WhatsApp Head Will Cathcart on Privacy, Content Moderation, and Apple

Will Cathcart runs WhatsApp, the 2 billion user app that's the de facto tool for messaging and calling for many across the globe. Cathcart joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss Facebook's feud with Apple, its battle with Signal, its bungled privacy update, new laws in India that might force it to break encryption, the way it thinks about content moderation and advertising, and plenty more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 0:43Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hey, Will.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  Hey, Alex.

• 1:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Thanks for coming on.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  Well, thank you for having me.

• 1:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Great, so I'll just read the ad and then we can get started. The Big Technology Podcast is sponsored by MediaOcean. Looking for a job in big tech? You might want to take a look at MediaOcean. They were just named by Ad Age as the number one place to work in advertising technology. Go to mediaocean.com/bigtech to learn more about the company and check out their careers hub. MediaOcean is building the mission-critical platform for omni-channel advertising. If that sounds cool, or if you just want to find out what those buzzwords mean, hit up mediaocean.com/bigtech and browse their job listings. And big thanks to MediaOcean for supporting the Big Technology Podcast. Okay, here we go.

• 2:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello and welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. Joining us today is a man who runs one of the most important apps in the world. Will Cathcart became the head of WhatsApp in March 2019, and the app has grown to more than 2 billion users since then. WhatsApp is at the forefront of Facebook's effort to make mobile messaging a key part of its strategy, maybe the core to its strategy, giving Will plenty of exposure into Facebook's dealings with countries and competitors. It's great to have him here today, especially at a moment when WhatsApp has been living in the headlines. Will, welcome to the show.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me, Alex. Good to talk to you again.

• 2:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's nice to see you again. I feel like the previous two times we talked, the first time you were showing me 360-degree photos on the newsfeed, turns out that virtual reality where you live in those photos actually became pretty important. And then the time after that, you were drawing a graph in terms of why Facebook thought that smaller groups were a key to its strategy. And now, when we hear about Facebook's strategy, groups are at the forefront. So you seem to know where things are going with the company.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Well, as I remember, Alex, though, when we talked about groups, I remember that conversation. I feel like you were the one who spotted a bit of a trend there, because I remember you came wanting to talk about seeing Nextdoor and Slack and what was Facebook doing. And I think, however many years later it's been, you were clearly right. I think that's a huge part of social communication software these days.

• 3:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I'd even give the credit on that one to our bureau chief at BuzzFeed back when I was there, Matt Hohn, and who was like, what do you think about this? And then we appreciated the conversation that we had with you guys. And I think we walked out, you know, seeing the way that you sketched it out. And I'll put the link in the show notes. But it was like, very clear in your blackboard drawing, your whiteboard drawing was the top of the story. It was just very clear that Facebook saw an opportunity there, and that turned into the big push around groups. So. But now you're talking a lot about messaging. You know, we saw earlier on, there was this pivot to privacy meme that people were talking about with Facebook, which obviously meant that Mark Zuckerberg saw that people were

• 4:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  starting to share in more intimate groups as opposed to broadcasting in the newsfeed. And you're at the forefront of that. So I'm really excited to have you on, really excited about this conversation. The place I want to start is with Apple. What is going on with Facebook and Apple? I went to WhatsApp yesterday in the iOS App Store and I found 22 different data items that Apple was saying that you collect. Now, Tim Cook has been pretty critical of Facebook, probably the most critical of any company out there. He's been more critical of Facebook than others. So do you think this whole App Store privacy nutrition label thing that they've done was a direct attack against Facebook?

• 4:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  It seems like that's might have been what was behind it.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Well, I don't know where it came from, but like from the WhatsApp perspective, we've been critical of the labels, not because, I mean, we think it's good for people to talk about and apps to talk about what data they have. We've taken what data we have really seriously since the beginning. We're proud of having brought end-to-end encryption to everyone around the world and we strive to collect a minimal amount of data we think is necessary to offer a great service at scale. And when the labels came out, you know, we, it's actually that the app provides that information. It's not information Apple provides. We provide the information on what data we collect and we also put up a FAQ on our website to go into more detail about each of those data fields because we think the detail matters.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  The thing that I think's been unfortunate about Apple's labels is I think the way they've designed them, they've ended up being pretty confusing. Um, in part because any app can put whatever they want for the labels. Um, and so, uh, you know, sometimes we get compared to Telegram as an example. Telegram, they have your messages. They don't have end-to-end encryption by default. They don't have end-to-end encryption at all for groups. And so we don't have the messages you send. Telegram does. Yet you go look at Telegram's labels and I can't tell how you would know that Telegram actually has a copy of what you're saying, whereas we don't. And I think that matters. I think that confuses people. And then the last thing I'll say is, you know, regardless of whatever the, the purpose of the labels was, we compete with iMessage from Apple.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  We compete in the US. I'm way more people use iMessage than use WhatsApp. We compete in a bunch of places around the world. You don't see a label for iMessage when you download it because you don't download it. It's on your phone to begin with. And so we were critical of that. They ended up putting up something on there.

• 6:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Apple said they'll put those.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's on their website. They said they put it on their website. It's on their website if you can find it. But even there, um, not to use this metaphor, but what's apples to apples? So one of the data fields we have in ours is payment information. We put, we have payment information because we have an optional feature for you to use payments in India if you want to. I think it's great.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  iMessage, you can send money on iMessage too. Apple has payment features and you can send a friend money through iMessage. Our label says we have payment information. iMessage does. What's the difference? Why does ours say it and theirs doesn't?

