By contrast, Gmail was easy. Fastmail ftw, forward all google mail to it, and the fact that most of my email use is work email, which is on its own domain anyway.
What I would like is a hardened, privacy focused distro of Android that is guaranteed to be independent from Google. Sounds like a tall order but here's hoping Samsung will come up with their own mobile OS although how unlikely this will be.
Samsung have not demonstrated being any more user friendly than google in my opinion. My S6Edge ran out of OS updates about 3 years after if was released. I have iPhones several years older that are still getting updated to the latest iOS. And there’s a whole bunch of crap undeletable Samsung software on their devices that I trust even less that Google’s apps.
The only thing I can't figure out is how to get off google calendar.
Mine was the move from Chrome/Firefox back to Opera.
I'm still puzzled what happened to Firefox. I was using the Developer Edition and the last two years the performance is really suspect. I don't have a million tabs open, don't have a ton of add-ons running and it still lags horribly, crashes and new tabs take forever to open
I thought at first it was either my network connection or maybe a system issue. Switched to Opera and was like, "Nah man, it was definitely the browser."
I'm in the same book with my calendar. I have multiple calendars several family members share. I tried using outlook.com calendars and although I prefer their UI, it wouldn't import Google calendars.
If you have any recommendations, I'm all ears. Its the last thing I need to rid myself of Google.
What makes it so difficult?
Between Android or iOS, I don't see iOS as being much better. At least I can still side-load applications in Android if it gets banned by the censors.
Google Search -> DDG -- Done
Android -> iOS -- Done
Gmail -> Personal domain email (pending, work started)
TV OS from Android -> Dumb TV (very hard)
YouTube -> ? (limited use, very hard)
Google Classroom (for kids) -> ? (very hard)
Google Maps (noted by helmholtz below ) -> ? (very hard)
...
This is just going out of the frying pan and into the fryer. (I assume you mean stock/Google powered Android here.) Replacing one user-hostile walled garden with another user-hostile walled garden is hardly an improvement.
I'd suggest Google Android -> Open-source Android ROM, though I know it can cause issues with some banking apps, annoyingly.
In end, as I said above, it's about reducing the footprint. Eliminating Google is a very difficult undertaking which I'm not really sure is even possible..
1) I find the use of the BlackBerry hub to really help with decreasing the intermittent reward that having to switch between applications to see your messages gives. 2) It is refreshing to use a device that is more purely focused on its intended purpose. (Communication) 3) I can still sideload most Android APKs if necessary.
Some out of the box thinking is in order here. Duringe the initial lockdown, I signed up to pay for Coursera's courses. I found out that what I craved wasn't shirking from work, but rather distraction. It didn't matter that I had to do some homework for the courses. Since I was _watching_ something, my brain thought of it as the same thing.
But I should note that you haven't addressed the biggest bugbear of mine either, Google maps. It's light-years ahead of everything else, and just does not get replaced easily.
Yes, I had missed Google maps. I agree it's indeed light-years ahead of others.
In end it's about reducing Google footprint, elimination is extremely hard.
I prefer Librem 5 or Pinephone instead, not to switch walled gardens.
> YouTube
PeerTube (very hard, but promising)
> Google Maps
> ...
I have a dumb tv from 2006 that we still use and we are happy with but it works because we also use a roku. An old roku.
At some point however not sure how but my roku updated and im pretty sure its monitoring all my stuff (mostly yt)
Ive read about router hacks etc to dumb down the roku and prevent it from calling home but it seems super hard. I was barely able to use my own domain with proton.
Neutering roku seems like mission impossible for a non sysadmin. Is there a simple solution to this with or without roku?
Because it would not make sense otherwise, considering how much it must cost them to run something like WhatsApp with millions of users and not get anything in return.
I mean, what's the point of all the data they have from me plus the armies of well paid ML engineers they have on their payroll, when if I order a laptop from Amazon, I'll get bombarded with ads for laptops for the next month. Do advertisers imagine I go through laptops like toilet rolls or something? If this is peak ML, then those who fear an AI uprising can sleep soundly.
I'm not convinced that if you went and did an actual scientific study on the efficacy of "big data" teams and ad-targeting and went through every business it would do any better than just regular boring contextual ads.
The ML experts in my company keep telling me maintaining these regexps is too costly dev wise, and that they can use ML to adapt to changes in the real world, and get a better result faster.
