alt Hacker News> Because some people say stuff like this doesn't make it right. WhatsApp messages are E2EE encrypted, unlike Telegram. There are other things to criticise with WhatsApp, but not that.
Is this verifiable fact or Meta's claim? As far as I know neither the server nor the client are open source.
> As far as I know neither the server nor the client are open source.
That is correct. I have a few things to add:
- Meta employees (and there are many of them) have access to the sources. So if Meta was downright lying about it, chances are that someone would leak it.
- Thanks to the Digital Markets Act, we see that the encryption protocol exposed by Meta for interoperability is based on Signal. If Meta wanted to lie, they would have to either use a different protocol internally (but again, we know that the Signal authors contributed to integrate the Signal protocol in 2016, and a Meta employee could relatively easily see if WhatsApp had removed Signal and re-added it just for interop recently) or use the Signal protocol but have the app send the content of the messages to the Meta servers after decryption (which would be fairly easy to see by a Meta employee).
- People who don't want to trust WhatsApp should use Signal. Moving to Telegram because of a lack of trust would be weird, as Telegram is most definitely not E2E encrypted.
In other words, the WhatsApp situation is not perfect, but telling people to move to Telegram because "it's safer" is actually dangerous. Telegram is strictly less private, period. Signal is strictly more private.
I am not saying people shouldn't use Telegram. As far as I'm concerned, people can do whatever they want (and I hear that the Telegram UX superior). What I do not tolerate is wrong statements about the privacy situation. Telegram is strictly less private, Signal is strictly more private.