Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does Meta cooperate with the authorities? Isn't Whatsapp supposed to be end-to-end encrypted?
Read the founder exit letter. whatsapp is definitely not e2e encrypted for all features. You leak basic metadata (who talked to who at what time). You leak 100% of messages with "business account", which are another way to say "e2e you->meta and then meta relays the message e2e to N reciptients handling that business account". Then there's the all the links and images which are sent to e2e you->meta, meta stores the…
actually its a nominated end point, and then from there its up to the business. It works out better for meta, because they aren't liable for the content if something goes wrong. (ie a secret is leaked, or PII gets out.) Great for GDPR because as they aren't acting as processor of PII they are less likley to be taken to court.
Whatsapp has about the same level of practical "privacy" (encryption is a loaded word here) as iMessage. The difference is, there are many more easy ways to report nasty content in whatsapp, which reported ~1 million cases of CSAM a year vs apples' 267. (not 200k, just 267. Thats the whole of apple. https://www.missingkids.org/content/dam/missingkids/pdfs/202...)
Getting the content of normal messages is pretty hard, getting the content of a link, much easier.
Its not signal, but then its never meant to be.