Looking ahead for WhatsApp

https://blog.whatsapp.com/10000627/Looking-ahead-for-WhatsApp

by edmorley • 10 years ago

210 193 10 years ago

blog.whatsapp.com

What if I don't have a Facebook account? Are they still tracking my phone number?

pawadu• 10 years ago

Well, the latest trend is that you don't need an account to be tracked and spammed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12335168

tommeader• 10 years ago

It doesn't really clarify it at all but there is a question like this in their FAQs https://www.whatsapp.com/faq/general/28030012 about half way down or so.

srinathrajaram2• 10 years ago

If you use an app that displays ads from Facebook, then most probably yes.

pidg• 10 years ago

[We'll] show you more relevant ads if you have an account with them. For example, you might see an ad from a company you already work with, rather than one from someone you've never heard of.

I'm not sure WhatsApp understand why people advertise.

jasongill• 10 years ago

I'm not sure you understand the modern advertising landscape... Reminding customers of your brand and products through retargeting is very big business

dx0346• 10 years ago

That works for regular purchases, but not for every company. I recently bought a car and did extensive research prior to the purchase. Basically from the day I bought the car (and stopped searching) they started showing me ads. It's 2 months ago and I still see barely anything else. Doesn't seem very effective..

DavidNielsen• 10 years ago

In that case it would lessen the chance of a competitor gaining access to your eyeballs, not a bad bargain in some cases.

RodericDay3• 10 years ago

Does anyone who likes markets actually think this makes for a better market?

iamben2• 10 years ago

It's kinda hard to get a conversion from a single ad for anything more than an impulse product.

hengheng• 10 years ago

I used to be able to pay for WhatsApp. Those were the days.

carmat• 10 years ago

This title is very misleading to the point that it's the exact opposite of what the post says:

"We won’t post or share your WhatsApp number with others, including on Facebook, and we still won't sell, share, or give your phone number to advertisers."

RodericDay3• 10 years ago

including on Facebook

not with

rilut• 10 years ago

> including on Facebook
not with

Wow that is cleverly evil

onewaystreet• 10 years ago

The post says the exact opposite of the title:

Even as we coordinate more with Facebook in the months ahead, your encrypted messages stay private and no one else can read them. Not WhatsApp, not Facebook, nor anyone else. We won’t post or share your WhatsApp number with others, including on Facebook, and we still won't sell, share, or give your phone number to advertisers.

Edit: That paragraph relates to your WhatsApp number. It is true that they do plan to share your phone number that you signed up with. You can opt-out though: https://www.whatsapp.com/faq/general/26000016

thwd• 10 years ago

That's just clever wording.

We won’t post or share your WhatsApp number with others, including _ON_ Facebook.

Is just saying that your number won't be visible to your facebook peeps. Which does not mean that Facebook (the company) won't get access to it.

denzil_correa5• 10 years ago

You can opt-out though: https://www.whatsapp.com/faq/general/26000016

This is a dark pattern. In fact, once you say "Agree" you only have 30 days to opt-out.

After you agree to our updated Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, you will have an additional 30 days to make this choice by going to Settings > Account > Share my account info in the app.

I can't see such an option.

shade23• 10 years ago

from the page >The Facebook family of companies will still receive and use this information for other purposes such as improving infrastructure and delivery systems, understanding how our services or theirs are used, securing systems, and fighting spam, abuse, or infringement activities.

So even if you do opt out,it really does not make a difference.

[Edit] : More excerpts from the TOS(https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/#privacy-policy-information-y...)

Account Information. Your phone number, profile name and photo, online status and status message, last seen status, and receipts may be available to anyone who uses our Services, although you can configure your Services settings to manage certain information available to other users.
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. However, your WhatsApp messages will not be shared onto Facebook for others to see. In fact, Facebook will not use your WhatsApp messages for any purpose other than to assist us in operating and providing our Services.

The only guarantee that seems to be given is the the messages will not be shared onto Facebook( It can still be used by them) and the [...]assist us in operating and providing our Services,I would like to see what Whatsapp describes as 'providing our Services',if they one day define 'providing contextual ads and product suggestions' as their Service we really have no option here.

