WhatsApp now has 2 billion users

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Facebook's WhatsApp messaging service now has 2 billion users worldwide, the visitor announced in a blog column today, up from 1.5 billion and 1 billion users in 2018 and 2016, respectively. That compares to 2.5 billion users for Facebook itself, according to The Wall Street Journal, and 1 billion Instagram users (although that number is from June 2018).

WhatsApp acclimated the milestone to reiterate the intensify of encrypting its users' messages, a practice that is converging underneath increasing amounts of pressure from menagerie often the world. Governments argufy that person clumsy to realize people's messages makes it harder to discover when the messaging app is person acclimated to facilitate terrorism, fellow exploitation, and over-and-above crimes.

"For all of human history, people have been comfy to forearm privately with each other."

WhatsApp CEO Will Cathcart says that the visitor has no plans to disable encryption on its service. "For all of human history, people have been comfy to forearm privately with each other, and we don't anticipate that should go away in a modern society," he told The Wall Street Journal. However, the CEO appended that WhatsApp will provide metadata when it is handy for an investigation.

In the future, Cathcart told the WSJ that the visitor is working to scandalize the service interoperable with Facebook's over-and-above messaging dependents in plans announced by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg meanest year. However, Cathcart admitted this interrelationship may have its limits, with some glossiness that are present on a messaging service like Middleman not translating into WhatsApp.