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Comment by a254613e | Hacker News Reader

What exact terms have changed that are "bullshit"? I see a lot of hate for whatsapp and statement about people switching etc, but nobody can explain what EXACTLY in this privacy policy update has changed to warrant that? From what I can tell absolutely nothing changed for the average users, only those who want to communicate with businesses - but perhaps I'm wrong.

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Except you won’t have a choice not to communicate with business. Businesses will communicate with you, based on your data Facebook collects.

I'm not really sure what the outrage is then? We're providing hosted WhatsApp clients for businesses to use and letting them know if your number is registered on WhatsApp doesn't sound like "end of days abandon ship" nefarious.

Fortunately there are alternatives, so it doesn't have to be a big reason to switch. Facebook buying WhatsApp was enough reason for me to refuse installing it, for no other reason than consolidation of services on that level is dangerous. The internet belonging to a few companies is bad.

It's not so much the changes they made, but asking people to accept the new policy or lose service. I think it's not a new thing, but

> Facebook and the other companies in the Facebook family also may use information from us to improve your experiences within their services such as making product suggestions (for example, of friends or connections, or of interesting content) and showing relevant offers and ads.

https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/privacy-policy?_fb_noscript=1

They stress that they're not sharing message content, but metadata appears to be fair game.

I don't recall agreeing to that part, but then again I don't recall reading the privacy policy before.

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