Also >New ways to use WhatsApp. We will explore ways for you and businesses to communicate with each other using WhatsApp, such as through order, transaction, and appointment information, delivery and shipping notifications, product and service updates, and marketing

This shows that once businesses onboard on Whatsapp (looking at it as wannabe WeChat),then this becomes a part of its services thereby allowing our information to flow out too.

cholantesh2• 10 years ago

Interesting that the opt-out link now leads to a 444...

edhelas• 10 years ago

https://www.whatsapp.com/faq/general/28030012

Third part :

This means, for example, although some information will be shared with Facebook (such as your phone number), that information will not be seen by other people on Facebook.

Yup that's just clever wording.

SimonPStevens3• 10 years ago

This line certainly makes it sound like they are sharing your phone number with Facebook to me:

  "And by connecting your phone number with Facebook's systems, Facebook can offer better friend suggestions and show you more relevant ads if you have an account with them."

coldtea4• 10 years ago

Yeah, just not ON Facebook.

As if we were worried that they would post our numbers to our FB friends...

coldtea4• 10 years ago

And who cares about the WhatsApp number? But sharing people's phone numbers? That's disgusting...

wigginus• 10 years ago

As far as I read correctly, you can opt out of this: https://www.whatsapp.com/faq/general/26000016

uitgewis2• 10 years ago

There is no such option in the iPhone app (2.16.9 / 15 Aug 2016).

denzil_correa5• 10 years ago

Once you say "Agree" you only have 30 days to opt-out.

After you agree to our updated Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, you will have an additional 30 days to make this choice by going to Settings > Account > Share my account info in the app.

I can't see the option either.

juandazapata• 10 years ago

The irony in their homepage is so good:

---------------- > Why we don't sell ads Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we dont need. - Tyler Durden, Fight Club

longsangstan• 10 years ago

Basically the whole blog post is talking about what Facebook is doing lol

uitgewis2• 10 years ago

Is there any way to keep WhatsApp and Facebook separate? It seems that either a) I use WhatsApp and have Facebook collect my data, or b) don't use WhatsApp.

There seems to be a complete lack of choice with what they do with my data.

lunula2• 10 years ago

You can use other messaging services. But the one you use may get bought up. They are fickle.

Why isn't there a popular p2p solution to messaging (other than email)?

ffggvv8• 10 years ago

Email is not p2p. And building an encrypted p2p is technically hard. Building a p2p even without encryption has UX problems. The other problem is how to make money from it? What's the incentive (for a private) to build it?

Kenji• 10 years ago

I uninstalled WhatsApp the moment it was bought by facebook. It's so obvious that facebook corrupts this fantastic company/chat application.

luastoned2• 10 years ago

How did Facebook corrupt WhatsApp? Pre-Facebook there was no end-to-end encryption, etc..

ffggvv8• 10 years ago

Did you see the source code of WhatsApp? Do you know somebody that saw it?

They can tell all they want, but I won't trust them until I (or someone I trust, e.g. Debian, FSF, etc.) see the code.

Also being end to end encrypted does not block whatsapp from censoring you or your friends/family! See how they "disabled" links to telegram https://orat.io/blog/as-of-today-whatsapp-is-blocking-telegr... and removed the telegram page from facebook.

denzil_correa5• 10 years ago

Earlier, anyone could get access to messages if they wanted to. Now, ONLY Facebook can access data.

sangnoir• 10 years ago

How did Facebook corrupt WhatsApp?

Previously WhatsApp had subscriptions ($1/yr) and were proudly ad-free. Facebook scrapped subscriptions and is about to add Ads. WhatsApp also never shared your number with anyone; sharing your number with advertisers is undoubtedly corrupting WhatsApp.

ffggvv8• 10 years ago

Thanks for doing it. If the whole community of hacker news decided to avoid shady companies like facebook we would probably be all better by now. As technology enthusiasts, I think we have a lot of influence on our relatives/friends.

To all reading, please consider deleting your account from shady companies.

