i guess that fb does store keys after all; they do respond to police requests

i also found this: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/v7tsou/is_whatsapp_lying_about_its_endtoend_encryption/

Encryption in WhatApp is actually a fake, because the encryption keys are generated and stored on Facebook’s servers, accordingly, they can read any of your messages as plain text, and the intelligence services obviously have access to them.

Also a few months ago there was a leaked slide from an FBI training course or something where they compared different messengers in terms of how well they cooperate with the police, guess who came first ?

WhatsApp provides data to the police in near real time (about 15 minutes from the time of the request)

The message from WhatApp at the beginning of the chat - that your data is not available to third parties is the height of hypocrisy.

whatsapp is not meaningfully e2ee

sounds like it’s not supposed to be a general use tool, but instead for counterintelligence only:

The Ministry of the Interior anticipates submitting around 30 requests per year for the surveillance of unencrypted messages and between 5 to 15 requests for encrypted communications. If there are 30 instances of encrypted message monitoring within a single calendar year, the Interior Minister is obligated to inform a permanent subcommittee of the National Council, which is the directly elected chamber of the Austrian Parliament.

Each surveillance method will require case-by-case approval from the Federal Administrative Court. The process involves a legal protection officer from the Ministry of the Interior, who will have three business days to respond to any request. Following that, a panel of three judges from the Federal Administrative Court will review the case. In urgent situations, an individual judge may grant approval, supported by a 24-hour judicial service system.

https://themunicheye.com/austrian-government-approves-malware-surveillance-23431

broad use would expose its existence and make any 0days useless in short order

firefox at minimum clears the very low bar of not exposing casual user to crypto