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It doesn't mater at this point. FB and WhatsApp lost user's trust.

Besides what they say is often not true anyway as history shows.

AFAIK it's a closed product. What is the proof that they can't see private messages?
Anything that says otherwise will be deleted. What more proof do you need?
You'd need Facebook and Whatsapp to demonstrate LEO came looking for the data and they had to attest what they did and didn't have, as Signal has [1].

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/10/fbi-demands-sign...

> “The only information responsive to the subpoena held by OWS is the time of account creation and the date of the last connection to Signal servers,” Kaufman continued, also pointing out that the company did in fact hand over this data.

Can we see WhatsApp client source code to verify this claim? We can for Signal.
Does it matter if they see our private messages when they hand all of the metadata (locations, usage patterns) to their own company Onavo to build extensive profiles? This for me is more of a concern than the message text itself.
This is the real concern for me too. But in the end I think WhatsApp has gravity even if moving to Signal is minimal effort.
Let this be a lesson for other messaging applications: giving users an ultimatum where they have to give up their privacy in order to continue using a product is a bad idea. Damage is done for users -- who have already accepted to give their contact lists and whatnot -- and for WhatsApp although at a much lesser degree. Network effects and migration costs will retain their users, but for how long?