5/27/22, 6:15 PM WhatsApp is a Threat to Society. Here's How to Fix It. - Techonomy  Subscribe Search...  Home  Articles  WhatsApp is a Threat to Society. Here’s How to Fix It. FA C E B O O K WhatsApp is a Threat to Society. Here’s How to Fix It. More than 1.5 billion people use WhatsApp, and the platform’s astonishing scale and speed have become vehicles for dangerous ammunition. BY DAVID MADDEN DECEMBER 16, 2019 EDITOR'S PICKS Meet the Startups: Cerebri.AI: Understanding Customers with Speed and Scale BY TECHONOMY MEDIA Report: Better Science Education Could Combat Misinformation BY MEREDITH SALISBURY T his year, Facebook distracted the world with its stances on political ads and law enforcement access, drawing attention away from a significant problem: the destructive impact of organic content. Around the world, enormous harm is being done using online platforms, all without spending a single dollar on ads. No platform illustrates this better than WhatsApp, the messaging app that Facebook acquired in 2014. The Modern Mindset for Business: Tech is Not the Issue BY ROBERT VATTER With an estimated 1.5 billion users who send more than 75 billion messages per day, WhatsApp is the world’s biggest messaging service (ad free, for now). Users can call or send messages to their friends and family; but large groups (up to 256 people) are also a compelling feature of the app. Highly convenient, and with low bandwidth thirst, WhatsApp makes it very easy for users to rapidly send text, images and videos to literally thousands of other users within seconds. WhatsApp’s most defining feature—end-to-end encryption—means such user-generated or forwarded content can’t be read, let alone moderated, by outsiders. Mark Zuckerberg, when announcing “the future is private,” compared encrypted messaging to the “digital living room,” a place for private conversations with just a few people. In reality, though, WhatsApp groups can https://techonomy.com/whatsapp-is-a-threat-to-society-heres-how-to-fix-it/ 1/5