Question: do you use Signal? If yes, are you backing up/syncing your contact list? If yes, are you worried about Feds coming for your backup/sync provider?
If that happens, that's not a disastrous thing. That means one person reveals who they're talking to in general, not just on Signal. It doesn't mean that the millions of Signal users all lose that privacy.
But no, I don't use Signal. I just think it's strange how some people can't seem to wrap their head around any of the rationale for this when it's the most transparent thing in the world. Do I like it? No, but it's ridiculous how some people pretend to be incapable of critical thinking in order to talk about how it's horrible. If something is actually horrible, being deliberately obtuse isn't needed.
I don't think you are getting it -- I am not talking about single user.
Whatsapp has 2 billion users, and they are pretty open that they upload entire user's phonebooks to Facebook-owned servers. We know Facebook is not worried much about privacy, so I am pretty sure that this data can be subpoenaed, sold and so on. If you care about privacy, you probably want to install something else, like Signal.
But you know what happens if you cannot get all of your friends converted at once, so you keep Whatsapp around? It will keep sending your contact list changes to Facebook, just at it is designed to.
Let me repeat this: you worry about metadata, so you want to chat to a friend via Signal. But the moment you add them, this is reported to all other apps including Facebook's Whatsapp. And there is no way to opt out of it.
How can people not notice this? How can any company call themselves "privacy friendly" and do this stuff?
