<story><title>Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?</title><text>Hi all. We&amp;#x27;ve been playing a silly little game with my wife lately: we send each other messages about some topic we never talk about and then wait for ads related to our conversation to start showing up in Instagram. As of the last month, they never fail to show up.&lt;p&gt;Please keep in mind that this is a conversation between two &amp;quot;personal&amp;quot; accounts, no business accounts involved. More so, we haven&amp;#x27;t accepted the new terms of use that &amp;quot;allowed&amp;quot; WhatsApp to access messages between personal accounts and business accounts.&lt;p&gt;Is WhatsApp scanning personal messages to target their ads as we are noticing? Weren&amp;#x27;t WhatsApp messages end to end encrypted? Is this a violation of their Terms of Use or am I missing something silly?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>brap</author><text>For anyone who has ever worked at a FAANG like company in the last decade, yes, this is actually very hard to believe.&lt;p&gt;Despite the shady image they have, these companies go to great lengths to avoid doing shady things (because ultimately it’s bad for business). Not to mention the hundreds of tech employees that would have to be involved and keep quiet in this type of “conspiracy”. It’s incredibly unlikely, I truly believe that.</text></item><item><author>moralestapia</author><text>(wrt some comments in this thread)&lt;p&gt;Is it so hard to believe that Meta is snooping on WhatsApp conversations? Meta, a company of unprecedented size that was built over monetizing your private data? A company who&amp;#x27;s been caught in plenty of scandals (like Cambridge Analytic) about this exact sort of thing (violating their users&amp;#x27; privacy)?&lt;p&gt;Someone from this community, which generally means educated, tech-literate and sensitive to these topics shares a perfectly plausible observation, of something that has been experienced as well by plenty of other folks, me included; and then some people come and try to make up the most convoluted explanations (candy boxes from Kazakhstan just happened to be trending that specific day, nothing to see here, move along!) to this phenomena and try to shift the blame away from Meta. Why do you do this? Are you Meta employees? A PR agency they hired?&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s just baffling. Apparently some people DO want to be abused.&lt;p&gt;Plot twist: we all get ads about candy boxes from KZ now.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dessant</author><text>I can imagine you haven&amp;#x27;t been involved in anything illegal, but I&amp;#x27;m sure you&amp;#x27;ve aware of Meta&amp;#x27;s documented track record of coordinated illegal actions. Do engineering teams just fall head first into a bucket of 2FA phone numbers and start using the data for ad targeting, and nobody bats an eye from the legal department to product managers? Or are they hypnotized to build services for biometric data collection without consent? Nobody does anything nefarious, but their collective actions which benefit the company just end up being illegal, again and again?&lt;p&gt;The tech companies you work for do often engage in illegal activities, and some of your collegues are complicit. I&amp;#x27;m sure it is an uncomfortable thought for some of you, but this is all part of the public record.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?</title><text>Hi all. We&amp;#x27;ve been playing a silly little game with my wife lately: we send each other messages about some topic we never talk about and then wait for ads related to our conversation to start showing up in Instagram. As of the last month, they never fail to show up.&lt;p&gt;Please keep in mind that this is a conversation between two &amp;quot;personal&amp;quot; accounts, no business accounts involved. More so, we haven&amp;#x27;t accepted the new terms of use that &amp;quot;allowed&amp;quot; WhatsApp to access messages between personal accounts and business accounts.&lt;p&gt;Is WhatsApp scanning personal messages to target their ads as we are noticing? Weren&amp;#x27;t WhatsApp messages end to end encrypted? Is this a violation of their Terms of Use or am I missing something silly?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>brap</author><text>For anyone who has ever worked at a FAANG like company in the last decade, yes, this is actually very hard to believe.&lt;p&gt;Despite the shady image they have, these companies go to great lengths to avoid doing shady things (because ultimately it’s bad for business). Not to mention the hundreds of tech employees that would have to be involved and keep quiet in this type of “conspiracy”. It’s incredibly unlikely, I truly believe that.</text></item><item><author>moralestapia</author><text>(wrt some comments in this thread)&lt;p&gt;Is it so hard to believe that Meta is snooping on WhatsApp conversations? Meta, a company of unprecedented size that was built over monetizing your private data? A company who&amp;#x27;s been caught in plenty of scandals (like Cambridge Analytic) about this exact sort of thing (violating their users&amp;#x27; privacy)?&lt;p&gt;Someone from this community, which generally means educated, tech-literate and sensitive to these topics shares a perfectly plausible observation, of something that has been experienced as well by plenty of other folks, me included; and then some people come and try to make up the most convoluted explanations (candy boxes from Kazakhstan just happened to be trending that specific day, nothing to see here, move along!) to this phenomena and try to shift the blame away from Meta. Why do you do this? Are you Meta employees? A PR agency they hired?&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s just baffling. Apparently some people DO want to be abused.&lt;p&gt;Plot twist: we all get ads about candy boxes from KZ now.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>thatoneguytoo</author><text>I completely agree (as another employee of FAANG). It&amp;#x27;s ridiculously hard to do anything against policy once it&amp;#x27;s set, and trust me, the policies are set. Media overplays a lot of things which aren&amp;#x27;t just there.&lt;p&gt;The sad reality is people are very predictable, even with basic data.</text></comment>