May, 14 2021, 12:00am EDT
28 Groups Denounce Facebook's Plan to Extended Data Collection by Pestering WhatsApp Users, Degrading Features
WASHINGTON
A coalition of 28 groups across the globe today sent a letter to Facebook demanding the company stop intimidating WhatsApp users to accept extended data collection, originally set to take effect on May 15.
Instead of forcing users to immediately accept new terms, Facebook is now pestering WhatsApp users to accept its policy change by May 15 or, under a new opaque timeframe, within a few weeks. WhatsApp will continually remind users to accept the new privacy policy and gradually degrade or remove core features of the app for those who do not--such as removing access to their personal chat list and deactivating message notifications. The company has not said when it plans to start restricting features.
"Despite persistent, international calls to respect people's privacy, the revised plan still prioritizes Facebook's exploitative business practices over basic privacy rights," the groups said. Facebook must immediately stop asking WhatsApp users to accept a degraded privacy policy and should reverse course on this latest move against global communications, the groups maintain.
"Facebook's prospective business model relies on extended data integration between WhatsApp and Facebook to benefit its own bottom line at the expense of user privacy. Facebook appears dedicated to continuing exploiting WhatsApp data to advance its marketing and commercial interests. Facebook has shown time and again that it simply cannot be trusted to safeguard our privacy or data," the letter reads.
"We must try to make sure Facebook is in possession of less of our data, not more. We simply cannot let the globe's messaging service function as Mark Zuckerberg's latest data goldmine. Given that Facebook's business model predicated on privacy invasion and consumer exploitation, Facebook never should have been allowed to acquire WhatsApp. The time to break up Facebook has come. The time to act is now. Save WhatsApp!"
- Burcu Kilic, digital rights program director, Public Citizen (U.S)
"Terms of usage constantly change to use business models that capitalize on member data with little regard to user privacy. We must ensure that communities, many of whom are Latino, are not held hostage by Facebook. The threat of being dropped from WhatsApp for not accepting privacy changes that only serve Facebook is reprehensible and shameful!"
- Jose M. Vargas, executive director, Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (U.S.)
"Facebook continues to aggressively undermine the privacy rights of people using its platforms, including WhatsApp. To squeeze further monetization from WhatsApp, it's working to rewire this essential global messaging service to further incorporate Facebook's myriad of extensive commercial data-gathering practices. Facebook's priorities of placing its constant search for greater revenues over the interest of the public is one reason why the company must be tightly regulated, and WhatsApp must be restored as an independent entity."
- Jeff Chester, executive director, Center for Digital Democracy (U.S.)
"Facebook has repeatedly broken the privacy promises it made when it acquired WhatsApp. It's time that privacy regulators worldwide and stop Facebook from misusing WhatsApp user data."
- Caitriona Fitzgerald, deputy director, Electronic Privacy Information Center (U.S.)
"Facebook's continuing insistence on exploiting all the people who aren't protected by privacy laws like GDPR shows how tone deaf this big tech monopoly still is in this crucial moment of reckoning. From all sides, people are demanding that their privacy rights be valued more than big tech profits. That Facebook would betray its own promises from when it acquired WhatsApp and continue to push forward in its cruel plan to manipulate and exploit people who are reliant on WhatsApp says a lot not only about the company's promises, but the company's prevailing motivations. Let the way that the WhatsApp community is being treated serve as a warning sign that Facebook has not learned and is not changing. In fact, with this move they're doubling down on abusive surveillance capitalist practices while gaslighting their customers."
- Lia Holland, campaigns & communications director, Fight for the Future (U.S.)
"WhatsApp is the most used instant messaging app in Latin America, at least partially thanks to zero-rating plans that allow people to communicate through the app without affecting their plan's data cap. The changes to WhatsApp privacy policy pushed by Facebook strengthen its dominant position in the market, making even more difficult to look for alternatives more respectful of people's rights."
- Maria Paz Canales, executive director, Derechos Digitales (Latin America)
"It is the newer people joining WhatsApp that brings all the value that the network holds. Zuckerberg cannot be allowed to break his promise and still retain WhatsApp. Regulators across the world must see to it. There has been some good news from Germany in this regard, and we are sure more will follow, with citizen groups keeping up the pressure. The recent announcement that the coercive action on WhatsApp users will be administered slowly over a few weeks and not suddenly is a cruel joke, akin to telling a condemned prisoner that he will not beheaded but killed by slow strangulation."