• 7:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  My, they, you know, Mark has said that Apple is your biggest competitor in messaging. Do you think Apple views Facebook the same way?

• 7:20Speaker 01

  I don't know. I mean, I think clearly if you look at, um,

• 7:26Speaker 01

  I think, you know, it's, it, I assume it's in Apple's interest to have everyone using an iPhone. I mean, obviously it is. And you look at a place like the US, um, most people have an iPhone. And the messaging experience works better on iMessage if everyone else has an iPhone. And if people switch to something like WhatsApp or another service, doesn't have to be WhatsApp. It's easier for their friends to go back and forth between an iPhone or an Android. It does, you know, I, I use an Android. Um, when people put me in an iMessage group with a bunch of their friends, it kind of breaks. It's kind of a weird experience. You know, you can't even like like the messages anymore. It just says like as text, it kind of, it's a, it's an odd experience. If you want to do a group video call, it doesn't work.

• 8:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  You guys are the barrier to their lock in.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so, no, I think it's, it's certainly in their strategic interest to have people not use something like WhatsApp. Because they want people to not use an Android phone.

• 8:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you, do you guys talk to them? Like what happens when this stuff goes online? Do you have a contact at Apple or is it just sort of war through the press?

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Well, we, I'll talk about it through the WhatsApp lens. I mean, we certainly do, you know, we submit our, we submit our app to the App Store. We go through app review. We talk about, you know, what, what stuff's coming and we get treated like, I think presumably like any other developer.

• 8:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  I know, no, but like on an executive level, like does Mark call Tim Cook? Or do you just kind of go through like your typical customer relations?

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Oh, I, I don't know. I've been into the parts I did. I don't know if I want to get into, you know, how that stuff goes, but no, like, I mean, I see it a lot through the WhatsApp lens. We do talk to them. I, I have, you know, I have gone to Apple and talked to them when there's a specific issue related to messaging, targeting messaging. It was in the press a year or two ago. They made some changes around their platform that actually made it really hard for encrypted messaging apps that weren't iMessage. To operate on iPhone, it was going to, was going to break a lot, kind of the whole industry of encrypted messaging apps. We talked to them, thankfully they pushed the date out. They actually made some changes. They sort of listened to it, but there is this dynamic where um, iMessage works. It works using special APIs in ways that the other apps don't. And whether or not they intend it, changes they make kind of affect the whole ecosystem.

• 9:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Totally. Okay, last question about this. You mentioned you use an Android. I know, I think Mark uses an Android too. Does the whole Facebook executive team use, uh, use Androids? Or does a good chunk of the Facebook executive team use Androids? So should we take that as, I mean, it was reported that Mark uses Android because he's sort of pissed at Apple. So what's going on there?

• 9:53Speaker 01

  Well, I use an Android because if you look at WhatsApp's user base, we are very Android-heavy.

• 9:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Totally.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  And so I use an iPad. I love, you know, I've used iPhones for many years, but I really want to actually use the product in the way most people are using it. So I use an Android. I think a lot of people just go back and forth. A lot of people use both or go back and forth because we're building our products for both and you got to understand them all.

• 10:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Okay, so that's very interesting stuff from like the competitive perspective in terms of privacy. And it's interesting to hear your thoughts on Apple's motivations. Clearly, I think that they know that you're a threat to their lock-in with the iPhone and are going to do whatever they can. And, you know, we hear this like Apple privacy messaging. And yes, of course, they're they're pro-privacy there. That's evident from the people I've spoken with, but it's also can be an argument for them because it does start to hit a company like you and makes people more reticent to switch to a phone that might,

• 10:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  you know, or switch to an app that might break their phone lock-in. But I do think the privacy thing is an issue. And so does so do Facebook employees. When you updated your app with a minor update, you know, people started freaking out. And they were downloading Telegram and Signal like crazy. And in fact, even internally, when it when it came to Q and A, Facebook's, you know, with with you and with Mark Zuckerberg, your own employees, you know, they didn't say, why are we being so misunderstood? Their top question was,

• 11:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  you know, the Facebook brand is toxic and what are we doing to change that? So I'm kind of curious what if you like, if you see the issue there and and, you know, what your reaction is to that.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  Well, I think the the most important thing for me to do is start by just being a little bit clear about our update because there was so much confusion around it. We really are trying to do a good job to

• 11:47Speaker 01

  take the time and explain it. This update does not change anything with the privacy of your personal messages. There's no change to that. We do describe some new business features we're building for people to communicate with businesses if you want to. People don't have to do that. People are in control if they want to. Love to talk with you about those, actually in more detail later, just because especially people in the US may not be as familiar with in parts of the world where businesses use WhatsApp too, and actually people talk to businesses to get things done. So what we're describing were some new features there that are optional that we're really excited about.

• 12:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and I don't think I'm gonna have any disagreement with you that the these, you know, this was not a big change in terms of the way WhatsApp handles privacy. But the very thought of like WhatsApp potentially changing its privacy policies is what set people off. And that I feel like we should talk about the root here, you know, versus the actual update. How do you reckon with that stuff?

• 12:42Speaker 01

  Well, the way I, I mean, the way I see it is, is people care about the privacy of their messages. Um, and of messaging and we agree with that. I mean, it's why we fought so hard to bring end to end encryption all around the world and defend it all around the world. At times with with skepticism from, you know, governments or people who are opposed to that level of security saying, well, do people really care about the privacy of this stuff? Yes, people absolutely care about the privacy of this stuff. So it does not surprise me at all that if people thought that were changing, they'd be upset. We'd be upset. We, that's why we care so much about the privacy and security of people's messages. So it, it, to me, this is, this was a painful reminder of how important it is we communicate really, really clearly about this to the two billion plus people who use WhatsApp.

