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Comment by deccanchargers | Hacker News Reader

I wish the Indian Government bans Whatsapp altogether ( I fully support Indian Government to do this).

My main grudge against Whatsapp comes from the fact that my college forces us to use it since the official group of my class is in whatsapp. I don't want to run that proprietary spyware on my phone. I feel it to be like neo-colonialism. Notes,etc. are sent there. It would be better if they switched to something better like telegram.

Another thing is that it spreads fakenews and propaganda and many people believe them.

I believe that banning Whatsapp in India gives more privacy to Indians.

P.S: I am Indian

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"I don't like it. Therefore, it should be banned."

Perfect summary of the Indian mindset.

This, alongside with "I like it. Therefore, the government should give it for free" can help explain half of what goes on in Indian politics.

Nope, You generalize large country based on my comment. it's mistake.

First thing, I am advocate of Open Source but I don't mind Anything that is doing something ethically.

Whatsapp, I believe is biggest hypocrisy. It advocates, argues for privacy and against spying while it being itself a spyware.

I don't mind whatsapp existing, i wouldn't simply use it,right? No, like i have mentioned in comment above, my college forces us to use whatsapp. Atleast it has API? no. or some standardized protocol? No.

Since it's spyware and it is pushed down my throat, i wish it not to exist. Since, whatsapp has gone against government itself, and we know that government doesn't like itself to be criticized, well it may ban Whatsapp itself, because then, my college will more likely to move to Telegram and it has atleast open source client.

Well, your criticism comes out of air without valid claims. i never told that the government should give it free to me because i like it.

moreover, my dislike of whatsapp has valid reasons.

Same thing here. We had a perfectly working Moodle site, with a scheduled calendar and such. Ended up switching to facebook because "everybody uses facebook".

You support privacy yet want to see and to end encryption removed (if the article is correct) and propose moving to a platform that in this sense is less secure from eavesdropping? OK.

Besides banning WhatsApp won't help with fake news - which ever dominant platform comes to replace it will suffer the same fate. It just so happens that everyone is on WhatsApp atm, so that's where everything happens. Including fake news.

I don't want end to end encryption to be banned and tbh, I don't trust Whatsapp's end to end encryption.

There are better alternatives to whatsapp which are open source, you know.

and no, the government is not going to block end to end encryption.

Ok, maybe not remove it completely, but start tampering with it. And i quote the article:

   Because messages are end-to-end encrypted, to comply with the law WhatsApp says it would have break encryption for receivers, as well as “originators”, of messages.

Also Telegram is not encrypted by default, so it's not a better alternative in that sense.

You may dislike facebooks business practices, but they are in the right on this one.

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