Message contents are end-to-end encrypted (but not all metadata is). And no, they are not sent through an unencrypted side channel to Meta. I've worked at Meta on a team that does end-to-end encryption. The company is also very clear about this publicly [1][2]
It's super frustrating that every single time WhatsApp is mentioned on Hacker News, someone boldly makes a claim that it's not encrypted based on hearsay or hunches.
It's super frustrating that every single time WhatsApp is mentioned on Hacker News, someone boldly makes a claim that it's not encrypted based on hearsay or hunches.
1- https://faq.whatsapp.com/791574747982248/?locale=en_US 2 - https://www.whatsapp.com/privacy