| I appreciate your response, and will give you the benefit of doubt -- however this is in conflict with what a superficial reading of Schneiner's article suggests. Reading the reporting it would seems to indicate that this is happening/in process at Facebook. While I cannot speak for the Forbes' author, Schneiner is widely reputed as a trustworthy source, especially on matters related to information security. This article calls into question his professional reputation as a information security journalist or yours as an executive at WhatsApp. As such, in order to help the general community decide for themselves, please shed some light on the following: 1. Does Facebook/WhatsApp have any specific plans for moderating content, via any mechanism, on the client? If so, please enumerate the kind/type of client-based content moderation currently in discussion. 2. Has Facebook/WhatsApp previously looked at doing content moderation on the client? If so, please enumerate the kind/type of client-based content moderation that was previously discussed. 3. What will you do, if Facebook/WhatsApp decides to implement content moderation and/or a content "backdoor" on the client sometime in the next 3 years? Will you continue to work for Facebook/WhatsApp? 4. Should Facebook/WhatsApp decides to implement content moderation on the client, what forewarning will Facebook/WhatsApp give us. What will you personally give? 5. You say that this is easy to detect. Can you please provide technical guidance (or pointers to such) on how to go about detecting this, so that the community at large may better learn how to detect this in any instant messaging app, WhatsApp or otherwise? I ask the above, in all sincerity, as Facebook's previous poor handling of data requires these kinds of inquiries -- especially when in opposition to reporting by Schneier, who's reputation as a information security journalist is bar-none. |
I looked at what WhatsApp promised to do against fake news (something where they had reason to promise harsh measures, since they were basically blamed for murders due to their forwarding features). I'm aware of restrictions and warnings on forwarding, but not some sort of 'fake news detector'.
> 5. You say that this is easy to detect. Can you please provide technical guidance (or pointers to such) on how to go about detecting this, so that the community at large may better learn how to detect this in any instant messaging app, WhatsApp or otherwise?
Reverse engineering their app. Doing it yourself is probably beyond the time you want to invest, paying someone to do it just for you is probably beyond the money you want to invest, but I'd really love if there was a group/entity that consistently checks (through reverse engineering and similar analysis) whether privacy promises given by apps are true, and most importantly, remain true over time.