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Comment by taylodl | Hacker News Reader

Using Facebook to do messaging? No thanks! Sure, when communicating with international friends I use WhatsApp because that appears to be what the rest of the world uses, but here in the States? No. We don't trust Zuckerberg. And yes, iMessage group chats are very much a thing here in the States and SMS group chats in general. And also yes, there's always that techie friend with an Android and makes your whole conversation go "green." Thing is, only middle schoolers really seem to care. I just know it means the communication isn't secured end-to-end.

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I didn't like FB well before it became fashionable, but I don't understand your logic here: what is that exactly that you can't entrust WhatsApp to send, but you can trust Apple, or your mobile carrier?

I'm not really answering your question, but in the States, there is a lot more trust placed in Apple over Facebook. This isn't that surprising - Apple has a much stauncher stance on privacy than alternatives.

I wish Signal would be more popular, but it's just not. I can't really ask new people I meet to communicate over Signal because it's a burden to get others to install some new application.

Im tired of super secure apps that ask for your phone number and even publish it to your contacts. Wake me up when Signal doesnt depend on a phone number any more.

DMing on Instagram is super popular in USA. Most of the people don't give a shit about privacy to begin with.

Facebook's goal is to extract as much information from you as possible. Apple wants to sell you a new phone.

It's absolutely not like that. Apple extracts profits in a lots of ways, including those which rely on gathering personal data.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32539762

Apple's iMessage is secured end-to-end, your mobile carrier can't see the message. As soon as the box goes green then any intermediary, including your mobile carrier and your friend's mobile carrier, can read the message and/or make it available to law enforcement.

In a U.S. court of law Apple has stood up to authority and pointed out they can't provide the messages requested as they're locked even to Apple. Facebook on the other hand has acquiesced to U.S. law enforcement. That tells me that even if Facebook has secured end-to-end messaging, which I don't think they've ever claimed, they have backdoors.

WhatsApp definitely claims end-to-end encryption. There’s a bubble telling you so at the top of every new WhatsApp thread.

If that's the case how do they detect if a message has been forwarded too many times ?

It's all about metadata, PRISM et al

I don’t know.

WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted. WhatsApp actually uses the Signal Protocol. Probably the best protocol they could use. It's described pretty detailed in a whitepaper publicly available on the WhatsApp website: https://www.whatsapp.com/security/WhatsApp-Security-Whitepap...

You got me to look into this further. I was seeing if there was a backdoor - and it appears there isn't. https://signal.org/blog/there-is-no-whatsapp-backdoor/

Given that I don't see why more of us Americans aren't using WhatsApp! :)

Ofcourse WhatsApp is not open source, as opposed to Signal (the app). You can never be truly sure if the protocol is implemented without backdoors because you can't verify the code. But I agree, WhatsApp is a pretty solid app.

I don't know about GPs logic, but my logic is pretty simple. I don't use any infrastructure that Mark Zuckerberg had his fingers on. That was clear to me after the first time I saw him.

> We don't trust Zuckerberg

This is a common excuse I hear in college to not use FB messenger or Whatsapp. But those same people usually have no issues using Instagram DMs. For most people, it's just a cover story to mask the real reason: Facebook messenger and whatsapp are uncool in the US

Well, I would fear verizon or whatever much more than Zuckerberg, especially that sms is plain text (not iMessage though).

Nonetheless, it is a self-made problem in the US, which wouldn’t even make sense in the EU because we don’t have such a high percentage of apple devices.

> but here in the States? No. We don't trust Zuckerberg

Completely false. I have multiple group chats in Messenger. The people who “don’t trust Zuckerberg” enough to not use his messaging products are a tiny minority of people in the US.

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