After nearly a year of work, buying some fancy new computers with giant GPUs, and countless meetings to describe the problem space, they have something that's around 60-70% as accurate as the current state of the art, and say they're close to closing the gap.
Meanwhile I add a new regexp or tweak an existing one and cause them to go back to the drawing board because I've "changed the entire problem description".
Sometimes I feel like I want the job where the only criteria is that I'm using the fancy new toys. It seems like more fun.
The lie is telling users that targeted ads are good for them
YouTube knows my UI is in English, and I've never watched a Cantonese video, and yet it constantly shows me ads in Cantonese. There are a lot of people in Hong Kong who don't speak Cantonese, or at least who are more fluent in English than Cantonese.
Not believe there is totalitarian is the greatest myth one can have in today workd.
"I've got nothing to hide"
They target something like "people interested in computer hardware" and they get them, including those who don't need a laptop. It's bad but must be somewhat better than completely non-targeted ads, as it excludes people who have never expressed any interest (so, while having false positives at least it tries to save on false negatives). And, of course, there is opportunity for Facebook to tell how their superior ad platform is smarter than last year.
The rest (but maybe even more important than actual value advertisers are getting) is advertising of advertising - all those stories how this machine learning agile blockchain big data is our only future. And many people just believe it, and non-ironically talk how Facebook is that omniscient deus ex machina that knows us better than we do ourselves. As this meme lives, those who have a product to advertise are inclined to believe it as well (and this makes them spend money on Facebook Ads).
So, in the end, the fact you're getting ads you're not interested in is less relevant and is kind of shadowed over by the fact advertisers get somewhat better value or maybe even just believe they do.
There are shouts that the king is naked and memes that modern machine learning has two objectives: classifying data and making predictions^W^W^W^W^W bullshitting investors and raising money... but so far, such voices are in minority.
If I had the money I would definitely have both.
All that said, Signal is making steady progress, and I've had zero resistance getting people to use it. Got 12 people on it this past week. Starting a few group threads helped it stick.
Edit: and signal is down...
Is it though? What's the actual benefit for WhatsApp?
They used to charge about $1/yr before acquisition and had over 500mm users. And I think they had fewer than 30 employees.
So they were bringing in about $500mm/yr and their infrastructure costs were unlikely to have been in the 100s of millions.
I'd be very curious to know. I don't remember specifics, but they were running a shockingly low number of servers early on in large part because WhatsApp is built on top of Erlang/OTP.
Or justify the costs of buying it. Supposedly the infrastructure and tech-stack is pretty lean.
Edit: Bought a piece of software [1] that perfectly exported five years of messages out of my cellphone, then I didn’t hesitate one day to delete my WhatsApp accout. I felt an incredible relief abandoning the last service I used from Facebook.
[1]: „Backuptrans iPhone WhatsApp Transfer for Mac“
It doesn't matter what they say now; Whatsapp needs to be crushed pour encourager les autres.
The most wonderful thing about WhatsApp was that everyone you knew was there.
However, I do think the incentives internally probably were structured in a way to encourage this change, and I doubt anyone is being seen as being "more successful" due to a rollback.
You're right. They're going to pay themselves the bonus regardless of this debacle.
Here's an article from Harvard Law Review about a lawsuit over this - you might be interested in the paragraphs in the "Shareholder Waivers" section: https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2019/09/18/setting-directors...
Some quotes: waive a shareholder’s right to sue the directors for violating their duty of loyalty regarding setting their own pay and For directors setting their own pay, the ruling suggested that a blanket waiver etc.
Disclosure: I work at FB but unrelated to WhatsApp
We were told nothing would change.
Oh wait, the time of last login will be shared with facebook family of companies? Despite this blog post showing no sharing icons at all - they ARE sharing and now lying about it by not showing a single icon to reflect this sharing.
Oh wait, we need your phone number for 2FA? Sure. Bam - now you've given us permission to spam you! They lied about that.
Check out signal and get away from the lies. This blog post is such a good example of it, all the things not showing as not shared are probably SHARED! So despite EVERY icon saying nothing is shared, they no doubt are pumping your phone number over to Facebook family of companies.
They are trying to do the fake apple privacy label thing - but only including non-sharing labels, not the sharing labels.
Totally disgusting. I'm signing up to signal today and pushing hard for my network to switch.
Now if only signal used go or something lighter weight instead of a monster java stack they could probably scale a lot better.
Amazing what some internal koolaid can do to you (well more than this,it's really probably greed). Please rethink critically the ethics of your employer.
