this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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Facebook turns over mother and daughter’s chat history to police resulting in abortion charges (www.theverge.com)
submitted 1 year ago by JRepin@lemmy.ml to c/technology@lemmy.world
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1874605

A 17-year-old from Nebraska and her mother are facing criminal charges including performing an illegal abortion and concealing a dead body after police obtained the pair’s private chat history from Facebook, court documents published by Motherboard show.

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[–] noodlejetski@geddit.social 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

major selling point was offering free encrypted messaging to the masses

no, their major point was offering free messaging in regions were you were being charged per SMS sent. end-to-end encryption has been introduced in 2016 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp#End-to-end_encryption), seven years after it's been founded and two years after Facebook acquisition.

[–] Monomate@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ops, my bad. I was under the impression the only reason WhatsApp is encrypted today is because they already were by the time FB bought them.

They paid US$ 20B to buy WhatsApp, and encryption is a major deterrent for them scanning all messages to enhance their targeted advertising business.

[–] noodlejetski@geddit.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

they have access to the metadata, which can be as valuable as the content of the messages.

[–] Monomate@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Maybe you're right, but I'd be hesitant to say WhatsApp user's contacts list would be worth US$ 20B.

My theory is they bought WhatsApp just because it was organically growing to be the dominant messaging app, and Facebook didn't want to lose this marked and bought them to squash the competition.

[–] noodlejetski@geddit.social 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

contact list? not really.

knowing who they talk to, how often, where from, for how long on average, and, in case of the countries where Whatsapp for Business is popular, what businesses do they spend money at? probably quite worth it.

[–] Monomate@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

The WhatsApp Business stuff is a more recent development. When FB bought them they had very little to work with.