• 13:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  But what do you think it is about Facebook itself that makes people feel so antsy?

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I think in this particular case, something we heard from in, in research actually was, was even more just confusion about what Facebook needs. A lot of what we heard was when people heard something about data and Facebook. Facebook to them isn't, didn't, didn't come to mind as a company. It came to mind as the app they use, that they, they use and they like using, but it's a social network where their friends are and their friends see stuff that they do. And a lot of the confusion we've heard in research and talking to people after about what happened was, oh, are my messages going to show up on Facebook for my friends to see? Or is there something about my data that's going to change what I see on Facebook or my friends are going to see that? Um, and that was actually quite, quite concerning to people.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Because to them, Facebook is a place where a lot of people are and their friends see what they do. It wasn't, um, for many people, I know some people obviously have concerns, but it wasn't for many people, something about Facebook, a company. To them, Facebook, the word is the app on their phone.

• 14:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Interesting, but like I think we can, we can both. Well, actually I won't put words in your mouth. I'll say that it does seem to me that part of this reaction is just people are nervous about the way that Facebook Inc. Treats privacy in general and that when they're gonna make a change to an app like WhatsApp. Again, the people start to freak out because the, because they look at the track record. And, and I'll just ask a more pointed question about that, right? Like. WhatsApp does use some user data for ads and you know, it goes to the ad, it's not, you know, it's not looking at the messages. We can establish that. But there is some user data that will go to the ad platform.

• 15:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Is it worth it? And wouldn't it be, be in your longer term interest to completely dissociate? The what's, and I know it makes it easier for businesses, but like talking about the, looking at the way that people reacted. Wouldn't it be better in your long-term interest just to dissociate ad data and WhatsApp? And build that trust with people as opposed to trying to shoehorn it into the system that exists today?

• 15:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a great question. So we actually don't, the, the uses of data.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  The uses of data related to ads in WhatsApp are actually quite limited. So I mean, we don't have ads in WhatsApp. You know, we don't see your messages. We don't know what your messages are. We're not logging who everyone's messaging and that's certainly not used for ads. We, we don't use your group data for ads. We're not tracking. Like a lot of the stuff that we actually heard concerns about. It's just not the case. I'll give you some, I'll give you two concrete examples where ads are involved. Cause this is why we can't just make a blanket statement. And I agree with you. A blanket statement would be simpler and cut through. One is, we do have a lot of businesses on WhatsApp who want to advertise on Facebook. Or on Instagram and instead of having people who see those ads go to a website, have them message the business on WhatsApp.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  And we actually think this is a great experience for people and for the advertiser. Because it's hard to load a website on a, on a low-end mobile phone and a lot of really small businesses don't have websites. So they run these ads on Facebook where the button says message me on WhatsApp. You only see that ad if you have WhatsApp on your phone. And if you're clicking those ads on Facebook, obviously that changes the ads that you see on Facebook. That's a great experience. Another one is if you message with businesses, we don't have the data, but they do. They know who you're messaging and it's possible for businesses to go run ad campaigns on Google or Facebook or send you emails or send you letters based on that. So it's hard for us to say have a blanket statement, even though I completely agree with you that it would be simpler and it would cut through.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Because there are these these real cases now.

• 17:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. Well, I'm not even looking for a blanket statement. I'm asking you about the blanket, like a blanket action. Yeah. Like an actual, I mean, I see that you see the logic in this stuff. But I also wonder, just for the long term health of your app, whether just, you know, okay, of course, it would mean that businesses can't do this stuff. But it does seem like what we saw, and of course WhatsApp kept growing. You know, when people were downloading Signal and Telegram. But, you know, they they were running to your competitors and installing them on on their phones based off of what I think was a distrust of the overall Facebook brand. So, and you know, we, I feel like there were even employees were saying that we promised people we wouldn't use their data for advertising. Whether, you know, I think that that that's certainly the perception.

• 17:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  So I I guess like, my question is, doesn't it put WhatsApp in a better long term position? Just to be able to make that break and say, okay, this functionality won't be available to businesses. But now there's no question about the fact that people's data is just never going to be used for advertising on Facebook.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  We have so many people who message with businesses. And again, it's a little hard to, um.

• 18:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. On WhatsApp, though.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  Correct. So actually, the way we've thought about it, um, which, I mean, maybe this kind of gets at what you're asking, maybe not. It's, I don't think it's exactly what you're proposing. But the way we've thought about this is messaging is different. Messaging is private.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  In a lot of places, people do message with businesses. What's a set of products we can build for people that they'll love, that will be valuable for businesses, that actually do help us build a business model for messaging? That is different. And so, for example, one of the things we're really excited about is people actually messaging businesses for customer service. It's not a, it's not a marketing moment. It's a, I have a problem or I want to, you know, in some cases I want to buy something, but I want to talk to the business. And we we charge for that today. It's not an ads model. We charge the businesses per message for when people reach out to them, their ability to access the messages and answer it.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  And we actually think, we think that's really promising and really interesting. So what we're trying to do is actually find what are products and business models that fit messaging that are different than what made sense for a public social network.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  And that's, that's actually a lot of what we're excited about over the next couple of years. And I think we can do something that works that actually helps people with what they want, which is they do talk to businesses in some cases and actually does generate revenue, does build a business for us, but in a way that works with the privacy expectations people have for messaging.

