Living in a WhatsApp World

If WhatsApp were a nation, it would be as populous as India. Pretty much everyone with a smartphone uses the instant messaging application owned by Facebook. But governments around the world complain that WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption makes it impossible for investigating agencies to eavesdrop on criminals and terrorists, or track their communications. In India, WhatsApp is often blamed for spreading fake news and rumours, which have even led to riots. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO, has argued that the metadata—who is communicating with whom— is available to investigators, if not the encrypted content.