News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:WhatsApp is going to share your phone number with Facebook by Natales on Thursday August 25, 2016 @10:47AM (#12359403)
Facebook paid a boat load of cash for WhatsApp. Why did you think they did it? out of the goodness of their heart? It's a business, people! and if you are not paying for it, their revenue stream must come from somewhere else. You are the product as much as the user. Get over it. If you don't like it, don't use it. Use Signal instead, which I do, and it's great.

There are also alternatives like Wire, which is really good although it doesn't have the adoption WhatsApp has.

Re:WhatsApp is going to share your phone number with Facebook by kirkdouglas on Thursday August 25, 2016 @11:04AM (#12359542)
They removed paid subscription several months ago. It seems that they can make more money from matching WhatsApp and Facebook social graphs than from annual subscription.
Re:WhatsApp is going to share your phone number with Facebook by dhimes on Thursday August 25, 2016 @11:29AM (#12359788)
That's truly remarkable. Facebook doesn't make that much money per users (about $1/user/month, as best as I can figure). I know people who would pay twice that for a privacy-keeping subscription tier.
Re:WhatsApp is going to share your phone number with Facebook by rorykoehler on Thursday August 25, 2016 @12:23PM (#12360296)
Do you know 2 billion people who would pay more than that for their privacy?
Re:WhatsApp is going to share your phone number with Facebook by newscracker on Thursday August 25, 2016 @03:22PM (#12361713)
When WhatsApp did have subscriptions in some regions, it was 99 cents per year, not per month. Facebook in the recent times has been making more than that.
Re:WhatsApp is going to share your phone number with Facebook by mcintyre1994 on Thursday August 25, 2016 @11:26AM (#12359754)
Did anyone ever pay for this? I mean, did they have some algorithm that concluded I and everyone I've asked were more likely to uninstall than pay, so we were never asked?