Handy links http://justdelete.me/

valevk• 10 years ago

Funny that it's impossible to delete you HN account.

dx0346• 10 years ago

Why is Facebook shady? They provide a free service and get paid by using your info to target ads. Of course they haven't been perfect, but it's hard/impossible to run a company of that size without ever doing sth controversial.

Renaud3• 10 years ago

we want to explore ways for you to communicate with businesses that matter to you too

Empty marketing speak, that sentence has zero information content. It just leaves me vaguely worried that they don't seem to be up-front with whatever they are about to do.

I'm just glad that FB doesn't have my number and doesn't have access to my contact list.

aembleton2• 10 years ago

If any of your Facebook friends have your number and have synced their contact list, then they do have you number.

Renaud3• 10 years ago

But Facebook will not know it's me because FB doesn't have my number. At worst, all FB know is that some people have my Whatsapp number. That doesn't help FB serve targeted ads to my FB account.

jamiesonbecker3• 10 years ago

If you've installed WhatsApp, then they do.

If I hash your number that you installed whatsapp on and get X, and then hash your number in Facebook and get X, and then realize that X == X, then I just matched your contact list in WhatsApp with all of your data in FB, all without explicitly sharing your phone number.

Even better, I now can match up all your friends, and all of their likes and dislikes, and make some educated guesses about what your likes and dislikes are.

Hashing, long story short: put some data in, like a phone number, and get a unique, unguessable strong back -- the same string, every time.

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptographic_hash_functio...

Renaud3• 10 years ago

I know what hashing is, but, as I mentioned, FB doesn't have my phone number, so no X hash to compare to whatsapp X hash.

SimonPStevens3• 10 years ago

Funny how times change...

Some quotes from a What's App blog post from 4 years ago titled "Why we don't sell ads"[0]

  "Remember, when advertising is involved you the user are the product."

  "Your data isn't even in the picture. We are simply not interested in any of it."

  "When people ask us why we charge for WhatsApp, we say "Have you considered the alternative?"

So they aren't showing ads themselves, but they are shipping your data out to another entity that is. Seems worse to me.

[0] https://blog.whatsapp.com/245/Why-we-dont-sell-ads?

PUSH_AX• 10 years ago

The price also changed.

chinathrow• 10 years ago

I don't think they ship your data elsewhere - I think they allow the users to opt-in for more communication by others, as said, e.g. the users bank.

Though I have to admit, the opt-in is not mentioned as such.

Edit: F*CK. It's opt out. https://www.whatsapp.com/faq/general/26000016

That won't be legal in some european countries...

joeyspn• 10 years ago

$22B gives you enough bang for acquihiring a team and also their moral values.

The vilified philosopher Groucho Marx once said:

"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others."

Sad but very common these days...

ChuckMcM• 10 years ago

Interesting question is if you sell out your app for a ton of cash, there isn't any structural issue preventing remaking it in the pre-sold out version (well maybe the original authors sign a doc that says they won't but others don't). So in theory you all can move another service with morals intact. But that is "hard" because your friends don't feel like moving. So the moralist says to their friends, "fine but I won't chat on whatsapp" and then they find their friends like them but not enough to change the app they use. So the moralist now has no friends (or they are always grumpy because their friends chose convienience over privacy) and they have to vent that frustration on the people who sold out.

It is a really interconnected set of issues, where the simplest person to blame is often not the actual problem.

mtgx2• 10 years ago

I guess their excuse is that then they were still an independent company. But everyone should know that this is Facebook's modus operandi now.

"Relax everyone, we're just introducing this new type of tracking technology to improve our services and your security! It's not like we're going to use it for ads or anything like that - that's crazy talk. Just trust us."

Two years later:

"So, everyone, you know that tracking technology we launched earlier? Yeah, we're going to use it now to *improve you ad watching experience"! (you've already forgotten we promised not to do it, right? Okay, good.)"

RestlessMind3• 10 years ago

Out of curiosity - will you compromise a little bit[1] on your principles if someone offers you 19 Billion USD? Honestly, I would. And I think almost all the people in the world would. So I don't see anything funny / surprising here.