• 19:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Oh, no. Okay. That's interesting. So it doesn't seem like you're, you're going to be open to revisiting that link between, you know, WhatsApp and ads on Facebook, which is, which is a stance for sure. And I, I understand it in some ways. But let's move on to Signal. I, I'm fascinated by the rise of Signal. I've moved my friends to Signal. And I like the fact that the messages disappear in a few hours. That it's encrypted, something that you guys offer as well. And we know our data is never going to be used for an advertising perspective. How do you compete with Signal?

• 20:19Speaker 01

  Well, we compete with lots of messaging apps, including Signal.

• 20:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, I know they're tiny compared to, I know. But like the Signal case in particular seems to be going for like, people liked WhatsApp, I think, because it was encrypted and because it was fast. So do you, do you like, yeah, what do you think about the Signal threat to you guys? I mean, I know you did just recently, recently released the disappearing messages within seven days, which I love. I'm, I'm glad. And I think that like Messenger should follow suit. I don't see the reason why we have our messages on our apps forever. Even Mark, right, had his own set of disappearing messages. And that might've been what inspired some of this stuff inside Facebook. But Signal lets you make, have them very easily have them disappear within, you know, 12 hours, if you want, or an hour, if you want. So

• 21:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  it seems that people are gravitating to the Signal use case. And I would imagine that, you know, if I was in your shoes, they would be the app I would be most afraid of. Does that resonate?

• 21:15Speaker 01

  Well, there's, there's, there's a bunch of apps we worry about all the time. And one of the dynamics of messaging is actually people have lots of messaging apps on their phone and they go back and forth between a bunch of them. And a lot of them are growing. I think, look, I think, I think some of the things people really, really value about WhatsApp that we're excited about continuing to improve and innovate on. One is the privacy of the product. Not just end-to-end encryption, as you point out, but I think increasingly, there's a lot of opportunity on how long messages stick around. To your point, it doesn't make sense for every message you have to stay on your phone forever. We think a lot about the metaphor for WhatsApp as we're helping people have a conversation with someone else as if they were face-to-face. We don't walk around in the world carrying tape recorders.

• 21:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  So we were really excited about disappearing messages. I think there's a lot more we can do there. I think there's a lot we can innovate on that'll be really, really exciting for people.

• 22:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Are those going to come to Messenger, by the way? I know that's not your product.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  No, I think so. I mean, Messenger's been innovating on, on things in the space of ephemerality as well. I think they launched a feature called Vanish Mode, for example. So I think you'll see a lot in both.

• 22:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's nice.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  And we'll learn about what people like the most. But I think there's a lot here, and I think it really is the next frontier in what people care about on privacy. And I think people really, really care about in their messaging service is reliability. And you don't see this as much with any individual launch that anyone makes or an announcement that we make, but behind the scenes, there's so much work on how do you make sure your messaging apps looks really, really quickly, the message gets through every single time, it works on a really, really inexpensive phone all around the world. A lot of WhatsApp's success, I would argue, is that in a lot of the places we're popular, it works for everyone all the time. And I think that's really, really important. And then another whole aspect, I think, what people really care about is the simplicity of the product.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  For a lot of people, WhatsApp is their first, their first experience using not just like a mobile application, but using like anything related to the internet at all. I mean, we go do user research in places and, I mean, to, to, to kind of bring you there in your mind, like, I did a user research session in Guadalajara where I was with a, you know, a 50-year-old woman in a one-room house in a, in a town a couple hours outside of Guadalajara with intermittent power. And her kids had just bought her her first smartphone. And it was like the first time she'd ever used anything on the internet at all. And you know, they did it so they could talk to her on WhatsApp. Um, and so I think a lot of how we innovate and what we're really focused on.

• 23:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  Pretty amazing.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, unbelievable. Oh, and it's just, you know, it's so humbling to get to.

• 23:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  To, you know, hear what they like about your product, also hear what you've gotten wrong or what's still too hard or still too complicated and improvements we need to make. But I think we have so much opportunity to keep innovating along all those divisions. Disappearing Messages, we worked really, really, really hard to make it simple. To make it something that anyone can turn on and understand, and there's not a lot of complicated settings. Um, to get through. I think we have a lot more we can do in the space of femorality. We've also been working a lot on, over the last year, on calling, audio calling and video calling. Um, we've seen tremendous growth in people using WhatsApp to do video calls because it's really, really reliable. It works on any, you know, almost any network connection.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  Actually, um, something, something unbelievable, like a quarter of our video calls are on a, on a network connection worse than a dial-up modem. Um, but it works. Um, and we can make it really simple and we can make it really private. So I think there's a lot we have, um, that I'm really excited about, but is it a competition? Absolutely. It's been a competition for a long time. I think it will continue to be.

• 24:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  I would have a, a red signal alarm. I mean, I know, I know that you guys are not in the offices, but when you return, I would have a red signal alarm. You know, just being like, this thing's coming for us. Cause it does seem like it's, it's taking, there, there's some momentum there around it. And I don't know, but it's good, it's good to see that, that you guys.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  No, no, look, I mean, we have a ton of respect for Signal. I mean, actually, you know, the, the, the end-to-end encryption technology we use is the Signal protocol.

