Author:  L. Marquez Affiliation:  Independent Researcher Abstract WhatsApp has long been positioned as the “private” messaging alternative in a platform economy dominated by advertising and data extraction. That positioning rests on a core technical and symbolic promise: end-to-end encryption (E2EE). In late January 2026, a class-action lawsuit and related reporting reignited a global controversy by alleging that WhatsApp’s privacy assurances are misleading and that internal