[1] - going from "won't show ads" to "ship data to someone else who will show ads" is not a big step. Just for perspective, some people are literally willing to kill others for far less.

Balgair3• 10 years ago

Then you don't have principles, you have exorbitant prices for your labor. Principles can change, yes, but if they do so only because there is a reward involved, then you are no different than my cat near dinner time. In fact, my cat may have more principles as he wont stop puking on the rug no matter the bribe I give him.

SimonPStevens3• 10 years ago

So this raises an interesting point. You could claim that everyone has a price, which may well be true. And if that is the case we should change the focus from just switching to the next new platform that promises [security/privacy] as a short term thing until someone offers them enough money. Instead we should focus on [building/using] something where no-matter the price offered the operators don't physically have the ability to hand over the data.

Stop using mobile phone numbers as account Id's might be a good start.

thr0waway1239• 10 years ago

Reminds me of a great joke.

Man to woman: "Will you sleep with me for a million dollars?" Woman:"Yes" Man:"I don't have a million. How about one dollar?" Woman:"Of course not. What kind of a woman do you think I am?" Man:"I think we have already answered that question. Let us now see if we can agree on a price"

Longhanks• 10 years ago

You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

Jayakumark• 10 years ago

Whatsapp founders mind voice - We just turned our users in to product because thats the best way to get billions in our bank account.

bprasanna• 10 years ago

Finally Facebook is making use of WhatsApp! How much ever carefully worded blog it could be, my brain considers it as "we will customize your facebook ads based on your whatsapp posts"!

luastoned2• 10 years ago

You don't seem to get end-to-end encryption.

lunula2• 10 years ago

Maybe they consider it works differently than advertised.

The end-to-end encryption cannot be reviewed because the source is closed.

blockross• 10 years ago

I doubt they will use our messages because you know, e2e encryption. This (very carefully worded) blog post only mentions using our phone numbers. Facebook has them, as well as a surprising number of advertisers and they'll be able to use it to determine more precisely your interests/needs/buys (because advertisers get your number from various sources like restaurants, shops, garages, etc.) and tailor their ads using that.

CalRobert2• 10 years ago

At what point do phone numbers become obsolete? Considering that I basically never call anyone, or receive calls (I do use voice communication but it's all voip), and that nobody where I live now uses SMS, what's even the point of that number?

rethab• 10 years ago

Maybe they could use WhatsApp to reach out to us -- ie. what used to be an ad on facebook will be a private message via WhatsApp telling you about the latest and greatest from your favourite fast food restaurant.

On a different note, they keep saying that nobody except the parties directly involved are able to read the e2e encrypted messages. They could be lying, couldn't they? Who knows that they (or somebody else) doesn't have a master key?

aembleton2• 10 years ago

I wonder how they will do this with end to end encryption. They could have the app report back if any keywords are used. Also who you contact and how often.

blowski• 10 years ago

With end-to-end encryption they won't be able to read the content of your posts. However, I guess they can tell who you spoke with and when, so it adds to Facebook's social graph.

I can imagine Facebook advertisers eventually being able to push messages to WhatsApp.

kirkdouglas3• 10 years ago

Time to use something else...

gshakir• 10 years ago

I and some of my friends foresaw this day and used Google voice numbers. Still, time to look for an alternative.

miend• 10 years ago

https://whispersystems.org

Open Whisper Systems' Signal is an open-source, end-to-end encrypted messaging client which can handle your regular SMS/MMS traffic, as well as (better) encrypted text communication between any number of Signal users, and encrypted voice calls. It not only encrypts content in transit, but stores it encrypted on your device as well. It has clients for iOS and Android. It also has a beta desktop app in the form of a Chrome app which can sync with your phone.

https://theintercept.com/2016/06/22/battle-of-the-secure-mes...

philliphaydon2• 10 years ago

Good thing Asia uses Line more than What's App.

srinathrajaram2• 10 years ago

India is one of the largest markets for Whatsapp.

philliphaydon2• 10 years ago

Never been to India. But Thailand, Cambodia, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, all use LINE. (and whatsapp) but I have 2 conversations on WhatsApp and dozens on LINE.

