How does WhatsApp earn money?

Being owned by facebook

They don't

Hamster wheel. They analyze, compile, and sell your messaging habits.

What @bahua said. Content is end to end encrypted, metadata isn't and you can often learn more about a person from metadata than from content.

They sell your shit.
"There is no free lunch"

Don't they also have a yearly subscription of a few cents?

@Batburger Nope, removed that years ago

@linuxxx oh, good to know I guess😀

It's owned by Facebook so they mine data on you and are rather bad at covering it up.

@nblackburn

Why would they have a reason to cover it up? Afaik, they're pretty overt about it.

@bahua Because they are doing things most people wouldn't agree with and have been caught on multiple occasions

@nblackburn

I mean, I guess it's buried in legalese, but they do say clearly that we are the product.

By selling your soul

@IllSlapU I may be wrong and all these might not even be metadata but they sure can be sold to any interested corporate.

- the habit of your text sending
- the habit of your calling
- the frequency and habit of your attachment sending
Very basic data.

More useful data
- your country (from your phone number)
- your profession or line of business (from your phone number and contacts)
- your current location (from your connected ISP)

All of those data are very useful and desirable for certain corporates eg: Telecom.

Remember, if you don’t see any obvious sign of income, you are the income. AKA your data

If you are not paying for a product, then you are the product.

@IllSlapU Metadata is the proof that a conversation happened.

Sender, receiver, date, time, location, possibly ip address etc. So everything but the content.

If I call (forgot the title of such persons) a person who helps woman through child birth, then call a doctor and then I'm on the phone with the hospital for half an hour, you don't need much content, the metadata speaks for itself.

@ArchLinux Yup, you often don't need the content, the metadata is mostly enough to gather intel on what's probably being said :/

@bahua Nobody argued that fact but it doesn't make it right, hell even some of it's execs have been whistleblowing on it's practices in social engineering.

You'd better ask how does Twitter earn money