• 25:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Um, right.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  I would, you know, I, I don't think we're doing a good job competing and trying to innovate for people if we don't have an alarm about every other messaging app out there. Signal, Telegram, iMessage. I mean, there's a bunch of things, things that, um, you know, things that aren't even necessarily straightforward messaging apps, but kind of look like them. I mean, Telegram blends messaging with social network functionality. Um, you know, we, of, of course, of course, you wonder about if anyone else is trying any of their app. Why, what is it offering? What could we offer to, to compete with it? Of course.

• 25:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Last question about Signal. By the way, I said I've moved my friends to Signal. I'm also using WhatsApp and I'm, I actually am, I, you know, we'll give you guys credit. The disappearing messaging option is great. People see me turn it on. They're like, how'd you do that? And then they're gonna start. So I think this is something.

• 26:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Uh, well, actually, trying to think. Well, let me just ask you this, this fun one first, then I'll go to my last Signal question. What happened with Jeff Bezos' WhatsApp when he said that it was hacked and they got all of his messages? Do you guys have any idea what happened there?

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Well, I, I, um, you know, I mostly know from news reports. My, my understanding, and we do see this happen sometimes, actually, is, um, people's phones get compromised. You know, either someone deploys malware on their phone, or, you know, even someone steals their phone or gets physical access to the phone. And, you know, we don't, we're not the ones that-

• 26:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  So it wasn't that someone hacked his WhatsApp?

• 26:43Speaker 01

  Not, not, not to our understanding. Um, we think someone sent it, from what we could tell from the news reports and what we understand, someone sent, uh, and this happens in other cases, someone sent, uh, a virus, you know, sent him a virus. You can get a virus emailed, you can get a message to you, get it sent, and then it compromises a vulnerability in your operating system. But, you know, I, you know, can't go like, it's not that I've like, looked at anyone's specific phone or I know all the details.

• 27:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  But we do see that happen, um, from time to time, and because, you know, people's, when someone's phone gets compromised, you know, their WhatsApp messages are sensitive.

• 27:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, last question about Signal. How do you guys feel about the fact that Brian Acton, one of WhatsApp's founders, is very actively working with them, he's funded them? Doesn't that hurt a little bit?

• 27:29Speaker 01

  Not, not from my perspective. I think Brian's great. I think, you know, all the people who created WhatsApp and got it going are pretty phenomenal.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  I think it's cool to see people go and continue to do more things to push the industry in tech. I think that's a good thing. It's pretty common that a lot of people I've worked with at, you know, Facebook over the years have gone on to do other really cool things. And look, it's a competitive space. I think it's good.

• 27:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  Well, would my job be easier if no one else worked on messaging? Sure, but like, that's not the world. The world is people going in and that's good.

• 28:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Okay, we'll move on to, we did a lot about privacy. Appreciate you rolling with it. Let's go to content.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  A lot of people want to influence the content that can appear on social apps.

• 28:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's everyone from activists to government themselves. And right now, the Indian government is working on some new laws that could pass like pretty soon. That would make you trace back, potentially make you trace back the first person who said something that it finds problematic. You know, through the chain, where did this end up originating from? And that seems like it would break WhatsApp's encryption. So if that comes to that, it seems like it might. Would you break encryption on WhatsApp or would you just leave India?

• 28:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, good, good question. So for context, and actually, really in the last few hours, maybe the last 24 hours, they did publish a whole bunch of new regulations. So it's not even, you know, might pass. They did, they did essentially pass a bunch of new regulations or laws. It's hot off the presses, so we're still digesting them and understanding what they actually mean or don't mean.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  For, for this concept of traceability, let me talk about the concept and why we're worried about it. So the concept is exactly as you described, which is a message, someone got a message that had been forwarded along. And they would like, this is coming from India, it's coming from Brazil, they would like to know where did it start? Who first sent the message?

• 29:30Speaker 01

  And the proposal is why can't you do that without breaking encryption? We don't need to know the content of the message, we already know because we saw it. Why can't you tell us who started it? And the problem is today, we don't keep a record of the messages that got sent all around WhatsApp. We get your message and then we, we, we deliver it.

• 29:48Speaker 01

  And to keep a record, there's this hard question of how you do it. How are you keeping a record on the server of messages that got sent around without knowing what the messages are? There's no easy way to do that. Or how do you change WhatsApp and messaging app? So it's included with the message. Like if I forwarded, if you sent, if I sent you a message and you forwarded on, should it say that it started from Will? Should you be able to easily forward on, well, Will sent this message to me and just send that on to everyone else? There's privacy implications of that. So we've been pretty opposed to it. We've been consistently opposed to it. This has actually been an ongoing conversation in India and Brazil and some other places, but especially India for a couple of years.

• 30:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Couple of years now.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  And we've fought it. We have court cases in India fighting on it. So, you know, we've, we've explained this to the government. We've explained why we have concerns about it. We'll stand up and continue to explain those concerns.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  Our hope is that we can find a way to end up with solutions that don't touch encryption. The core origin of this idea came out of concerns over misinformation. I mean, we share concerns over misinformation. Over the last couple of years, we've made a lot of changes to WhatsApp. To stress the fact that we don't want it to be a broadcast messaging platform. We don't want this to be a platform where people go and get messages out to millions of people. So, and I know you've, you've written about some of these changes in the past, but we made a bunch of changes to make WhatsApp more private.

• 31:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  We'll get into that. Yeah. But at the end of the day though, let's say you don't win your court cases and you're forced and this thing makes you break encryption. What's your decision? Break the encryption or, or shut it down?

• 31:18Speaker 01

  I mean.