Granted I don't know anyone in Australia/New Zealand using LINE. (I live in Singapore)

ap46• 10 years ago

FUCK THIS!

https://blog.whatsapp.com/245/Why-we-dont-sell-ads?

The only reason I hang onto it is that someone with my contact number might send me something & I still need my cell number to access it otherwise.

danielsamuels• 10 years ago

How much were you paying for Whatsapp then, how much are you paying now?

chukye• 10 years ago

I do not mind to pay, as long as they dont share my phone number and dont show me ads.

coldtea4• 10 years ago

Who said WhatsApp customers suddenly became unwilling to pay?

As opposed to FB/WhatsApp looking for other (ad companies) customers?

If I pay for a service membership and then you make it free, that doesn't mean you get to do whatever you want with my data.

fiatjaf3• 10 years ago

They could sell access to a business API: just a way for business to communicate with users from corporate numbers accessed through an API, instead of forcing companies to respond to customers by hiring an employee to type text on a phone.

This could also power things like https://getmagicnow.com/ on Whatsapp.

tdkl2• 10 years ago

Seems that the endgame now when end to end encryption is well known, desirable and serves as a product advertisement, that they'll just go after metadata and focus on that instead.

JOnAgain2• 10 years ago

I don't get this part: "We won’t post or share your WhatsApp number with others, including on Facebook" and then "And by connecting your phone number with Facebook's systems, Facebook can offer better friend suggestions and show you more relevant ads if you have an account with them"

How are they matching up accounts without sharing my phone number with Facebook?

jamiesonbecker3• 10 years ago

It's just hashed. I.e., pick a unique number that matches your phone number and just always use that one instead, because the value in your phone number is not the functionality of calling you, but matching you up with all of your other metadata, content, "Likes", etc.

So the goal isn't to sell YOU. You are boring and prosaic. No advertiser cares about you personally.

We'll make money by selling your likes and who you're connected to in this fuzzy, aggregate format. Advertisers want to sell to a group of people who look just like you.

lorenzhs2• 10 years ago

It's just hashed

but the key space is way too small for a hash to be a meaningful anonymization mechanism. It's too easy to build a rainbow table for possible phone numbers.

vincentkriek• 10 years ago

I believe the big difference sharing ON Facebook and sharing WITH Facebook.

JOnAgain2• 10 years ago

This is probably spot on, and the bit I missed when reading. So they share your phone number and contacts (or Facebook and Whatsapp use the same hash off your phone number and share that), but Facebook promises not to put the number you have in Whatsapp on the website.

jamiesonbecker3• 10 years ago

Hashing your phone number and linking it with other phone numbers (also hashed) meets all of their promises and yet still allows them to build an object graph of who's connected to whom, who communicates when, how often, and with whom, and match all that data with what's in facebook already with the data that's in your address book on your phone, even if you never install the FB app...

metadata, all the way down.

daemin• 10 years ago

So basically they're going in the direction of WeChat. People won't see advertising, but businesses will pay to let you interact with them on the WhatsApp platform.

gergles• 10 years ago

https://www.whatsapp.com/faq/general/26000016

That "Option 1" optout is the darkest dark pattern I've ever seen. A secret hidden checkbox that only shows up if you tap "yes, I'd like read 2000 words of legal jargon", which doesn't do anything anyway, because either way Facebook is getting your phone number. They just might choose not to use it for ad targeting if you check the box.

Gross, gross, gross.

Also, has anyone else noticed "to fight spam and abuse" is the "think of the children" of Internet services? Any invasive technique (SMS verification, browser fingerprinting, trying to sniff out unique hardware hashes, DRM) is always presented as "fighting spammers". Just an interesting sidebar.

mtgx2• 10 years ago

because either way Facebook is getting your phone number.

Correction - Facebook already got your numbers (and has been doing recommendations based on them).

