I've been running and using a puppeting bridge [1] for my Matrix instance for more than 4 years with 3 different numbers and no problem at all.

The controls they have in place are probably based on behavior, rather than on access.

[1]: https://github.com/mautrix/whatsapp

WhatsApp will ban you if it detect any kind of automation, if you use this or an other wrapper you will -very luckily- get banned, even without making calls. They want you to use their paid business API

Good to know WhatsApp is at least somewhat proactive against scammers.

That would be a fine posture to take, very naturally-selective, but I find it discomforting because I've seen so many different ways that humans act that don't benefit them (individually or on the whole). It isn't always out of self-destruction or lack of self-preservation. More often than not, the choice was based on what's easiest -- a tendency towards the path of least resistance. This technology looks a lot like trading off intention, and attention, for quick and good-enough(?) results. Enough so that I can understand GP's concern for our communication skills as a society.

I think we could find ourselves losing the "thought and effort" in spite of it being more valuable, because many people find it easier. Or that even those who continue on with it, despite it not being easier, are broadly labeled as a bot because their writings failed the vibe check.

I have confidence that there will always be small communities that continue holding this as valuable, but that maintaining it in a community setting will become more strained as the general zeitgeist drifts in the direction of regarding output higher than effort.

I don't use WhatsApp, I helped most of my family and many friends move away from it, and I feel like we (you and I) see WA in a similar way. IMO the main issue here is the network effect and vendor lock-in (for the lack of a better term -- I'm writing this from my phone in a rush).

> Where am I wrong? What am I not seeing?

English is my second language, so maybe I'm missing some context here, but every time I hear techies calling non-techies "Normies", it's used in a derogatory / condescending fashion. That's reductive (non-techies are not a homogenous group) and somewhat intellectually lazy.

To give you an example, WA users in the US and, say Portugal or Poland ended up using it for slightly different reasons and in a different technical context. WA used to be the best video chat app for quite some time in the UK, AT or PL (imo), and I know of many people who started using it for that specific reason (esp. important for large migrant communities). FaceTime wasn't that popular because Android market share in the EU was bigger than in the US.

WhatsApp acts the phone's entry point for many.

Contacts aren't stored on the phone, messages act as contacts. Phone and video calls also on WhatsApp. Photos are shared via WhatsApp so that's where the gallery is. It even functions as a calendar of sorts – events are organised in WhatsApp groups so there you have directions and dates and who brings what. More and more businesses use WhatsApp to communicate with customers.

Why people like this, I do not know. But this is what I observe. Maybe software in general is too shit to use so people prefer to take a sub-optimal WhatsApp-based life over fighting their phones at every step. And I can't blame them.

> Where am I wrong? What am I not seeing?

The killer application are the group chats. Normies can't make an email group, or remember to reply to all, or even make a Yahoo! Group [dead] or Google Group [dead?].

It's very easy to setup a group in WhatsApp and keep the member list updated.

For bonus points, it's very difficult to Ctr-C the info in WhatsApp, it's easier to press the arrow and forward the message to another WhatsApp group.

Once you have all your groups in WhatsApp, it's easier to use it for everything.

PS: Also, a few eons ago in many countries SMS had a cost, and WhatsApp was free, it was so another good point to use it.

WhatsApp nailed the onboarding experience. In a time where other services asked you to create an account with an email and password, which is enough of a hurdle already, WhatsApp looked up your phone number and said "I'm sending you an SMS, enter the number you received to check we got it right". And then, it never asked for anything ever again.

WhatsApp was the first messaging app I remember that didn't require a user account.

People already had the phone numbers of people they knew so they just had to install the app and could immediately chat with any of their contacts.

Compared to chat apps with usernames where you started with an empty contact list, the barrier to start using it was very low. It was basically a drop-in replacement for SMS. Group chat and free messages were the reason to switch.

You're wrong that it's bad. Clearly it cannot be that bad if even your 80 yo grandma can get the gist of how to use it properly.

Can it be better? Probably. Does it need to be better? Clearly not.

The UX is pretty good. At least as good as any competitor. There are no ads. It's cross-platform. It's secure. Group chats work.

WhatsApp gained dominance when the alternatives were still SMS and BBM! You don't have to resort to ego-boosting put-downs to explain why it is so popular.

Whatsapp has absolutely taken over communication in the world (aside from the US for some reason)? Funerals, trips, fund-raisers, even interacting with businesses is now done on WhatsApp in my country. When briefly I decided to try to de-Meta my life, I found that it was one service I absolutely cannot do without and still function as a member of my family and community.

Network effects are network effects. I really feel physical disgust and try to keep it off my devices, but while it's feasible when living normal, uh, "no-lifer" life, it's unfortunately basically impossible when I travel or even just participate in local communities (sports, hobbies, etc). In the latter case, it's simply rude and disorganizing to refuse to join the group chat, in the former case it's often the only way to contact hotel/taxi/whoever you urgently need to contact in some not so touristy spot. (And, BTW, it's designed to be practically unusable, if you don't allow it to access your contact book, so no dirty tricks like that will fly.)

