The ‘share information with Facebook’ nugget is hidden behind a toggle at the bottom of the screen, and will be guaranteed to be missed by the 99% of users who just want to talk to their friends.
Then, once you’ve agreed to the terms and conditions, you’ve got a completely arbitrary 30 days to read an online article which tells you what you’ve signed up for before WhatsApp is irrevocably sharing your data with Facebook.
You can build an incredibly accurate picture of people’s lives from metadata alone – WhatsApp know it and Facebook know it.
Not only that – when WhatsApp start building out these ‘brand’ relationships which will look a lot like helpful information at first – you’ll be loading your data into that brand’s custom FB audience too. And you won’t have an opt out because, y’know, reasons.
This is very obviously not the WhatsApp that promised not to kid around with its users when Facebook bought it out.
