WhatsApp Reveals What Happens to Users Who Don't Agree to Privacy Policy Changes | Hacker News Reader

WhatsApp Reveals What Happens to Users Who Don't Agree to Privacy Policy Changes

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81 pointsTomte35 comments

That's an oddly biased article: "The misperception.." ... "rival messaging apps like Telegram and Signal, both of which were quick to exploit the situation"

I think being skeptical of these anti-privacy moves is perfectly reasonable, and I think saying Signal and Telegram is "exploiting the situation" is misleading at best and disingenuous at worst.

"To exploit" can mean "to make the best use of" it does not have to imply any ethical question.

> the changes at the time were interpreted by many users to mean that the platform would share their messages with parent company Facebook.

> The misperception caused a backlash amongst users of the Facebook-owned platform, causing an exodus to rival messaging apps like Telegram and Signal

There was no misperception, we all moved because of what Facebook is doing, not because of what we thought they are doing but aren't.

> According to an email seen by TechCrunch to one of its merchant partners, WhatsApp said it will "slowly ask" users who have not yet accepted the policy changes to comply with the new terms over the coming weeks, "in order to have full functionality of WhatsApp" starting May 15.

> If they still don't accept the terms, "for a short time, these users will be able to receive calls and notifications, but will not be able to read or send messages from the app," the company added in the note.

So, if you chat with a business, Facebook will know details about the business, and maybe the chat. That's the real value Facebook gives business to use WhatsApp.

If you only chat with private numbers, WhatsApp will operate exactly as it was before the privacy policy changes, Facebook will know nothing about you.

Is this correct?

TheY can sell metadata from private chats (maybe like a profile) to said businesses...

Can they? And which metadata?

In any case, that's assuming you talk with a business. So if you don't, will they sell that metadata too?

If you talk with a business, lets say a bakery, Facebook will know you talked with that bakery, and if you talk with a different business that other business may know it too. That's metadata about you that they explicitly say they collect.

But if you never talked with a business...what will Facebook know?

The graph. 30% of your close contact interact with these bakeries, so there is a higher than baseline probability that you are likely to be a potential customer for those bakeries.

And then, if I decide to contact that bakery, then I guess Facebook will mix the data that my closed contacts interacted and then myself, I assume so.

But if I don't interact...they can't (or rather they shouldn't). They state that you will never be contacted without you doing the first move, so even if all my closed contacts chat with the bakery Facebook will have 'this user is highly likely to contact this bakery' data, but can't do anything about that unless I personally contact myself, apparently.

Edit: nop, as their policy say: 'your contact list will never be shared with Facebook' so even if all my contacts chat with the bakery Facebook won't have the data 'this user is very likely to contact this bakery'.

Facebook can, of course, just 'ignore' their own policy and give this data to the bakery so that they contact me directly, but doing so will be a direct contact break. This is Facebook, it is not entirely impossible (unfortunately) but if they do it will be another scandal.

Is this the fear people have for WhatsApp?

So, I never chat with businesses, and I live in the EU. This new privacy policy should not concern me much?

Exactly. If you never chat with businesses, nothing changes at all. The update just spells it out in clearer terms.

If I'm a business why would I allow Facebook to use data from chats with my customers to help them identify (eg) the most profitable ones and potentially make that identification available to competitors?

If you don't want to do that you don't have to, as far as I understand (and if I am wrong here, that is what I think would be particularly fascinating); you can instead use the (existing) WhatsApp Business API "client"--which you would have to host yourself, coming up with your own mechanism for sharing access to it within your organization, and handling your own security and durability measures for the keys involved--rather than using the (as yet unreleased) Facebook hosted client feature they want to role out for the large number of businesses that probably don't want to deal with all of that. As far as I understand (and I would be fascinated to learn I was wrong here), using the API client means your communications with your customers would be end-to-end encrypted.

Here is the (afaik, prior) documentation for the (afaik, secure) feature that they are seemingly having a hard time getting people to adopt:

https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/getting-starte...

Fair enough but how long will the existing API client last for.

Completely consistent with previous behaviour to try to get businesses used to using WhatsApp and then withdraw this client.

I don't think its controversial to say Facebook have a big (and increasing) trust issue.

That's fair. I will say that unlike previous APIs, Facebook looks to be dotting their i's and crossing their t's so that everyone is on the same page.

A reason a lot of the previous APIs were removed was because the New York Times learned that they could frame them as "Data Sharing Agreements" and have a litany of BS hit pieces that people would eat up no matter how privacy aware they were being. I remember even a piece about gmail plugins being framed as Google selling your email to third parties.

Facebook seemingly has no qualms about removing services which may be immensely valuable to individuals but which don't generate cash for Facebook.