• 31:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Cause India is a pretty big market for you.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  It, it's very big.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  Look, our track record on this, I think speaks for itself in that we've been willing to take some really hard calls to defend encryption. And it is really hard for me to, I mean, especially if you're talking about, you know, break encryption is really hard for me to imagine being comfortable with that. I mean, it's hard for me to imagine even how you ask people to do that. I think it's such a fundamental threat. So we'll, we'll, we'll stand and we'll make our case and we'll, we'll argue. And I, you know, my hope is here, we can find something that is not breaking encryption that addresses the concerns. It's much more reasonable. Um, that is a much more reasonable solution.

• 31:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  But if you do get there.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  We face this all around and you know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna give you a like ultimatum. Here's exactly what we're gonna do anywhere in the world, but no, we face this in a bunch of places. And we've been, you know, we've been blocked in places. You know, there's a lot of places where we take the risk every day that we may just may not be able to operate tomorrow because we might get blocked.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  But this stuff is hard. I think it's really a question for the, the whole, um, the future of the internet in a lot of these places. You know, my, my worry on encryption in general, zooming out is increasingly countries where it's, it's coming up as a topic of debate. I mean, in the U S in the last year and a half, two years, it came up a lot with, you know, especially the previous administration and Attorney General Bill Barr. There were pushes to outlaw encryption in the U S. I mean, if encryption gets outlawed in the U S, obviously we'd fight tooth and nail to the end on that. But that, I mean, what, what, what would that do for the whole industry and for every encrypted app? What would that do for people's security all around the world?

• 32:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I can't, I mean, you know, I see the argument, but it's just tough to imagine the support. There, there are good mechanisms to take action about bad stuff that's happening, you know, in encrypted apps. When it comes to like user reports and stuff like that. So I just personally just, I, I've become very wary, probably like you guys of seeing a government say, we don't want encryption. Cause that's just saying, we want to be able to spy on our, on our citizens. I don't, I don't like it at all.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  No, we, we hate it. And I think it's also important that, you know, when different governments say it, it emboldens others.

• 33:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. So what I, I want to ask you about that because, you know, I had Purnav Dixit, former colleague of mine on the show here.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  Heard that episode.

• 33:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  To talk about, thank you, I appreciate it. Yeah, Purnav's awesome. And actually, I don't know if I should be saying this, but you know, I ran some questions by him before I got on the line with you guys, with you and, and he very graciously helped me out. So, um, but like one of the things we spoke about was that there is a, you know, threat of a splinter net, where instead of having a global internet, uh, you have countries each with their own regulations, each with their own apps. For instance, you know, the Indian government is pushing Ku, which is a Twitter competitor after Twitter, said, uh, we don't really want to play by your rules. So. Um, do you, well, how, how concerned are you about the possibility that we might end up in this splinter net situation?

• 34:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, we're only 20 years in, not even to the, well, I don't know, to the fact that we have had mainstream social media. So this stuff is far from settled. So what do you think about that?

• 34:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's a great point, and I think we should be worried about it. I mean, we already arguably already have a splinter net with, um, you know, mainland China and the rest of the world. Um, but I, I do think there is a risk that, um, we end up with that in more places, you know, in different countries around the world or even different regions, you know, Europe and the US. Could you imagine regulations diverging in such a way that it forces a splinter net? And I, I worry that, I think people benefit a lot from products that one, work globally. A lot of usage on WhatsApp is people calling people elsewhere in the world or messaging people elsewhere in the world. I mean, a lot of the original use of WhatsApp was for people who traveled. Um, and I think that, you know, even if you only use something with your friends inside your country,

• 35:04Speaker 01

  I think people benefit from having more choices globally. But a lot of the decisions we're going to make on the internet, governments are going to make on the internet over the next 10, 20 years, I think will really shape whether this is a, you know, a global market or whether each country has its own, you know, own mini internet with its own mini apps. And I think the latter would be worse.

• 35:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you think that banning Trump emboldened, you know, the Indian government to start taking stronger stances against American social media companies? Any relation there?

• 35:33Speaker 01

  I mean, potentially, I, you know, I guess I don't know all the dynamics. I mean, I think, look, I think a lot of governments, I mean, the Indian government too, have been trying to figure out what regulations they want in this space, what stances they want to take. And I don't think that's new. Um, you know, I don't think that we suddenly went from none of that conversation to a bunch in a few weeks. I mean, we've been having the conversation about traceability in India for a couple of years, uh, with court cases, et cetera. So I don't totally think that's new. I, you know, did it affect the trend? Maybe. But I think the, the core trend here is every country trying to figure out what regulations they want and, um, those diverging in different places. And some of those, I mean, look, I think regulation can, can be a very good thing, depending on what it is.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  But, but that doesn't mean I agree with all of it. And so some of it, I think, is also worrying regulation in different places. I mean, regulation that weakens encryption, I'm worried about anywhere.

• 36:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 36:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Totally. In a position like yours, it must be pretty wild. You have like both product innovation, communicating with users, trying to figure out what every government wants, trying to figure out how it blends into the Facebook product as a whole. Man, there's a lot of stuff to handle. It's uh, I'm sure it's more intense than many CEO jobs out there.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, we're going to have something exciting at the end of the day. I'm really lucky to get to work on a product that billions of people use and love and care about deeply. I mean, that's really, really, really exciting. And then of course means they have lots of things they'd like us to do with the product, which is, puts the burden on us to go do it, but I think it's really exciting.

