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How WhatsApp became an unstoppable global cultural force

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Re: How WhatsApp became an unstoppable global cultural force

#121

Post by nitwit005 »

dcsommer wrote: post #91
noprocrasted wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It collects people's contacts and social graphs, which are then used to influence ad targeting in Meta's other platforms. That's why it insists so badly on having full access to your contacts.

This is absolutely not true and would immediately trigger lawsuits across the globe. WhatsApp and Meta data separation is extremely strict. Source: I work at WhatsApp and also https://faq.whatsapp.com/1303762270462331 > We need your contacts to provide the service, but don’t share your contacts with Meta.

Under "How We Work With Other Meta Companies" in the privacy policy describes a usage almost identical to what the parent suggests:

> improving their services and your experiences using them, such as making suggestions for you (for example, of friends or group connections, or of interesting content), personalizing features and content, helping you complete purchases and transactions, and showing relevant offers and ads across the Meta Company Products;

https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/privacy-policy

Re: How WhatsApp became an unstoppable global cultural force

#122

Post by noprocrasted »

dcsommer wrote: post #91
noprocrasted wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It collects people's contacts and social graphs, which are then used to influence ad targeting in Meta's other platforms. That's why it insists so badly on having full access to your contacts.

This is absolutely not true and would immediately trigger lawsuits across the globe. WhatsApp and Meta data separation is extremely strict. Source: I work at WhatsApp and also https://faq.whatsapp.com/1303762270462331 > We need your contacts to provide the service, but don’t share your contacts with Meta.

Your company has been knowingly in breach of the GDPR since it went into effect and shows no signs of stopping despite multiple adverse rulings and fines. There is no reason to trust a company whose entire business model is based on breaching privacy regulations and lying about it.

What you're saying is either an outright lie you are telling us, or a lie you have been told and are yourself choosing to believe to feel better about working for them, or to not put yourself at risk by digging deeper and finding adverse information (which once you know it you may be required to blow the whistle or find yourself legally complicit in the matter).

Basic economics suggests there is no reason Meta (then-Facebook) would pay what it had paid for WhatsApp for "just" a messaging app, especially before it was as entrenched as it is now (and so could trivially be dethroned by Facebook's own offering). They did so because unlike Facebook, people trusted WhatsApp with access to their contacts and that information is extremely important for Meta.

Re: How WhatsApp became an unstoppable global cultural force

#123

Post by Veserv »

orf wrote: post #74
Veserv wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, very few countries have a app where you can do "everything" in it. "This clear definition is really hard to achieve, therefore it must mean something different" is not a counter-argument. I observe that these applications which are everything apps almost always have integrated payments platforms. This is not always the case, but seems to be the stickiest part of the offering. My thesis is that a competitive appl…

> I observe that these applications which are everything apps almost always have integrated payments platforms But this is essentially a sample size of 1? There’s definitely an advantage to having integrated payments if you want to do “everything” (most of which requires or is related to payment of some kind). But IMO you’re missing the forest for the trees: adding a payment button to an app is essentially integrated…

Because if you integrate with Apple Pay or Google Wallet then iOS or Android become the platform that delivers tailored applications, not your "everything app". Almost like that is exactly how it currently works in much of the world.

You are arguing in the wrong direction. You think I am arguing that supporting payments is a compelling feature for get customers. So, logically, you just need to add the ability to do payments in some way. My argument is actually that a robust payments platform is the moat needed to prevent your "everything" app from fragmenting by preventing your users from going around or under you. A lower level platform that provides a low friction means of payments for delivered services undercuts the coherency of the higher level platform since applications can be delivered around you.

So your examples actually support my argument. Payment platforms like Apple Pay and Google Wallet attached to their service delivery platforms, the app stores + OS, make it hard to lock people into "everything" apps because the OS is the "everything" app. Efficient inter-account transfers prevent "everything" apps from locking users into their payment ecosystem. If you do not have the payment moat, you are left with actually competing on features and delivery of services which is really hard to do across "everything", so you are better off focusing instead of trying to make a "everything" app.

Re: How WhatsApp became an unstoppable global cultural force

#124

Post by ethbr1 »

crazygringo wrote: post #99
Zak wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reasonably confident WhatsApp never caught on in the USA because most American phone plans had unlimited SMS in the early 2010s when WhatsApp's popularity was growing elsewhere. International messaging was probably also a big driver in Europe, but less relevant in other markets.

You are correct, this is exactly the reason. Other countries charged per SMS so everyone had good reason to use an app instead. The US didn't charge, so why would anyone download an app?

The US did have SMS caps/charges, but pre-2008-iPhone+AppStore. (from memory)

Consequently, I don't remember much of a timespan when US customers had both (a) SMS caps/charges and (b) smartphones with open-enough app stores to distribute something like WhatsApp.

For much of the rest of the world, including international communication, that was a more extended period.

Re: How WhatsApp became an unstoppable global cultural force

#125

Post by openrisk »

Whatsapp is the only app (or any piece of software for that matter) you will actually see embedded in the physical world, in the form of street signs for neighborhood watch groups.

Very unfortunate given its now part of an adtech conglomerate. The defacto messaging app for such uses should be Signal.

