Where does it literally say that?

I quote from their website

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Today, WhatsApp does not share your personal information with Facebook to improve your Facebook product experiences or provide you more relevant Facebook ad experiences on Facebook. This is a result of discussions with the Irish Data Protection Commission and other Data Protection Authorities in Europe. We're always working on new ways to improve how you experience WhatsApp and the other Facebook Company Products you use. Should we choose to share such data with the Facebook Companies for this purpose in the future, we will only do so when we reach an understanding with the Irish Data Protection Commission on a future mechanism to enable such use. We'll keep you updated on new experiences we offer and our information practices.

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This is legalese for pretty much what I posted. In particular, the keep you update here does not necessarily mean you get to agree to a new privacy policy, as the current policy does not include a commitment not to share data (for ads etc) with facebook in the first place. This statement is deviously placed outside the privacy policy!

Also further up they say that they associate the whatsapp profile with any facebook profile in the household/net/vicinity. To be clear, they do this now. Not in the future.

Oh just on case you are unsure what will happen with all this, it’s the following:

In the near future, they will start sharing all that juicy data with facebook based on some made up precedent, new technical justification, some claim to pseudonymity, or discussion with some Irish politician or whatnot.

After being found out, they will then eventually apologize, do better next time and pay the fine, which pales in comparison to the profit gained from that data.

Just as they are now replying to an order from a data protection official with: ‘Lol nope‘

Just don't use Facebook or Facebook Companies products? Like probably most people don't?

Just not be such a contemptible company? Like probably most other companies aren't?

Yeah, sure, but why use them if they choose to be such.

They've managed to become essential communication infrastructure. Exposure of these services to you, but also exposure of your data to these companies is unavoidable.

The neighbourhood watch uses WhatsApp as its primary communication channel, friends are posting group activity photo's and are reminiscing about past activities on Instagram, all the internet your elderly uncle knows is Facebook, all the local used goods sales go through Facebook, some of the best consumer grade VR sets are owned and sold by Facebook, many modern websites are built on Facebook's React, any new novel app that is released gets copied within months by Facebook.

There is no choice `preparetobeassimilated.mp3`

This is 100% on the regulatory bodies who just let this happen, and still are. They just don't seem to understand the gravity of the situation.

Totally agree.

I was happily using WhatsApp (and had even paid beforehand when they were only charging what they needed to operate).

I invested a lot of effort to onboard family members.

Everything was fine, until Facebook purchased WhatsApp by paying about 40 USD per user.

Now I have to invest a similar amount of effort in getting people to move to Signal.

Sorry, just don't agree.

> Should we choose to share such data with the Facebook Companies for this purpose in the future, we will only do so when we reach an understanding with the Irish Data Protection Commission on a future mechanism to enable such use

Where's the documentation that this happened? Surely there would be some declaration from the Irish Data Protection Commission if this was happening.