@jj @hhardy01 note, when I said non-tech journalist I'm referring to the Forbes article that started this speculation.
Agreed that the WhatsApp defaults are bad for truly secure usage. Not just the backup option but also notifications of fingerprint changes defaulting to off.
Use Signal if you really want to be secure. They make tradeoffs in favor of security, nit convenience - eg not allowing backup on iOS because Apple doesn't allow local backups
@jj @hhardy01 and naturally, as discussed on this instance before, regardless of whether Facebook plans to add client-side filtering or required to implement some "ghost protocol" (technically feasible, despite industry protestations, unless someone looks at the source or decompile it well enough), the best recourse is to use services that are fully open sourced and has reproducible builds. Closed source but audited would work too.