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WhatsApp’s Status feature works a lot like Stories do in Instagram, in that users can use the option to stitch together photos and video to express themselves in a way words alone might not allow them to.
The idea behind WhatsApp Status sharing is that it will allow users to post their status directly to their Facebook story, Instagram Story, Gmail, Google Photos, or other service.
WhatsApp told The Verge that the sharing feature doesn’t link accounts on the two services in any way, and instead transfers the data on-device using Android and iOS data-sharing APIs.
Even when sharing to another Facebook-owned service like Instagram, WhatsApp says the two posts remain separate events and are not associated in Facebook’s systems.
Regardless of that explanation, relating the two platforms in the public consciousness has become a risky business for Facebook ever since it acquired WhatsApp in 2014.
The company said at the time that it wouldn’t collect data from the end-to-end encrypted messaging service, but then two years later it began doing exactly that for ad-targeting purposes.
In 2016 the company had to end the collection of WhatsApp user data across Europe, including the phone number a user verifies during the registration process and the last time a user accessed the service, after privacy watchdogs slammed the practice and regulators demanded it be stopped.
Facebook was subsequently fined $122 million by the European Commission for misleading regulators during the merger review about the extent to which it could link accounts.
