I've been watching a bunch of discussion this week about the privacy policy update we’re in the process of making @WhatsApp and wanted to share some thoughts.

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I want to share how committed everyone @WhatsApp is to providing private communication for two billion people around the world. At our core, that’s the ability to message or call loved ones freely protected by end-to-end encryption and that’s not changing.

With end-to-end encryption, we cannot see your private chats or calls and neither can Facebook. We’re committed to this technology and committed to defending it globally. You can read more here: https://www.whatsapp.com/security/ 

We’ve updated our policy to be transparent and to better describe optional people-to-business features. We wrote about it in October -- this includes commerce on WhatsApp and the ability for people to message a business. Pls see: https://blog.whatsapp.com/shopping-payments-and-customer-service-on-whatsapp

It's important for us to be clear this update describes business communication and does not change WhatsApp’s data sharing practices with Facebook. It does not impact how people communicate privately with friends or family wherever they are in the world.

Not everyone may realize how common it is to WhatsApp message businesses in many countries. In fact, about 175 million people message a business account each day on WhatsApp and more want to do so.

Also businesses want tools to quickly and effectively respond to those messages. It’s too hard today and features like Shops and Pay can help people buy things they want from businesses on WhatsApp.

We’re in a competition on privacy with others and that’s very good for the world. People should have choices in how they communicate and feel confident that no one else can see their chats. There are people who disagree with this, including some governments.

We’re proud of the service we offer, and we’ll continue to develop technology and practices to provide private, secure communications for as many people as we can.

That’s why we are so committed to end-to-end encryption, and why we keep improving the privacy of WhatsApp, such as with our launch of disappearing messages in November. Our innovation on privacy will continue.