I've been noticing Facebook recommendations based on Whatsapp numbers I have for many months. So they already have the numbers. But they're probably legally obliged to announce it in a privacy policy change that they will use them to target ads at you.

kingosticks• 10 years ago

They surely do have my numbers i.e the phone numbers in my address book (for other people), but do they actually have my number? Every time I visit the facebook website i get a popup asking me to update my profile with my phone number. Note that I do not have the facebook app installed.

rogy• 10 years ago

I find this so creepy. I get recommended people on facebook such as my Phsyio, whos number I don't even have saved. I've just spoken to him on Whatsapp. Bizarre.

MichaelMoser1232• 10 years ago

wonderful, a successor for whatsapp is now getting its chance. Everybody i know was using gmail for sending messages, and then they did a few awkward redesigns and told us that we should not expect too much in terms of privacy [1]. Whatsapp got its chance and promised privacy and integrity - and everybody started to use WhatsApp instead of mail (still they have to store the messages on the server for delivery and don't tell you for how long they do that). I guess new startups that do messaging get another chance.

[1] http://techland.time.com/2013/08/14/google-says-gmail-users-...

rvschuilenburg• 10 years ago

I remember Telegram saw a huge increase in users shortly after the announcement was made that Facebook would buy WhatsApp.

lima9• 10 years ago

Use Signal: https://whispersystems.org/

It uses the same crypto as WhatsApp (same developer), but values your privacy and has properly working audio calls - better than WhatsApp in my experience.

It's essentially WhatsApp minus Facebook. And it's open source.

The company (and person - Moxie) behind Signal, OpenWhispherSystems, worked with Google and Facebook to add end-to-end encryption to Facebook Messenger, Google Allo and WhatsApp. It's literally the same protocol and Moxie is a highly regarded cryptographer / security researcher.

Telegram, which some are suggesting, has encryption as opt-in and their encryption scheme has been widely criticized for being dodgy (see: https://moxie.org/blog/telegram-crypto-challenge/).

skybrian2• 10 years ago

You're seeing this everywhere because spam and abuse make everything suck. That's reality. Any service that doesn't have some way of fighting it eventually devolves into a cesspit.

reitanqild3• 10 years ago

Honestly: they don't need to feed data into their <del>spam cannon</del> adtech to solve spam?

Next up: These guys are selling booze to support AA!

kbart• 10 years ago

I deleted my WhatsApp account and uninstalled it from my phone the same day Facebook bought it. It was a only a matter of time when WhatsApp becomes another data collection and ad delivery platform.

shklnrj• 10 years ago

So I get the following from the post-

* we wont advertise, but we would expose the data to Facebook and they would, see we are still awesome!

Anyways, can someone help me in understanding how businesses would contact a person via Whatsapp?

rcarmo• 10 years ago

The writing's been on the wall for quite some time, so this isn't really news -- more of a clarification, really, written with reassurance for the average user in mind.

I see a lot of negative pushback here on HN, but here in Europe WhatsApp is pretty much universally used -- not to ludicrous extents, but simply because it's always been a usable, reliable service. Stuff like Viber caught on in some places, Telegram seems to be used only by techies, and Facebook Messenger seems to be rather hit and miss.

Despite a lot of reservations, I started using WhatsApp because the peer pressure was unsustainable -- family, friends, colleagues (at three companies), etc., everyone uses it, and to me it has the saving grace of (unlike FB messenger) not being updated every month with frilly, useless features (although they never seem to get around to adding quick replies on Apple Watch, and the lock screen replies on iOS still fail).

I'd probably be happy with SMS and iMessage, but the truth is that I _never_ get any messages through either (except for banks and the odd URL sent from an iPad)...

thewhitetulip3• 10 years ago

I can not prove it, but I feel github/google and fb has something of a deal.