It happens here to individuals and it's now happening at country level. Can't help but feel that Zuckerberg and Sandberg are playing with fire here.

Companies don't general form to create value for individuals with the expectation they get nothing out of that work. Certainly not to the point for it to be considered playing with fire for a business to stop doing something that isn't profitable.

Facebook is not your friend and you are not Facebook's friend.

No business operates in a vacuum - there are countless examples where firms have to continue to provide services to unprofitable customers in some locations for public policy reasons - banking and telecoms probably throw up hundreds of examples.

Facebook may not be regulated as a utility now but they are giving lots of reasons why more regulation would be justified.

Let us not forget, that this is an app, and we can replace it at will.

If only more of the world's problems were so easily fixed.

I'm a member of a WhatsApp group of families who have family members in a particular care home. It's an important means of exchanging information.

Can I persuade them all to move to Signal / Telegram? No.

Not so easily fixed.

You can be the unreasonable minority that forces other's hands, to crib N.N.Taleb https://nassimtaleb.org/2016/08/intolerant-wins-dictatorship...

How nice, you'll still be able to receive messages, but not reply.

I hope this puts a real taste of the censorship these platforms arbitrarily wield into the mouths of millions of people.

don't forget - as long you are being harmed by a private corporation and not a government - it's A-ok!

You cannot escape an evil government.

But if you don't like the services of a private corporation, just drop it. Nobody is forcing anyone to use WhatsApp. Pleople decide to do so. We are all free, and I believe we can all affort a (very) few euros/dollars/pounds and buy Threema. Or using Signal for free.

But if your government decides to bump VAT on food at 60%, you cannot escape that. Only leave the country.

If these private corporations decide to censor some message, an individual "just dropping" them won't help them spread the message one bit.

Nobody's forcing you to use whatsapp other than a little global pandemic forcing all interactions online aye

Now's not the time to cut yourself off from your support network and Facebook knows it. Gross.

Whatsapp has basically replaced the public telephone network in some countries. It is the only way that many businesses can be contacted; they won’t respond to normal phone calls or SMS, and they don’t maintain a website or Facebook page. Even some government offices will insist on being contacted via Whatsapp. So, even if you bought Threema or used Signal, you would still be quite isolated from the society around you.

Once a product development by a private company becomes essentially necessary public infrastructure, obviously there are concerns.

Then that's a problem that needs to be solved. And the only way to solve it is to have people who don't use WhatsApp and refuse to. If the business doesn't take email, SMS, phone calls, Signal or Matrix they can go without my business, and I am already reaching out to those that may be at risk. And it doesn't happen here, but if a government office were to refuse contact other than whatsapp then I would sue. Why on earth should Facebook be given the power to dictate and process how I communicate to gov offices? It's insane and requires immediate response by citizens.

That's not censorship, that's generous. If you don't agree with the Google terms of service, it's not as if you can make use of their services. Facebook apparently allows people to still have WhatsApp, run the software, connect to the servers, and receive messages. Presumably to make other people talk to those users, making them want to reply, and then sell their soul after all, rather than haunting those users off the platform altogether. It's clever and insidious.

Whether or not is it generous doesn't change the fact that is is censorship.

To censor: "to examine in order to suppress (see suppress sense 2) or delete anything considered objectionable" (Merriam Webster).

That's not what this is. Nobody is reading messages or selectively withholding them. They're denying access to certain parts of the service for people that don't want to agree to the service's contract (I said, mostly jokingly, that this is "generous" because most other services just stop working altogether if you don't agree; I obviously don't think Facebook is the benevolent party here, as the rest of my previous comment made clear).

Whether that contract Facebook offers is reasonable and just, or whether perhaps we can consider WhatsApp public infrastructure due to its ubiquity and importance in certain countries, is a separate discussion.

The new contract may not be fair to require because people often don't really have a choice to move away, but for it to be censorship there has to be more than "we can't provide you a service because you didn't agree to our contract under which we provide it". If I don't agree that Deutsche Post sells my metadata to third parties, it's not suddenly censorship if Deutsche Post refuses to then deliver my letters. They're not censoring my letters, they're telling me to go and find another delivery service or deliver my own damn letters.

Which, to get back to the point, you can do on https://matrix.org.

> Nobody is reading messages or selectively withholding them

Facebook is selectively withholding messages sent by users who haven’t agreed that Facebook should get to arbitrarily and unilaterally change contract terms at any time.

Somehow I feel like we are speaking different languages.

Well how else could they tease you into eventually accepting the terms? You get that little dopamine hit from a notification, but can't deal with it until you accept their terms.

It's fairly insidious.

Good old extortion: a drug dealer gives naive users a free sample, those get addicted and then the dealer says the price. Luckily, we can temporarily use SMS while switching to Signal.

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