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My dude, the new TOS stipulate that "you grant WhatsApp a royalty-free, transferable license to use, reproduce and derive works from data you upload, send, ..."[0], which makes no sense at all if WhatsApp/Facebook did not have a way to decrypt the things people send via WhatsApp.

[0]: https://twitter.com/FSFTamilnadu/status/1346864102698754050

I think that the TOS is just terribly written and opaque, and that in the next weeks we will receive clarifications about the fact messages are protected. Otherwise if it will be the case that FB can read messages, the matter will be very different and I will agree on the switch. But so far to imply this looks far fetched.

Even without that, all the metadata which is now shared with FB and 𝙲̶𝚊̶𝚖̶𝚋̶𝚛̶𝚒̶𝚍̶𝚐̶𝚎̶ ̶𝙰̶𝚗̶𝚊̶𝚕̶𝚢̶𝚝̶𝚒̶𝚌̶𝚊̶ Friends is as sensitive as the actual transferred data. Contact lists and phone numbers are going to be correlated to Facebook profiles, messaging patterns mined, etc.

It's about time people rise up and oppose this exploitation.

That is DEFINITELY a serious problem.

Personally, I want to see more people using Matrix because it solves that exact problem, but before that can happen I think we need a really, really good, easy to use client for it that's less like a Slack/Discord clone and more similar to something like FB Messenger, WhatsApp, Signal, Etc.

Just a correction antirez. WhatsApp is extremely big in Asia too, specially South Asia.

Thanks! I was still thinking that Line and Wechat entirely dominated the Asian market.

You were partially correct: wechat is big in China, Whatsapp is big in the Indian subcontinent

And really big in SE Asia, AFAIR.

Regarding your other point, while you are theoretically right that this is a dangerous precedent.

But I think this week's events were extraordinary. At the end of the day humans are running these platforms and it becomes very hard to ignore developments like these. As much as I love free speech we have seen throughout the world that there is a real human cost to not censoring these things.

I agree that it was extraordinary and extremely worrying, but:

+ Trump is not running out of channels to speak, just who supports him will believe he is censored and will develop a deeper attachment to him. Democracy works when you are able to understand somebody is fool even if you can read what they write.

+ Twitter censored his tweets partially even before what happened recently. When he claimed he didn't lost elections.

+ This time we believe it was acceptable because our political views here in HN, mostly are aligned with the ones of folks running social platforms. Next time it may be different.

> Trump is not running out of channels to speak, just who supports him will believe he is censored and will develop a deeper attachment to him. Democracy works when you are able to understand somebody is fool even if you can read what they write.

Yeah, but what we have seen in social media is that the discourse gets polarized. Everyone hangs around in groups/channels/subreddits/blogs that are of the side they identify with. They are echo chambers which shape their own reality in many ways. So people often tend to believe one version of the events. Over the years we have seen fractures between ideologies grow deeper. So, I am not sure if this strategy works.

> This time we believe it was acceptable because our political views here in HN, mostly are aligned with the ones of folks running social platforms. Next time it may be different.

Completely agree on this. It is definitely dangerous.

> This time we believe it was acceptable because our political views here in HN, mostly are aligned with the ones of folks running social platform

There's different types of acceptable that get confused (for some people they may be equivalent, but the problem is that they fail to recognize that for other people they are distinct, and also that they fail to realize that making them equivalent is the essence of totalitarian control), specifically:

“Is it right that the private actor makes this decision?”

vs.

“Is it right that the private actor is free to make this decision?”

Twitter has made several curation decisions I thought were not acceptable in the first sense, because my political views are not aligned with Twitter's, such as deciding to lift the rules applicable to most participants from those that met a new leadership position test in response to widespread complaints about Trump’s routine violations early in its term.

But I don't find those decisions unacceptable in the second sense because I believe in freedom.of speech and the press, which exactly means that Twitter ought to be free to decide on what content it will carry, including whether and how to take the social position of the source of the content into account.

> So it's not going to happen that there is a mass move outside of Whatsapp anytime soon.

I (sadly) agree with you on this. (Ciao Salvatore)

I'm surprised you're being downvoted, is it possibly because of the reference to the current POTUS being "silenced" on Twitter (despite you later state that you're anti-Trump)?

Anyway, I believe you're incorrect on your stance on the new TOS, but I'm studying it more now because I am also a bit confused and I've read conflicting interpretations.

Edit: part of the confusion might stem from the fact that TOS in Europe do not include the data-sharing part with Facebook, which is instead included elsewhere [0]

(HN user antirez is based in Europe, not in the US)

[0]: https://twitter.com/NiamhSweeneyNYC/status/13471849630163394...

I was sure I was going to get downvoted (but that's not a problem, the interesting part is why). The fact is that here in HN there is a large group of people that think in a pragmatic way like "Trump is doing an incredible danger, it must be stopped", without giving the right weight to the other components of the issue, that is how important is that social medias are so neutral to even allow to say terrible things. American left-wing is very different than EU left-wing I identify with, and this causes a cultural mismatch that results in the downvotes.

About the TOS, to say the final word is impossible because the TOS is written in a very obscure way. But I don't believe they will, at the same time, keep implementing end-to-end encryption and, at the same time, have a TOS that states they can read your messages. Reading your messages would be completely unacceptable: then yes many would switch. IMHO it's just that lawyers tend to fail big time at their work, and that this will get clarified soon.