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Comment by saddlerustle | Hacker News Reader

It's absurd this article doesn't try to describe what the changes actually are. The privacy policy change doesn't functionally change anything about what data is collected or shared with Facebook. Metadata collection for ad targeting has been allowed by the privacy policy since 2016.

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More than that.

(1) The policy differs per country. But how is it different in practice between the EU and USA and Brasil? It's not public knowledge.

(2) It's absurd the policy doesn't describe anything useful. I tried to find if the contact book is being sent to facebook and if so, for how long. The wording is so opaque it's impossible to figure out.

https://twitter.com/majek04/status/1348574409968275456

The contacts have been shared since 2016. You can get your account info in the Account option, but they make it a pain to get it. Mine took 3 days for an HTML page.

I did that. It doesn't answer the question - is my contact book on facebook servers? If so, how it is processed and for how long.

The article is a short piece that basically says "Remember that kerfuffle about Whatsapp TOS that lead Facebook to put it on hold? It's back on". For that purpose the paragraph it does include describing the kinds of changes at stake should be enough. It's not an in-depth piece explaining the nature of the changes and in which cases they are indeed just "clarifications" as Facebook claims.

In 2016 WhatsApp let users opt-out of Facebook data sharing with third parties by just checking a box in Account Settings [1]. Most of my friends and family did opt-out. Now, as far as I understand, they are being "forced to opt-in" by accepting the new ToS and Privacy Policy or, otherwise, getting locked out.

1 - https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/25/whatsapp-to-share-user-dat...

No, that is entirely incorrect:

> When WhatsApp launched a major update to its privacy policy in August 2016, it started sharing user information and metadata with Facebook. At that time, the messaging service offered its billion existing users 30 days to opt out of at least some of the sharing. If you chose to opt out at the time, WhatsApp will continue to honor that choice. The feature is long gone from the app settings, but you can check whether you're opted out through the “Request account info” function in Settings.

https://www.wired.com/story/whatsapp-facebook-data-share-not...

> WhatsApp will continue to honor that choice.

That's good news but I can't find this stated anywhere in their policy:

https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/updates/privacy-policy/?lang=...

It seems like an important thing to mention.

After all the Facebook scandals you really trust them to honor that choice?

That's not true. There is no change for users who opted out in 2016

I think we're long past the idea that general, global news producers are trying to stay factual and provide information to their readers. It's all about generating outrage as it's much easier to get people hooked on outrage than the boring truth and impartial reporting.

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