A Facebook employee making claims about privacy or ethics makes me immediately suspicious of those claims.
I think a lot of horses have bolted, but I'm sure there will be plently left once the gate is shut.
Wouldn't it be better to just say: "WhatsApp does not share your contacts." or even better "WhatsApp doesn't store any of your contacts especially the ones who doesn't even use WhatsApp"?
My user experience on Signal has been excellent so far, family switched without difficulty.
The point is, this happened to be a watershed moment. Whether the conditions (mining metadata) were met years ago or in a week or two from now is irrelevant.
Why is "personal" present in that sentence?
EDIT
Finally, here's the real reason for the changes:
> "While not everyone shops with a business on WhatsApp today, we think that more people will choose to do so in the future and it’s important people are aware of these services."
My wife recently started to complain about the new instagram UI and that there are shops _everywhere_, and that the UI has reorganised buttons so people will find themselves at shops if they follow muscle memory.
Apparently that's the future of WhatsApp.
While back then, there was not enough outcry and momentum to switch people over to Signal, now, with Facebook being seen more negatively even by laypeople, there seems to be enough momentum and I've gotten most people switched over. Hopefully, this will make it easier for their friends to switch too. So if you were unable to switch a few years ago, try again! People may be easier to convince than you thought.
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/whatsapp-facebook-data-share-not...
It's mostly "sorry that you don't understand how things work". I've seen this before with these privacy-invading megacorps. They're tone deaf and defensive. Maybe they're worried that people are catching on and the tides are shifting.
[1] https://blog.whatsapp.com/giving-more-time-for-our-recent-up...
The new privacy policy just reformatted how data is shared with facebook from the "Affiliated Companies" section to a new section "How We Work With Other Facebook Companies", but the only real change is, like the bullet point says, an added sentence about how data might be shared to integrate whatsapp into other facebook products, and it's clearly "integrate" in the functional sense.
Similar to facebook messenger recently adding instagram messaging, they're probably planning to add whastapp messenging too. I imagine this change isn't in the EU privacy policy just because just like the integram change, more product integration there is held up by antitrust action.
Notably, facebook using whatsapp data for ad targeting has been allowed by the privacy policy since 2016
I say “manipulative and evil”.
I would actually prefer it these changes weren't delayed since it will also delay the eventual user exodus to Signal / Telegram.
Problem solved.
Everything happens in WhatsApp here. Just moved to a new building and they added me to a whatsapp group for announcements / requests etc. Also, movers, utility people etc would call and ask for a “location”. Not an address. A “location”, meaning sharing a location via whatsapp. Noone even mentions the name whatsapp. It is implied.
If you have children, most schools have whatsapp groups for parents and teachers to get in contact.
I mean I can find much more. Not having WhatsApp is not an option here. It is almost like not having a cell phone.
If the former, my complete sympathies. Carrying around this low-level resentment about an app all while having to use it isn't great.
But if it's the latter, then the solution is obvious. Delete the app and then let the chips fall where they may. I guarantee there is a grumpy 60 year old in your life who just never ditched his Nokia and "it works for him". It's clear that you can't have it both ways.
I make this comment because too often on the internet people will comment on a self-help article, or someone sharing their success story, or a piece of advice with "Yeah, but it doesn't work for me because..."
Well, great? Sorry to hear that? This topic, then, is not for you? Carry on and good luck? It's just too many people expect universal solutions that MUST work EVERYWHERE without exceptions.
Later on, I signed up to Facebook again (for all the wrong reasons), and not much changed in that communication was mostly off Facebook because that's what my acquaintances and I had established.
I got rid of Facebook again not long after. Then a few years ago I moved into a new property where, just like you, the first thing they asked me is if I had Facebook so I can be added to building's group. I politely told them I do not, and what do you know, the landlord was still able to keep us up to date with announcements and everything else.
I'm sure my situations isn't the same as yours, and I do believe that you're in a worse situation than I was in that sense. Certainly, I don't disagree that it's hard to leave a service when everyone else is on it.
However, something has to give.
Your utility provider will find a way to tell you that you owe them money. The movers will find a way to talk to you to get his business. When they ask for a location, and you send the address instead anyway, they'll copy and paste it.
Maybe I have an oversimplified view of the world, because quite frankly, here in the UK, there is a lot of convenience and professionalism.