• 37:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. So we've talked about content moderation. I have this thing that I call outputs versus the machine. Where like so much of the focus is on, I appreciate that. Yeah. So much of the focus is on the stuff that, you know, the platform spit out and very little of the focus is actually spent on the mechanisms and the fact that the way that the products are designed has a big impact in terms of what people are doing on them and how and what the temperature of discussion is on them. And that's why I found WhatsApp's message forwarding limit fascinating. Because broadcast platforms like Facebook and Twitter basically run off the share and the retweet button,

• 37:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  where people pass things on with very little context. And, you know, you guys limited message forwards, which is essentially WhatsApp's version of the share button. Which was like, I felt like was kind of an admission, maybe that sometimes this fast seamless virality isn't always good, which is unbelievable, you know, coming from inside Facebook. So I'd love to know how that's working out. And we have a, I actually got a question from, on Twitter, from a friend of the show, Evelyn Dewick, who's a Harvard lecturer, who said, what data do you have? When how restricting forwarding impacted how your service was used. So I want to roll those up

• 38:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  into one question and kind of hear your thoughts on that.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess it's a great question. I think the first thing to say is, I mean, We think private messaging is different than a social media large forum. Marcus sometimes used the metaphor publicly of a town square in the living room. But we think those are different. And so we do think the product should work differently. We don't want WhatsApp to be a place where someone goes because they want to get a message out to a billion people. We want WhatsApp to be a place where you talk to people. And it's true that when you talk to people, they might talk to others or you might talk in a group. And so there's not like a perfect right line. But what we decided was that if I talk to you, it makes sense for you to go forward or share something about what you learned from me to other people. But does it make sense for you to in one click, share it to a thousand people?

• 39:13Speaker 01

  No, that just doesn't feel like it fits correctly for WhatsApp. And then on top of that, yes, there's a dynamic where we don't see the content. We don't know what you're saying. We don't think we should. That's why we think encryption is really good. But it also means then we're looking at changes that are about the machine instead of the output. I guess to use your metaphor. So we've actually restricted forwarding multiple times. So the first big one we did was we restricted.

• 39:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  In pretty big ways.

• 39:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, we restricted from you can forward to a lot of threads at once to your capped at five. You can forward to five threads at once. To Evelyn's question, that reduced forwarding by about 25% globally at the time. The more recent change we made is we actually implemented a concept called a highly forwarded message. So we're able to do this consistent with encryption. We don't see the message. We don't, we don't know who you're sending it. We're not tracking who you're sending it to, but we do know how many times, how many hops a message has been forwarded. And after it's been forwarded five hops, we tell you it's been forwarded a lot because we want people to have that information themselves to know that this might have been viral. So they could change what they're thinking about it. We actually got rid of the quick forward button altogether. And if you do go and forward it, you can only forward it to one thread.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  Now, we made that change at the start of COVID. We started to hear from people about I'm getting a lot more stuff forwarded to me about COVID. And that cut highly forwarded messages by 70%, which is pretty big. And then actually more recently, what we're really excited about. We added now where the forward button used to be, the quick forward button used to be is a search Google button in many languages. We worked with Google on this. And the idea is if something's been forwarded around a bunch and I forward it to you, maybe the easiest thing for you should do to should be to go learn more about it. Rather than the easiest thing for you to do should be to pass it on. And I think that's actually really exciting because it gives you control.

• 40:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I'd like to pause on this because I, I think that like, of course, you're, you're gonna have different dynamics on WhatsApp and Facebook, but the problem is the same, which is that, you know, you mentioned COVID, right? You're gonna make these limits to limit COVID misinformation. It's not like, you know, the quick spreading of COVID misinformation on a Facebook or a WhatsApp. It's gonna work all that differently when you have that share button. So don't you think that like limiting the sharing function on Facebook to some extent might also, you know, solve some of the, the issues that we see there in terms of, uh, I don't know, like hate or sensationalism or, you know, uh, misinformation,

• 41:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  which I, I guess like what I'm trying to say is I'd much prefer a product solution that slows that stuff down. Then like, you know, content moderation armies deciding what we can say and what we can't. And then of course activists on both sides clamoring for the other side's stuff to be taken down.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Well, I think there's, I mean, there's hard trade offs involved in all of this. You know, when I say that highly forwarded messages dropped by 70% on WhatsApp, I don't know that that's all misinformation or bad stuff. I actually bet there's a lot of stuff in there that, you know, if we knew what it was, we'd say, oh, it's kind of a shame.

• 42:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Funny memes.

• 42:11Speaker 01

  Funny memes or, you know, or important, good information or information about a crisis or, um, information challenging a government.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  So I think there's hard trade offs here. I, I, for, for me, some of it's about what do you want the product to be? I think, I think I do think a private messaging service is different than a large public, um, social network. I don't think end to end encryption would be appropriate for a large public social network either. Um, I think you do want large public social networks for people to be able to reach more people, but I think you also do want to know, you know, have the ability to have, have content moderation in that environment. I mean, I hear you. It sounds like, I mean, it sounds like you're generally more comfortable with approaches that just, make it harder for information to get around than approaches where you're trying to sift through and decide which information's,

• 42:57Speaker 01

  passes a, a content policy or, or has a social issue, which, which is fair. Those are hard questions and then it means people are deciding. But the downside, if you go that route, is you're also making it harder for information to get around. And I do think it's useful for there to be products where people can get information out. I think that's actually a powerful thing. It has a lot of good, too.