As to "how do they even manage to use it", well, the mere notion of a great UI is vastly overhyped in the first place (by designers themselves, most of all). People get used to just about anything, if they are taught to use it. And learning a 5-step sequence to use any app like this — anybody can do that, even a 85 year old (even if they swear they can't).

Even within the Netherlands there are pockets of Signal users, Telegram users, and in rare occasions even people using SMS or iMessage. Facebook Messenger also has a foothold in some circles.

That said, you'd be an outlier if you have a mobile phone but no WhatsApp. Everyone has WhatsApp, but fortunately not everyone is using it for everything. Unfortunately, that usually means using an even less secure and trustworthy messenger service.

In South Africa, without WhatsApp you are literally cutoff from communication, so for us it is more like 99.99%

One-party-consent only means you can legally record something, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're allowed to share it with (non-government) third parties later.

It could be legal to record and use as evidence in court later, but that doesn't mean you're allowed to share it with some AI company.

> I can also copy and paste the messages people send me.

Sure you can, but the people can sue you if you paste it into something public. I don't know if you're making some deep philosophical comment but this is something people have been sued and lost for before.

Legally, there absolutely is. Because by law, the messaging app operator also can't just publish the stuff you write in a chat. Even some disclaimer in the terms of service probably wouldn't work if people would generally assume the chat to be private.

And it also doesn't even matter because WhatsApp claims to be E2E-encrypted.

WhatsApp has end-to-end encryption

Meta claims WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted.

It's up to you to trust Meta or not, but people who trust them do have an expectation of privacy.

That's irrelevant here because the OP is running the LLM on one of the ends, so it's decrypted that same as when you're reading the chat convo yourself.

It also misses the mark because you're talking about an eavesdropper intercepting messages and the OP is the receiver sharing the messages with a third party themself.

Germany.

You have a "allgemeines Persönlichkeitsrecht" (general personal rights?) that prevents other people from publishing information that's supposed to be private.

Here's a case where someone published a facebook dm for example:

https://openjur.de/u/636287.html

I believe echoangle’s concern is about the security and privacy of the LLM using the data, not the MCP server itself.

You think they (plan to) decrypt messages and then upload them again in plain text to a server?

Since on-device processing is neither as objectionable nor could be very large

I don't use WhatsApp myself because of who runs it and there are plenty of better options out there, so I certainly agree with the sentiment of steering clear, but this claim does seem pretty far out there

I understand why one would think it's funny to feed the parent comment into an LLM but please at least label when you echo such output on the site

I don't think their main concern was the privacy aspect.

> They're probably the same types who use it to do their work.

Citation needed.

It's a local LLM with access to an extraordinary amount of personal data. In the EU at least that personal data is supposed to be handled with care. I don't see people freaking out, but simple pointing out the leap of handing it over to ANOTHER company.

Not all Meta products are alike. WA has E2E encryption, has had it for a long time. It's the same protocol as Signal: in fact, it was built for/in WA by Moxie/signal a while ago.

That doesn't make the metadata private. Meta can use that as they want. But not the contents, nor the images, not even in group chats (as opposed to Telegram, where group-chats aren't (weren't?) E2E encrypted).

What you say or send on WA is private. Meta cannot see that. Nor governments nor your ISP or your router. Only you and the person or people you sent it to can read that.

It's a d*ck move if they then publicize this. And, as others pointed out, illegal even in many jurisdictions: AFAIK, it is in my country.

Personally, I would say that still reeks of being manipulative. I've received messages from a friend which were definitely LLM-generated, it made me like that person considerably less

It very much depends on the specifics around use cases, parties, and jurisdictions. In plenty of them, you're allowed to record and keep track of conversations you're taking part in, as is the other party, but publishing those on the internet would he illegal.

Processing them (like compressing them to mp3 files or storing them in cloud storage) is probably legal in most cases.

The potential problem with LLMs is that they use your input to train themselves.

As of right now, the legal status of AI is very much up in the air. It's looking like AI training will be exempt from things like copyright laws (because how else would you train an LLM without performing the biggest book piracy operation in history?), and if that happens things like personal rights may also fall to the AI training overlords.

I personally don't think using this is illegal. I'm pretty sure 100% of LinkedIn messages are being passed through AI already, as are all WhatsApp business accounts and any similar service. I suppose we'll have to wait for someone to get caught using these tools and the problem making it to a high enough court to form jurisprudence.

Messages are. I do not believe that metadata about the messages are, however. So they know who you're speaking to, at what frequency, and from where.

my mom showed me her phone the other day - she had updated her Whatsapp App and now the search bar has changed from "search your chats" to "search chats or ask Meta AI anything". I've googled a bit but did not find an option to disable meta AI and also found no definitive answer what Meta AI actually does - if i search for a chat, does it use this chat as context to provide answers? does it run locally (i highly doubt that)? is it only another interface to chat with an llm? It sure seems that this might be a stepping stone to pipe Whatsapp Messages into Meta AI and thus ignoring e2ee, not sure if it's done already but the line is getting quite thin.