Regardless, I've messed up a lot when it comes to privacy in the past, and I'd rather not continue those same mistakes. I've come to learn to value my privacy, and I encourage everyone around me to value theirs, so I lead by example. I implore you to do the same, because your privacy is important. It'll be hard, but it'll be worth it.
For instance I am part of a volunteer organisation, that amongst other things runs some Covid-19 vaccination centers. At a local level this is organised through a WhatsApp group with about 50 members. For now, I am nothing special in this organisation, no-one with special skills that would be called upon to do particular tasks, just a worker drone.
If I left the WhatsApp group, the only result is that I would never hear about anything that was going on ever again. I would effectively be leaving the organisation too.
Umm, no. I use both WhatsApp and Signal (way before this hysteria began) but the "just leave" mentality isn't realistic. Most people don't care about this stuff enough to install a new app and start using it. Even for people who will join it, it takes time. The network effect is still there.
Being on HN too much and/or having social circles full of people who think like you misleads people.
Oh, but it is. You just need to accept a drop in your social circle.
"It's not how the world works". Of course it is. Most people downloaded WhatsApp because someone told them to so they could message each other.
You essentially have a personal disagreement with the practices of a specific company and want to inconvenience others who might not think the same way. It's arguably a selfish perspective, family members may be willing to bend to those demands for an individual. But to expect businesses to indulge every single individual preferences for how they wish to be contacted is impractical.
Saying "i'm on signal" could be totally considered normal in just a few weeks from now.
It does suggest the authorities do have access to WhatsApp chats in some manner, at least.
Durov has publicly stated that the FBI offered bribes multiple times to insert a backdoor into Telegram.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_...
And that would be so good because I could be convinced to really uninstall whatsaap
A partial exodus doesn't work. With this delay, maybe half of the people who were going to switch won't end up switching.
By boiling the frog slowly, they make sure that a mass exodus never happens, only partial exoduses that end up dying and tiring people out.
I'm not sure. Bad publicity has a critical point after which people leave and move to other services. When people who weren't concerned about privacy before began to have conversations about whether Telegram or Signal is a better replacement to WhatsApp, Facebook realized that they have pushed it too far this time. They're much better served if people think "Oh WhatsApp is owned by a shady company but everyone I know uses it so I need to use it to".
Did you just provide the counterargument to your own argument?
If they backpaddled is likely because there was enough of a negative reaction to raise concern.
I believe it's more likely they are trying to figure out how to announce the next deadline more quietly without breaking too many laws.
Servers and infrastructure cost money. People's time costs money. You need enough donations for it. If you don't, you have to strategize to get more.
The key distinction being that loan will need to be repaid.
> The initial $50M in funding was a loan, not a donation, from Brian Acton to the new nonprofit Signal Technology Foundation. By the end of 2018, the loan had increased to $105,000,400, which is due to be repaid on February 28, 2068. The loan is unsecured and at 0% interest.[5]
I don't think he would have done particularly well either, due to lack of charisma.
Highlights from his hourlong livestream to show how relatable and definitely a human he is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVyLlFezj2E
I really can't imagine him giving a speech on a stage with cheering crowds.
* He restructured of Facebook stock trough the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative so that he can run for a office and maintain control (also for tax and other reasons).
* He started with "I'm no longer an atheist", now believes religion to be “very important.”
* Hired Obama's campaign manager (David Plouffe)
* Hired former GWB campaign manager and RNC chariman (Ken Mehlman)
* visited 50 states "to meet people".
* hired more even more political strategists who worked for Obama's and Hillary's campaign. He had something like 150 people working just for his PR according to some sources.
No amount of turd polishing with unlimited money and PR talent was able to make people to like him. Trump is horrible but at least he raises emotions in people.
I wonder what the cost-benefit line looks like for PR person versus life coach.
That's a lot of yes-men. Maybe we should bring back Court Jester as a profession.
I don't rule it out. Gates managed to pull it off when I didn't think it was possible
At least we got some memes out of that.
- WhatsApp: Oh wait, SMS etc. is completely insecure
- Signal: Oh wait, WhatsApp is structurally unable to be a force for privacy
- Matrix: Oh wait, even benevolent centralization is an unnecessary risk
I look forward to the public's increasing wisdom with these matter.
As it is now, with WhatsApp being part of it, FB has access to any (non-e2e) data by default. The new agreement might have been them hedging to keep it that way, which backfired spectacularly.