• 43:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, look, I'm definitely in favor of more friction. I don't think it becomes, it's the internet, right? So copy and paste takes a handful of seconds. So it's not, it's not, you know, the, the ending of information being circulated, but it is, you know, potentially people being forced to take a couple more seconds to think and decide whether that's what they want to pass along and actually have to put it under their, their own names versus like take stuff from some, you know, and send it to their audiences under somebody else, which limits accountability, but it is a conversation. You know, I, I think I value hearing your perspective on it, honestly, and, uh, and I appreciate you listening to mine.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  Oh, of course.

• 43:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  So. Okay, last question. Uh, when I asked on Twitter, what do you want to know about WhatsApp? People really wanted to know, you know, what's going on with WhatsApp in the US? It seems to be, you know, used incredibly highly elsewhere, not deeply in the US. Do you have like a quick thought on that?

• 44:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's get some, some of what we talked about, about the history and Apple.

• 44:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  And, and I, well, so, okay, let me, let me.

• 44:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  So it's iPhones.

• 44:15Speaker 01

  So I think iPhones are a huge part of it. I think some of it's the history, too. So in the, in the, WhatsApp was released in 2009. Yon put it out in 2009. And that was actually right after it was first possible on an iPhone to have an app in the App Store that had push notifications, which you kind of need for a messaging app. So the iPhone was out for a couple of years with the ability to message and some people message, but no alternative.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  And iPhones did pretty well in the US in those couple of years. So a lot of people got them and they got used to messaging and using iPhone. The second thing which I think happened is, um, has to do with cost. A lot of WhatsApp's early appeal was that it was free, uh, or really actually was paid cheaply, but free at the margin, free for any individual message you sent. And then later after joining, Facebook became completely free. And, um, in the US, most people paid like $5 a month or $10 a month for a texting plan that was unlimited, which is a lot of money, uh, compared to free. But at least once you've paid that, you don't think each next message I'm sending, I have to think about. In most of the world, it didn't work that way. In most of the world, you had to pay 10 cents a message or 20 cents a message, or god knows what for an international call,

• 45:24Speaker 01

  or an international message. So WhatsApp was just a game changer because it saves you money. Whereas in the US, that was less of a dynamic, and more people had gotten iPhones and they'd gotten more locked in to iMessage. And some of that's carried through. Even to this day, I think the US is probably one of the countries where the highest share of people use iPhones instead of Androids. And they use iMessage. But that doesn't mean we don't hold out hope that we can entice more people to try WhatsApp. In the US, we do see a lot of good usage for people who have international contacts. People know people in other countries, want to do free international calls, want to send messages internationally, or people who know a lot of people in Androids.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  I actually had a really exciting moment last week. My son's in kindergarten and there's a mailing list for the parents in kindergarten. We're all doing Zoom kindergarten, so it's like hard and you're trying to coordinate. And sometimes the dial-in doesn't work. And one of the parents sent out a link saying, let's all join a WhatsApp group. So we can coordinate on this. I don't know, I have no idea. I think they probably don't even know that I work at WhatsApp.

• 46:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  You didn't?

• 46:27Speaker 01

  I didn't do it. I wasn't the one who sent it out. So I was super excited. We all joined this WhatsApp group. And it's great, actually, because it's like 30 parents or whatever. And when the Zoom isn't working, we can quickly coordinate. It's better than email. And it would have been, I think it would have been hard to do that on iMessage. So I think there's, there's things we can do to have the product actually work. But we do face this dynamic of exactly what you said before. iMessage has a strong, Apple has a strong incentive to keep people on iMessage. They don't want to make it easy for somebody who's an Android. And so it just puts us in a harder position than we've had in a bunch of other places.

• 47:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep. Well, as we conclude, I want to say there's, there's been a movement, you know, among some folks in, in the tech industry to, to pull back from engaging with, you know, journalism and not take tough questions. And I think it's a testament to your character and, you know, I don't know, the way that you guys run the company, that you're willing to come on here and take some tough ones. And, and I do appreciate it.

• 47:26Speaker 01

  No, thank you. Love the conversation. Would love to talk more. I think these are, they're. Like, I mean, do you think you're exploring this? Some of these are really hard, interesting issues and actually talking through them, I think, doesn't get you to a perfect answer, but I think it helps. It helps me and we have a higher chance of getting to a good one.

• 47:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I agree. And, you know, I have my perspectives, obviously, but to be able to sit with you and kind of run them by you and hear what you think about it is something I appreciate immensely and has helped broaden my thinking just in a short amount of time. So, thank you for joining today.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  Thank you. And likewise, thank you for having me on.

• 47:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Great. Well, that will do it for us. Everyone here on Big Technology Podcast, want to thank Will Cathcart for joining us. You can find him on Facebook. I'm pretty sure that's what he would shout out.

• 48:07Speaker 01

  Yep. Yep, you can find me on Facebook. You can find me on Twitter. If you haven't used WhatsApp, give it a try. WhatsApp.com.

• 48:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. Well, there's the pitch.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  I sneak it in.

• 48:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, it's good. It's, I like the app. Like I said, I'm glad that you guys are disappearing the messages. And so, we are gonna wrap here, but just a quick thanks to Nick Watney for doing the editing, Red Circle for hosting and doing the analytics. We'll be back every Wednesday with a new quest, new conversation with a tech insider or outside agitator. We have some really, really good conversations on the way. So, if it's your first time here, please subscribe. If you've been here for a while and want to rate us, that would be great and we would appreciate that very much. So, until next Wednesday, I'm wishing you all the best. Thanks again for listening and take care.

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