So forgive me for being a naive idiot, and I realize Facebook spent something like the GDP of Paraguay to buy WhatsApp. But the idea that the only possible way to monetize e2e chat is to break the encryption and scan for keywords seems like a stretch.
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And WhatsApp didn’t grow to be a billion+ user system because Facebook marketed it. It was purchased by Facebook because a couple of scrappy upstarts managed to acquire Facebook scale — and start pulling eyeballs from FB properties.
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Anyway, my point is that Facebook already has tons of user data from its other properties, much of which is getting linked to WhatsApp accounts. Use that data to display ads. Let people opt out for a payment.
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Anyway, I realize this isn’t going to bring in the kind of revenue that FB shareholders (excepting myself!) want. But that’s not my point.
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My point is that e2e applications (even at 1bn-user scale) are alarmingly cheap to build. The threat to those apps is not that they’re *expensive*. It’s that the minute one gets successful, a giant like Facebook seeks it out and buries it in cash and a broken business model.
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Replying to @matthew_d_green
I don't disagree with you but he isn't saying that *E2E* comm apps are expensive. He is saying that comm apps have a cost that must be offset by revenue - but, if they are E2E, you can't monetize the traffic in order to obtain such revenue.
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Replying to @VessOnSecurity @matthew_d_green
The part that *I* don't understand is the off-the-cuff remark that e2e would make WeChat-like capabilities difficult. What capabilities? Payment? Shouldn't encryption be helpful for that; not an impediment?
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Replying to @VessOnSecurity
Yeah. The only features I can see not working are the ones that involve server-side content scanning. Like advertising and content filtering.
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Replying to @matthew_d_green @VessOnSecurity
Let me rephrase. Advertising works fine. Targeted advertising even works great if you can link the user’s account to another source of data like their FB profile. Literally the only thing that doesn’t work is strip-mining the actual content of text messages.
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Replying to @matthew_d_green @VessOnSecurity
So when someone at FB says they don’t have a monetization strategy because of e2e, they’re saying that the value of the content strip-mining is so high that the money they can make through other strategies doesn’t compare.
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Haven't they said over and over they don't do content mining of messages? 
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