If you ask any of those 4 billion people if they know WhatsApp is related in anyway to Meta, your answers will be split between "no" and "what's a Meta?"
Most non tech folks believes that Meta listens to their conversation for ads in Instagram, but that's a different issue, and even with that belief they are fine with that. I have seen this discussion so many times with so many different groups.
Everyone is only on WhatsApp because everyone is on WhatsApp. That is why they tolerate the Meta ickiness of it.
I use Whatsapp daily (as does everyone I know) and there's no way I'm buying anything from Meta.
But I'm making sure WhatsApp will not be used for anything outside this context. That way I can nuke it when we're back home.
My comment was in the context of "Meta has a brand issue" which is absolutely true.
Instagram. Critical to life. Naah.
These people probably have zero awareness about cookies, tracking, online disinformation campaigns and online security in general...yet the one "tech" thing they know is that Facebook spies on you.
Everyone is aware of how Meta kills privacy in their products. The products are still useful, especially at price point "free". And they are still riding on an installed base and network effect from a time before we cared that much about the privacy infringement.
But, actually paying for the privilege of being the product...that seems like an extremely hard sell from Facebook for me.
I remember doing Bug Bounty for Meta a while ago and telling some friends and family about it, and I had to repeatedly explain they _are_ Facebook and WhatsApp and Instagram and many other things because they would look at me like I was talking about aliens.