Re: How WhatsApp became an unstoppable global cultural force

#126

Post by noprocrasted »

dcsommer wrote: post #119
toast0 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be very careful about making such statements. It is absolutely true that WhatsApp collects your contacts' phone numbers and your social graph. Unless WhatsApp has stopped doing that, in which case it should make a big announcement. I don't know if the social graph is used outside WhatsApp, so that part may not be true, but it is within the privacy policy to do so (at least the one I see, EU may have a differe…

This is not me making some grand new commitment. It's right in the privacy policy and also summarized here: https://faq.whatsapp.com/1303762270462331 > We need your contacts to provide the service, but don’t share your contacts with Meta. I'm frustrated that people even at HN allow themselves to indulge in conspiracy theories that would be immediately whistle-blowed or reported on. There are thousands of people that…

> We need your contacts to provide the service, but don’t share your contacts with Meta.

There are plenty of ways to make this statement 100% factual and still effectively leak the user's address book, at least in a form useful to Meta. It is true that Meta doesn't need your raw contacts, it just needs certain inferences made from them. WhatsApp can perfectly well make those inferences and only share those, with some trivially-reversed "anonymization" on top as an extra layer of obfuscation.

Re: How WhatsApp became an unstoppable global cultural force

#127

Post by bigzyg33k »

noprocrasted wrote: post #122
dcsommer wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely not true and would immediately trigger lawsuits across the globe. WhatsApp and Meta data separation is extremely strict. Source: I work at WhatsApp and also https://faq.whatsapp.com/1303762270462331 > We need your contacts to provide the service, but don’t share your contacts with Meta.

Your company has been knowingly in breach of the GDPR since it went into effect and shows no signs of stopping despite multiple adverse rulings and fines. There is no reason to trust a company whose entire business model is based on breaching privacy regulations and lying about it. What you're saying is either an outright lie you are telling us, or a lie you have been told and are yourself choosing to believe to feel…

Whatsapp has been audited several times, and to say that an engineer at meta “has been lied to” is laughable given he/she has access to the entire codebase

Source: also worked at meta and had full access to WhatsApps codebase, like most engineers at meta

Re: How WhatsApp became an unstoppable global cultural force

#128

Post by dcsommer »

noprocrasted wrote: post #122
dcsommer wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely not true and would immediately trigger lawsuits across the globe. WhatsApp and Meta data separation is extremely strict. Source: I work at WhatsApp and also https://faq.whatsapp.com/1303762270462331 > We need your contacts to provide the service, but don’t share your contacts with Meta.

Your company has been knowingly in breach of the GDPR since it went into effect and shows no signs of stopping despite multiple adverse rulings and fines. There is no reason to trust a company whose entire business model is based on breaching privacy regulations and lying about it. What you're saying is either an outright lie you are telling us, or a lie you have been told and are yourself choosing to believe to feel…

A conspiracy involving thousands of people lying and no one speaking up over many years (it's been over 9 years since the acquisition) is incredibly unrealistic. Your hypothesis that WhatsApp shares the addressbook with Meta is not at all probable.

Re: How WhatsApp became an unstoppable global cultural force

#129

Post by jorvi »

itikasp wrote: post #10
insane_dreamer wrote: post #8

What surprises me is that while WhatsApp has become an "everything" app in many parts of the world, much like WeChat in China, it has not done so in the US. In fact, I don't know anyone in the US who uses WhatsApp "internally" (the only times I use it is to communicate with people outside the US). The description of WhatsApp here is exactly what Elon wanted X to become (which clearly didn't and almost certainly now w…

Hi, I am one of the editors of this story, and we have also thought about this. In my opinion, one of the reasons why WhatsApp hasn't become the "everything app" in the US is because Apple/iOS devices are very popular in the country, where as in much of the world, Android is popular thanks to the availability of cheaper devices. Apple offers a suit of apps and features, including Facetime, that's not available for An…

WhatsApp has not become the "everything app" in the EU either?

People use it for chatting with people, groups of people, or businesses. Virtually no one uses the Status or Communities feature.

I have 289 people in my phone book right now, 1 of them occasionally posts on Status when on vacation. Of 25 people I quickly checked with, not one of them uses Communities.

Re: How WhatsApp became an unstoppable global cultural force

#130

Post by shafyy »

wenc wrote: post #70
insane_dreamer wrote: post #8

What surprises me is that while WhatsApp has become an "everything" app in many parts of the world, much like WeChat in China, it has not done so in the US. In fact, I don't know anyone in the US who uses WhatsApp "internally" (the only times I use it is to communicate with people outside the US). The description of WhatsApp here is exactly what Elon wanted X to become (which clearly didn't and almost certainly now w…

This is why travel is so important -- it gets us out of our bubbles. Once I was brainstorming with a German colleague about a new business chat feature, and he said we should target WhatsApp as a channel. My American colleagues were like, "No one uses that these days." But Americans have little idea how popular WhatsApp really is in Europe, and Brazil (where it's colloquially called Zappy Zappy), and vast swaths of t…

> Japan does have a very high iOS market share however because they appreciate craftsmanship

Citation needed

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