[starfallg]

>What other technical approach are people advocating for?

Reduce user data stored in cloud data centres as much as possible. This is the approach taken by Whatsapp, so not surprised they are the ones most vocal against it.

And at the risk of appearing to be supportive of a Facebook product, I think this is the right way to take computing. We don't need a central place to put stuff or to do compute when we can do it on our own devices. We just need orchestration.

[nicce]

It is a bit ironical that WhatsApp is worried about privacy. All message metadata is unecrypted and part of their business model. They don’t know about message contents, but they know everything about your social network (who do you message and when, who are part of your groups etc.) Add cross-app tracking with Facebook APIs and soon they can also categorize your message contents.

[asutekku]

How would you do it? With whatsapp you have the file on messaging partner’s phone. People do not want to share their images over a peer network with random people.