Also, Signal should introduce some kind of paid subscription with a few critically important qualities:
1. Anonymous payment that binds subscriptions to users without retaining anything about who paid. Like a prepaid GSM SIM. All Signal needs to know is that the current terminal uses a paid subscription.
2. Ability to buy a cheaper bulk/family bundle. I use Signal to talk to family and close friends and would like to pay for myself and my parents, at the very least.
3. Price it differently in different countries. $1 in India is as heavy as $10 in US. This is super mega important.
4. Setup dedicated servers for subscription users with a much better service level. The service collapse that happened today should not happen again. There should also be an option for a fully encrypted backup that Signal cannot decrypt just on the server side to store personal conversation logs.
Nonsense. They've been impacted by uninstalls/deletions and trying to salvage things.
I'm amazed how FB keeps falling for such things. From my understanding this story has blown out out of proportion and the main reason is the way FB handled those privacy changes.
Telegram got 25 million new unique users. Signal got 50 million, so much that it melted their servers for a while.
The masses now know that there are options to Whatsapp, maybe that'll trigger a move to more options, maybe not. We'll see.
Use Signal (and donate/make a PR every once in awhile).
Been following Whisper Systems since Redphone and TextSecure, so glad to see them shine.
Matt Stoller from BIG is right, only jail time for executives guilty of breaking the Sherman Act will stop these monopolies now.
That may happen to Facebook in a few years.
Users have been going to Signal en masse, in their millions upon millions, to the point that Facebook had to back down.
It's a sort of democratic consumerism. I don't want to call it capitalism, but is that what it is?
Either way, it's nice to know that people can make big corporations change their minds sometimes.
So, they're gonna keep going.
Facebook-owned WhatsApp said they would work to "clear up misinformation" around its privacy policy.
(I've also heard it claimed that it's an urban legend that frogs won't jump if you cook them slowly. But, maybe it's an urban legend that it's an urban legend.)
Working experiment. Frogs stay in water.
> Heinzmann heated the frogs over the course of 90 minutes from about 21 °C to 37.5 °C, a rate of less than 0.2 °C per minute.
Failed experiment. Frog jumps.
> as the water is heated by about 2 °F (about 1 °C), per minute, the frog becomes increasingly active as it tries to escape, and eventually jumps out if it can.
There's a bunch of anecdotes from biologists and veterinarians saying 'ofcourse the frog will try to leave', but no modern experiments to see if a frog will escape if the water is boiled sufficiently slow.
Come on, it only takes a moment of critical thinking to realize no animal would allow itself to be boiled alive, be it slowly or quickly.
If you're in a bath and you increase the heat until you're hot, do you keep increasing the heat or do you jump out when it's too hot?
> no animal would allow itself to be boiled alive
You're surely not suggesting frogs have a theory of self, and while there's evolutionary pressure against walking into forest fires or too hot sun-baked rocks, there are very few environments where animals would be subjected to slowly increasing water temperatures that eventually reach fatal temperatures. If it's not obvious that there's evolutionary pressure for this situation, and we don't think frogs have a conscious self-preservation, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the legend out-of-hand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
You don't need a theory of self to explain this. Frogs are living creatures with an instinct to live, and heat stroke is bad for survival. It's no different from wandering into the desert sun - you cannot thermoregulate your body past a certain point.
> The legend is that if they're submerged in hot water and heated slowly enough, the brain starts having problems due to the heat before the skin gets too uncomfortable.
By that logic people will stay outside and freeze to death from hypothermia which eventually causes people to believe they're hot while literally freezing to death, even though long before that happens any functioning human being would say "I'm cold and need to warm up now!" before suffering any significant health problems.
It's a fucking dumb legend and regurgitating it does humanity a disservice. I am aware it is a common saying and what it means. I just wish people would think more before repeating everything they hear.
1. Prepare three bowls of water, one cold (but bearable), one hot (but bearable), and one lukewarm.
2. Place one hand in the cold water, and the other hand in the hot water.
3. Wait a minute or two.
4. Place both hands in the lukewarm water at the same time.
5. WTF, is this hot or is it cold?
It's funny to read that, until you realize, that it is exactly what humans are doing in regards to global warming.
Day 1) Users are outraged and company says there will be changes! (Twitter bans Trump)
Day 2) Users are angry and company shows changes they will be making (yup Trumps account is gone.)
Day 3) Users move on to something else and company goes back to whatever they want to do (Trump posts video on twitter, but this one is ok, we'll let this one slide.)
Give it a few days and WhatsApp will be back to business as usual.