> So while there was a loss of privacy, the alternative was to remove the offer of the application itself in its entirety.

OP's point is that the change in forwarding was practically equivalent to (partially) defeating the encryption.

I think the argument is that, previous to this Whatsapp forward counter rollout, one would assume significant hits to credibility would block a company/org rolling out such a thing in a client. And that hit apparently didn't happen.