I communicated with a guy on github and gmail for a project, I got his recommendation as a friend on facebook. He lives million miles away from me, have never met him, have 0 mutual friends, yet there he pops up, since then I have never used facebook on my personal laptop.

dougk16• 10 years ago

I've had similar situations and my assumption is that the other person looked me up on facebook and that's how the connection was established. Still creepy but seems more probable than facebook infiltrating my other communication channels.

msh• 10 years ago

He probably shared his email contacts with fb.

thewhitetulip3• 10 years ago

Well, I am sure I wouldn't be in his email contacts, but maybe he shares his email stuff with fb. Spooky, I stopped using facebook since then :-D

Rarely do I use it these days. had to login to check the deepmask demo :P

2almalki• 10 years ago

I think if you were logged into fb, and checked out the guys github, and github has fb widgets on his page, then it can make the connection. IIRC linkedin did/does the same thing for mapping where you went. I run ghostry to block widgets/analytics, and uBlock origin for adds

take this with a trunk load of salt.. idk if its right..

gurkendoktor2• 10 years ago

Since you've communicated about a project, it's pretty likely they have googled your name and clicked your Facebook profile in the Google results, or looked you up directly on Facebook. Should be pretty easy to reproduce with a throwaway profile, and it's much more likely than a deal between GitHub or Google and Facebook.

thewhitetulip3• 10 years ago

That's the sppoky part, I have made my fb profile not crawalable, unless you have mutual friend you can't even add me. Yes that sounds like a deal to me.

nbevans• 10 years ago

I expected this blog post to be launching their API - which is now, what, about 3 or 4 years overdue? But alas no - just some privacy encroachment changes to their T&Cs...

reacharavindh2• 10 years ago

I really really really wish there was a IM messenger as ubiquitous,simple,sensible as WhatsApp that I can pay a reasonable dollar for and expect sensible privacy.

I'm using fast mail instead of Gmail, I'm using self-developed sync scripts instead of Dropbox, What can I use instead of WhatsApp?

Propen2• 10 years ago

Dropbox alternative: https://tresorit.com/ WhatsApp alternative: https://whispersystems.org/

reacharavindh2• 10 years ago

Thanks for the link to tresorit. Will check it out. I checked out WhisperSystems. Signal (their iOS app) needs access to Contacts to work. Why?! (1) Why should I trust them with my contacts that I'm NOT reaching through their App, (2) Smells the same like WhatsApp where it is only a matter of time, where they sell out and start selling my contacts for "correlation" value at least.

Cross posting this rant as a ask HN post.

laurent123456• 10 years ago

All these new features is basically them trying to become the new WeChat, where we'll have one central place to manage all our digital needs (buying tickets, paying bills, getting notifications from the bank, etc.) [0]

[0] http://www.economist.com/news/business/21703428-chinas-wecha...

noahmbarr• 10 years ago

Even the blog title has the stench of BS - "Looking ahead for WhatsApp"

wst_• 10 years ago

The problem with switching into better IM is that all your friends and family should switch as well. Considering that most of people does not understand a privacy issues today and do not care about security, it is an extremely though task. You may be using state of art encrypted connection, but it would not help much if you have no one to talk to.

tgsovlerkhgsel• 10 years ago

It also doesn't help that all the privacy-aware tools suck.

I was using Signal, but it was sufficiently unreliable that I was now forced to sign up for WhatsApp because Signal was practically unusable. And usability-wise, WhatsApp is sadly miles better than anything else I've seen, especially Signal. Great call quality, automatically reconnects (with an audible hint that the connection is down) instead of silently dropping your call, at least appears to work more reliably than Signal where recently about half of my call attempts failed and message delivery is pretty much random. Also supports read receipts.

I won't even get started about XMPP where clients act out in ways that would make any non-geeky person immediately stop using it. Even for the more privacy-aware people, there is a limit to the brokenness that a person can tolerate.

It's great that other messengers provide more privacy, but all that's pretty useless if they fail at fulfilling their main task. And that's before the network effect you mentioned.

kartickv• 10 years ago

As a counterpoint to the rest of the comments, I'm probably better off with WhatsApp than plain SMS, which the Indian government has access to. I'll pick Facebook spying over government spying.

Other networks are not an option, since WhatsApp is the universal choice.

michaeloblak• 10 years ago

WhatsApp, if you want to make your platform for business, just open your API.

MrBra• 10 years ago

So, do they have my number if I agreed to the new terms but I didn't set my telephone number inside FB?

Looking ahead for WhatsApp

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