The Problem With Fixing WhatsApp? Human Nature Might Get in the Way | NYT

From a timely WhatsApp reality check

"Unlike Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, WhatsApp isn’t a social network. It is mostly a bare-bones texting app in which most conversations are private and unmediated by any kind of algorithm meant to amp up engagement. This design means WhatsApp has little control over what content takes off and what doesn’t; in most cases, the company cannot even see what is happening on WhatsApp, because the service encrypts messages automatically.

That means the real problem may be not so much WhatsApp the company or WhatsApp the product but something more fundamental — WhatsApp the idea.

When you offer everyone access to free and private communication, lots of wonderful things may happen — and WhatsApp has been a godsend to vulnerable populations like migrants, dissidents and political activists. But a lot of terrible things are bound to happen, too — and it might be impossible to eliminate the bad without muzzling the good."

The Problem With Fixing WhatsApp? Human Nature Might Get in the Way | NYT