WhatsApp is finally letting users share pictures in better quality. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the new capability on Instagram today (via The Verge), and support for HD pictures will roll out to all WhatsApp users over the next few weeks.
As WhatsApp is used in many countries with poor connectivity, the app compresses images and videos to use less bandwidth. However, support for sending HD videos on WhatsApp is also coming soon according to Meta.
WABetaInfo previously reported that the beta version of WhatsApp for iOS and Android added support for sharing HD photos back in June. At the time, beta testers needed to manually choose the HD option every time they wanted to send a picture to other users. This is likely still the case, again, to save storage space and send photos faster.
According to The Verge, WhatsApp users on slow connections still get the choice to receive photos in either standard or HD quality. Either way, all pictures sent via WhatsApp are encrypted by default.
Last month, WhatsApp also announced that it had started rolling out video messages to all users. Video messages are currently limited to 60 seconds, and they should also become available for all users over the coming weeks.
I know but your metadata is all they need and cross-referenced with all the other tracking and accounts they have, there’s zero privacy left.
Putting on tinfoil hat: or is it e2e encrypted? They hired Moxie to set up the signal protocol but who knows it’s still in use since it’s closed source? Even if it is still active: what key is used for encryption? Maybe a hard-coded one owned by Meta?
No, I don’t really believe that as according to Snowden in his earliest whistle blowing even the NSA is primarily interested in metadata. You can derive pretty much everything from that alone.
Privacy, like security, is about layers. Just because they have your metadata doesn’t mean you go ahead and give them everything else.
Fair criticism, I’d recommend either Signal, Matrix, or XMPP over Telegram/Facebook(Meta).
Oversimplifying what actually happens. They can infer what may have happened based on other data points but its not 100% accurate. You can avoid all these metadata issues by not using messengers by Google/Facebook/Meta/Telegram in the first place.