A WhatsApp spokesperson has clarified to News18 that WhatsApp only inspects user messages when a report of abusive content is raised by a co-user against a specific message. Such a report causes a message to be forwarded to WhatsApp, which allows it to test for abusers and spammers on the app. The spokesperson claims that its end to finish encryption of messages isn’t broken as a results of this, as only voluntary reports of abuse are forwarded to the corporate under exceptional circumstances. The source report by ProPublica has also reflected WhatsApp’s stance on the below matter. Original report continues below.
Social media giant Facebook touts WhatsApp as a secure messaging platform where users chats are end-to-end encrypted. A recent report has now revealed that WhatsApp may allow content moderators to access users’ messages in certain cases. in line with a report in ProPublica, there are quite 1,000 contract workers in office buildings in Austin, Texas, Dublin, and Singapore. These hourly workers, in keeping with the report, can only view messages that the users have reported. this implies that these moderators can only see users messages, images and videos only the receiver hits the report button to report the message to WhatsApp.
The report in ProPublica says that this messages review is one element in a very broader monitoring operation within which the corporate also reviews material that’s not encrypted, including data about the sender and their account. A 49-slide internal marketing presentation from December 2020 accessed by ProPublica emphasizes the “fierce” promotion of WhatsApp’s “privacy narrative.” It compares the brand character to “the Immigrant Mother.” This marketing material doesn’t mention the company’s content moderation efforts.
WhatsApp’s director of communications, Carl Woog acknowledged that teams of contractors in Austin et al review WhatsApp messages to spot and take away abusers. However, he told the publication that Facebook doesn’t consider this work to be content moderation. “The decisions we make around how we build our app are focused round the privacy of our users, maintaining a high degree of reliability and preventing abuse,” Wong was quoted within the report as saying
