this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2024
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Is this deshittification?
Oooor it's a change being made by Meta to ensure that all your contact details are entered into a platform owned by them (since the underlying phone OSes have made scraping that data harder in recent versions), so they can more efficiently mine your data so Zuck can afford another yacht.
I'd like to think it's a user benefit, but I mean, historically.... it wont't be. (Yes they claim it's encrypted, but I don't trust Meta one bit to still not have some way to use this data for their benefit.)
It’s reasonable not to trust them, but they could get in serious legal trouble if they are claiming the data is encrypted and they can’t access when in fact they can.
WhatsApp has a different business model. There are a lot of businesses on the platform and businesses are charged to do business messaging with users.
In some parts of the world WhatsApp has become a somewhat essential part of life so plenty of businesses what to participate and access the users there.
How Meta got into that position involved zero-rating— a practice where they work with ISPs to make sure there are no data fees to access WhatsApp.
While free seems good, the practice allowed WhatsApp to quickly dominate, crowd out competitors and make itself essential.
https://www.humanrightspulse.com/mastercontentblog/is-zero-rating-a-threat-to-human-rights
“What makes a zero-rating practice, like that of WhatsApp in Brazil, particularly threatening to human rights is when it is the only economically viable option for internet access in a society. In Brazil, as an internet connection can swallow up to 15% of the household income, users rely on these practises. As Professor Belli points out that economically, no other opportunity exists to assess the information being presented.”
Eh, I would actually believe this is purely user driven. Their solution doesn't sound like it will work differently in Europe vs the rest of the world, and if their claims about it being encrypted and only user accessible are true, there is fundamentally no benefit to them from a data harvesting stand point.
They also face a lot of competition in the messaging space, moreso than any of their other apps, which will generally incentivize them to be more user focused.