Why does it want them back? It really just cares about the social graph. It doesn't need to know what you're saying, just who you're talking to. I've already seen that information used in Instagram: people I chat with more often in WhatsApp have their content (stories and posts) surfaced at the top of my feed.

Ugh I hope not, Messenger is exactly what I don't want WhatsApp to become.

I'm trying to stay away from Messenger but it does have one significant advantage over WhatsApp - it can be used on multiple devices seamlessly, which is useful when I have a work phone and my personal phone.

Almost impossible to square that requirement with strong end to end encryption.

You can figure out ways to do it, but it's pretty kludgy (messages addressed to you have to be encrypted with the keys of each device you've authorized) and you can't scroll back prior to when a device was authorized and its key was communicated to other participants, which users might not find convenient.

But it's why I don't use Whatsapp as well, personally. I prefer the cross-device seamlessness of Hangouts (and FB Messenger) to E2E crypto.

> You can figure out ways to do it, but it's pretty kludgy (messages addressed to you have to be encrypted with the keys of each device you've authorized) and you can't scroll back prior to when a device was authorized and its key was communicated to other participants, which users might not find convenient.

Apple seems to do OK with iMessage and it faces the same constraints.

> Apple seems to do OK with iMessage and it faces the same constraints.

Always had an impression that iMessage is not end to end encrypted.

It is, but it requires the sender to encrypt the message for every one of the recipients devices.

What isn't encrypted is iCloud backups, which are what provide the ability to scroll backup on new devices.

It's just overburdened and cooked at this point honestly. WhatsApp feels fresh compared to it.

It reminds me a little bit of Google+, they're willing to ruin every product they have so they can look more like the fresh new thing.

I hope not. I prefer Messenger by far. I want my conversations everywhere I compute, and WhatsApp seems very averse to that. I understand why, but it's not what I want in a messengong product.

Because different market have different choices. In developing world more people like to use WhatsApp as their messaging solution while on the other end in some countries WhatsApp is not popular and messenger is more popular

How will they harvest data from encrypted chats?