I think Facebook fundamentally misunderstands the privacy concerns of the WhatsApp user base.

I first started using WhatsApp years ago at the urging of friends of mine in the Levant and other parts of the arabic-speaking world where it had become universal — because of privacy and security. Most of them live in nation states where governments routinely invade privacy for oppressive reasons, and they felt they needed secure communication for existential reasons.

I continued using WhatsApp as its popularity soared in the UK and the EU where messaging fragmentation makes it convenient for communicating across borders — but where expectations of privacy are significantly higher than in the United States.

Many of my friends who originally adapted WhatsApp for privacy and security reasons stopped using it quite a while ago, and Facebook’s recent privacy policy change prompted a lot more of them to ditch the app.

That might not make sense to Zuckerberg, whose business model makes collecting people’s private information imperative, but it makes sense to the people who made WhatsApp big in the first place.

The world wants a private communication system that does not collect user data. If Zuckerberg won’t provide that, somebody else surely will.