What a strange way to think about a telecommunications service. By the same logic, shouldn’t there be a privacy policy for regular old phone lines? Who knows which third parties are between you and the person on the other end!

And speaking about the other end: I have bad news about all the data you share with untrustworthy contacts on WhatsApp…

Quite practically, anyone that enables backups (which WhatsApp heavily nudges people to do) uploads a copy of all your messages and media sent to them to a cloud provider you have no privacy agreement with.

old telephone lines did not disclose info about me with merely my phone number. whataspp discloses name, picture, status

As for your second comment, updated first comment with:

I am not even sure how this is GDPR-compliant if that app is European. They do not have my permission to have my private data, and GDPR does not allow whatAspp to hand it over without my permission either...

  > old telephone lines did not disclose info about me with merely my phone number.

Old telephone lines most certainly disclosed additional information about you. Who you contacted, when, how often.

Did you call that drug dealer every Tuesday evening? Looks suspicious. Did that criminal call you the day before he robbed a store not far from your home? Looks suspicious. Do you call Pakistan twice a week? Looks suspicious. Have you ever called a suicide prevention hotline? A bank other than your own? A mosque? An independent political party?

Your POTS phone was always revealing information.

> whataspp discloses name, picture, status

Only to who you choose to make it available to. And if you choose “everybody”, I don’t see how you can reasonably expect this to mean “everybody not using third-party software”?

Because until today that IS what it meant! Are you claiming that "pray i do not change the deal further" is a sane approach?

I just don’t think that’s a reasonable expectation of a telecommunications tool, so yeah, I think it’s a fair change well within the norms and expectations of an instant messenger.

You should get to control how/ to whom your data is distributed, but also requiring these recipients to only use software and services of your choosing seems excessive. Platform lock-in at this point seems like the much greater harm.

I could see the case for a small indicator in the contact details that they’re using a third-party client, but anything more (green bubbles?) would be counterproductive.

i did not ask for green bubbles, nor did whatsapp implement that. they let me opt-in to communicate with questionable clients and i am here for it.

Do you also wish you could only get telephone calls from people using American made handsets, and that your email client asked you before receiving emails from other email clients, and that you couldn’t get SMS’s from other smartphone manufacturers without opting in one at a time?

Being able to reject spam , regions, specific people, specific topics, all makes sense. Wanting to approve/reject the program used to make the connection is a pretty useless way to segment communications - how will you determine “questionable” clients, and what when there’s a person you want to chat with and a person you don’t both using the same client?

I actually would love a mode on my phone that blocks all calls not coming from iPhones just like I have a mode to ignore all messages not coming from iPhones. It has blocked so much spam that it is worth it.

In that case, I have no words. I always thought that people got lured into walled gardens surreptitiously, not with eyes wide open...

It's not requiring, thats the point of BirdyChat, right? You just have to opt-in to use it.

The recipient is already using third-party code. I am using a Samsung OS, which is not from Meta, to see your messages. Do you object to this? I also have the YouTube PiP overlay layer in front of your messages.

That is Zuck's usual MO, so why not apply it when it's not to his advantage?

Because I don't chose everybody? I don't want everyone to see my information, why would I?

Man there's a rising amount of people who don't understand hypotheticals. How can you think that your comment "...I don't chose everybody?" is a valid answer to "If you chose everybody..." ?

Then don't choose everybody. Settings -> Privacy -> set everything to "my contacts" or "nobody".

Old telephones had caller ID. They would send your name and company.

You did have to initiate the call, but you still didn’t have any kind of agreement about it.

Yes, and you used to have to pay for it! Not only was it opt-in, there was a charge.

Several people have scraped every possible phone number from WhatsApp so they know your name, picture, and status if they want it.

So, that doesn't mean we give it away freely because someone was malicious. That makes no sense.

It's already given away freely. Anyone who has WhatsApp can add you as a contact and see this information.

If you are bored and have a computer, you can add every possible phone number as a contact. Not many people do that, but some did.