What arguments do you use to persuade someone they should stop using Whatsapp? For me personally the fact it’s run by Facebook is already enough to be sceptical and avoid using the service. However, most people probably consider it a good app for private messaging because of the E2EE.
The collection of the metadata doesn’t seem to bother people too much and looking at the privacy policy I am having a hard time trying to define what is it exactly about the metadata being collected that makes WhatsApp a bad service for private communication:
We collect device and connection-specific information when you install, access, or use our Services. This includes information such as hardware model, operating system information, battery level, signal strength, app version, browser information, mobile network, connection information (including phone number, mobile operator or ISP), language and time zone, IP address, device operations information, and identifiers (including identifiers unique to Meta Company Products associated with the same device or account).
At the end, one might argue, the communication itself is private since WhatsApp can’t read the messages. Would it be correct to say that WhatsApp does provide private messaging but the problem is rather having the app itself because it collects loads of additional data? Any thoughts on how this data can be misused by Facebook and why it should be important for everyone to keep FB from getting the metadata?
Well, the content of the messages is usually not so important.
If Alice speaks to Bob, go to visit him (1) and stays there over night (2) and few days later is sending messages to number X which belongs to abortion clinic (3) and the day after she’s going there personally (4) You don’t really need the content of the messages to figure it out what’s going on in Alice’s life.
Legend:
Both phones connected to the same wifi
Location of the both phones over period of time
Meta know who speaks to who
Again location + clinic’s wifi
But to be honest I don’t think that you’ll convice anyone this way. It’s too complicated and people don’t care.
My problem with this “they know you called your oncologist/gynecologist/name_your_favorite_doctor but don’t know what you were talking about” argument is that you don’t usually use WhatsApp for such kind of calls. So FB will see how often two (or more) people communicate and unless you disclose some sensitive information in the name or description of the group chats, what kind of sensitive information will Facebook actually have access to based on a user’s metadata?
Do you have alternative ways of persuading people to stop using WhatsApp?
It depends on the person.
I don’t care so much, so one day I just announced that I’ll be leaving WhatsApp for this and this reasons (shortly!) and I’ll be on Signal. If people want, here is the link, it works the same. There was short transition period which I used to “convinced” more people to join by Michael Bezzel’s “shady psychology” (TL;DR - take a looooooong time to answer on WhatsApp and answer immediately on Signal). Then I just deleted the account. Some people installed Signal, some didn’t You can call it spring cleaning of the contact list.
Eh its hard to convince anyone to move messengers. If the person you are talking about is a privacy/security minded person then it won’t be hard to get them to move to Signal as the privacy benefits will sell themselves.
If this is a ‘normie’ then WhatsApp might be the better option then whatever else they were using like SMS or Facebook Messenger. Take a win when you can get one.
People usually don’t care about technicalities, I myself have to use whatsapp (through matrix bridge) coz I have some groups and people that I love to talk with. My family even uses an echo dot and to be fair the music playback and speaker quality can not be found with anything else.
So the question is to show the UX / Utility of something more private. there is this nice article on domestication of users
I really don’t have any solution to the problem utility vs privacy.
the music playback and speaker quality can not be found with anything else.
I had Nest Audio and for the price the sound is incredible. Also Nest Mini is impressive.
No. I don’t have respect for people who don’t care about privacy and freedom, by using anti-privacy services your directly contribute to the spread of mass surveillance, as a consequence people like me who value privacy and freedom must fear the future and the spreading surveillance.
By not openly and directly calling things out you are making things worse, same as censorship.
This is outright misinformation, WhatsApp uses Signal Protocol internally(modified to collect metadata). They can’t and don’t need to access message content.
Being rude to people who don’t share your opinion/have different priorities/are simply not well informed is not going to solve it but will only make those people hostile to whatever you consider to be a problem.
Also, don’t expect support from the community of people who do value privacy with such an attitude. Everyone has their own threat model which might be different from yours, but it doesn’t mean that the others are idiots if they don’t share your values.
I guess the problem of domestication is even a harder concept to communicate because it is so practical to have just one app for all means of communication.
It’s disappointing to realize that basically the only thing you can say to WhatsApp users is “don’t use it because Facebook is evil” without being able to point out any real dangers.
Yes. Privacy is really abstract concept. You can start talking about security, that’s little bit easier to grasp. Unless they’ll be personally affected by that to some degree, vast majority of people will not care.
I usually sell people on usability features of Signal not the advanced triple ratchet encryption. I’ve actually had better luck convincing people that are using SMS to switch to Signal because of the neat features like stickers, high res image sharing and video calling. Whatsapp has more features than Signal so it is a pretty hard sell especially if you are already using Whatsapp with that person.
Well, that’s exactly what I would do but as my post suggests I don’t know how to persuade people that they should be concerned about metadata collected by WhatsApp
You can call it spring cleaning of the contact list.