New warnings this week should be a serious reality check for Meta/Facebook’s more than 3 billion messaging users across WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger; here’s what you need to know...
The argument that has blown up this weekend between Elon Musk and WhatsApp, forcing the messenger’s boss Will Cathcart to defend the integrity of its security, has highlighted—yet again—the awkward truth that has shadowed WhatsApp’s success: Facebook aka Meta.
Facebook is the world’s second most valuable data harvesting machine after Google, and certainly its most contentious. While Google’s tracking and ads generate plenty of headlines, it’s Facebook/Meta that plays center stage when Apple and others crack down on data collection and tracking overreaches.
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It is that metadata collection and analysis that has sparked the latest public spat. And while we’ve progressed significantly from Cambridge Analytica and App Tracking Transparency, this is still an area that concerns and confuses in equal measure.
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Facebook acquired WhatsApp in 2014. The platform has five-times as many users now as it did then, it also enabled end-to-end encryption for all messages and calls between those users by default in 2016. WhatsApp might be Meta’s largest messaging platform, but Meta also has Facebook Messenger, which in itself has more than a billion users; it is also default end-to-end encrypted as of last year.
Let’s put that into perspective. Meta/Facebook, despite its data harvesting business model and privacy backlashes, is the world’s leading provider and defender of private, secure messaging. Period.
WhatsApp takes the credit for normalizing fully encrypted messaging and calls around the world, now protecting its 2-3 billion users. Apple may have been first with iMessage in 2011, but its user security is compromised by its restriction to Apple’s walled garden, still reverting to SMS. RCS on iMessage may be due in the fall, but it’s expected to launch absent any end-to-end encryption.
Facebook/Meta has rigorously defended WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption over the years against immense pressure from law makers and security agencies globally. The company has arguably been the world’s most powerful advocate and defender for the security, facing down wave after wave of threat and even threatening to exit markets (1,2) rather than accept any forced compromise.
It hasn’t all been plain sailing. WhatsApp’s misguided plan to wider its data sharing arrangement with Facebook in 2021 led to a global backlash and an embarrassing u-turn. And the platform is currently fighting the Indian government in court over plans for traceability. But WhatsApp has become a quasi global mobile network, with billions of voice and call minutes as well as messages and media transmitted securely across the planet. As such, it’s a critical component in the global communications ecosystem—and it’s fully secured, at least from a content perspective...
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It’s not just WhatsApp. Meta plowed ahead with Facebook Messenger encryption last year, despite immense pressure not to do so, given claims that monitoring communications between adults and minors would be reduced, and investigations into terrorism and crime would be seriously hampered. For Meta, losing the ability to analyze messaging content as part of its data harvesting machine was also a business model compromise. But for users, it was a huge step forward.
Which brings us to metadata. Yes, WhatsApp’s privacy policy acknowledges metadata can be collected and shared with Meta, and the ultimate rationale is to tune marketing profiles and deliver better ads. But that metadata is fairly limited, albeit it can be combined with other sources to enrich its value, and WhatsApp’s evolution into a social media platform with communities and newsfeeds expands this.
Encrypted messaging metadata is arguably more useful from a relationship mapping perspective than a marketing perspective—which can be gold dust to law enforcement. And here, WhatsApp says it adheres to strict rules as to what it collects and the basis on which it is then shared. While some have claimed otherwise, there’s nothing substantive to back that up. The recent allegation that governments track who you message relates to network analysis, crudely monitoring comms from point to point, flagging when you message and trying to identify who you message. It’s a crude technique, and fairly easy to defend against. Device and platform metadata is on an entirely different level.
But it’s there, it exists—while WhatsApp continues to innovate from a privacy standpoint, with disappearing messages, encrypted backups (closing a major law enforcement loophole), IP cloaking and chat locks—it’s there and it exists. All of which is the fire to Musk’s smoke.
But the reality for all of us is that without Meta, without WhatsApp and even Messenger, fully encrypted comms would be denied to billions of users around thew world. The alternative is an iPhone-only or Android-only halfway house, or a specialist product such as Signal, or buying into Telegram’s misleading privacy ads and using a platform that doesn't offer any default end-to-end encryption at all.
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Facebook/Meta’s “dark side” will continue to excite the headlines, and there’s much to be done to curb the excesses of social media algorithmic addition and data harvesting. But we need to be balanced. Credit where it’s due. The company democratized end-to-end encrypted messaging, which is good for all of us. There are no current alternatives to its platforms offering the same scale and security.
And so, while metadata harvesting should be outed and exposed and debated, it should not be confused. When WhatsApp’s Will Cathcart tells Elon Musk “we take security seriously and that's why we end-to-end encrypt your messages—they don't get sent to us every night or exported to us,” it’s critical users understand what that means, that we all understand what it is and what it isn't. Because in comparison to the importance of content encryption, metadata harvesting is marginal.
The awkward truth is that as worrying as elements of Meta, its data and its privacy might be, the current alternatives available to billions around the world are likely much worse.
