WhatsApp's encryption scheme was designed by Open Whisper Systems, which is now Signal, and even uses the Signal protocol library: http://www.cdn.whatsapp.net/security/WhatsApp-Security-White...

Of course you got all the metadata going to FB, but it's still a good messenger feature-wise for now, so I'll keep it as a backup in case my favorite privacy-conscious messenger is down again for 10 hours.

What good is e2e encryption that is essentially becomes mere in transit encryption, since WhatsApp will filter your messages BEFORE they are sent to see if it needs to take any action? (Which action is of course phoning home, outside the precious Signal Protocol)

How is it in-transit encryption? How does Facebook decrypt it? Do you have any facts other than "it's Facebook, so it must be bad"?

There is no evidence that messages ever leak outside of WhatsApp via means other than potential unencrypted backups that you may or may not be using at a cloud provider not connected to Facebook or your IME.

If you're targeted by NSO or whatever nation state that would be interested enough in you to compromise you, you got other things to worry about.

I mean that argument applies equally to Signal since you have to use their client and the services are architected in the same way.

WhatsApp does filter messages on the client side but it’s stuff like submitting image hashes to the CP database. If Signal reaches the scale of WhatsApp they will be forced into doing this as well. And nothing in Signal’s architecture prevents this kind of data exfiltration the same as WhatsApp.

source?

Unfortunately do you have anything to back your claim? Because there is a number of official sources pointing out that Whastapp uses the signal protocol to do both 1:1 and group chat