- Parminder Jeet Singh, executive director, IT for Change (India)
"WhatsApp and Facebook, in a clear abuse of dominant position, share users' personal data without legal basis, without clear purposes, and without any possibility of opposition by its users. It's essential that the companies start respecting consumers liberty of choice and right to self-determination by giving them granular options to determine what and how data it will be collected, with what purpose and by whom."
- Juliana Oms, attorney, Brazilian Institute for Consumer Protection (IDEC) (Brazil)
"Facebook is adopting a double-standard: good behavior in countries with data-protection laws, and trying to get away with abusive data practices everywhere else, such as this 'open-timeframe' for accepting the new policy. The fact that executives are bragging that most users have already accepted an abusive policy is alarming. It is time to be the company you claim to be and stop abusing your economic power."
- Flora Rebello Arduini, senior campaigner, SumOfUs (Brazil)
"For too many people, leaving WhatsApp - especially when so many rely on it to keep in touch with their loved ones - is not a viable option. Facebook knows this, yet the company still wants to force users to accept a policy that would undermine their privacy. This is a blatant abuse of their dominance. Already South Africa's information regulator has sounded the alarm about the new policy contravening the country's Protection of Personal Information Act (PoPIA) and how the new policy is discriminatory as people in some parts of the world would enjoy significantly more privacy protections than users elsewhere. Mark Zuckerberg ignoring this call would be a blatant undermining of people's privacy in the interest of profit."
- Palesa Ramolefo, campaigner, mobi (South Africa)
"We are worried about the instability to which users in Paraguay and the global south in general are subjected to when it comes to privacy policies and terms of services that are constantly changing. It is not fair, particularly when so many individuals don't have a choice but to use WhatsApp due to poor connectivity and infrastructure."
- Eduardo Carrillo, human rights and public policies analyst, TEDIC (Paraguay)
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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ICE Goons Pepper Spray Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva During Tucson Raid
"If federal agents are brazen enough to fire pellets directly at a member of Congress, imagine how they behave when encountering defenseless members of our community," Grijalva said.
Dec 05, 2025
In what Arizona's attorney general slammed as an "unacceptable and outrageous" act of "unchecked aggression," a federal immigration officer fired pepper spray toward recently sworn-in Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva during a Friday raid on a Tucson restaurant.
Grijalva (D-Ariz.) wrote on social media that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers "just conducted a raid by Taco Giro in Tucson—a small mom-and-pop restaurant that has served our community for years."
"When I presented myself as a member of Congress asking for more information, I was pushed aside and pepper sprayed," she added.
Grijalva said in a video uploaded to the post that she was "sprayed in the face by a very aggressive agent, pushed around by others, when I literally was not being aggressive, I was asking for clarification, which is my right as a member of Congress."
The video shows Grijalva among a group of protesters who verbally confronted federal agents over the raid. Following an order to "clear," an agent is seen firing what appears to be a pepper ball at the ground very near the congresswoman's feet. Video footage also shows agents deploying gas against the crowd.
"They're targeting small mom-and-pop businesses that don't have the financial resources to fight back," Grijalva told reporters after the incident. "They're targeting small businesses and people that are helping in our communities in order to try to fill the quota that [President Donald] Trump has given them."
Mocking the incident on social media, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin contended that Grijalva "wasn’t pepper sprayed."
"She was in the vicinity of someone who *was* pepper sprayed as they were obstructing and assaulting law enforcement," she added. "In fact, two law enforcement officers were seriously injured by this mob that [Grijalva] joined."
McLaughlin provided no further details regarding the nature of those injuries.
Democrats in Arizona and beyond condemned Friday's incident, with US Sen. Ruben Gallego writing on social media that Grijalva "was doing her job, standing up for her community."
"Pepper spraying a sitting member of Congress is disgraceful, unacceptable, and absolutely not what we voted for," he added. "Period."
Democratic Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said on social media: "This is unacceptable and outrageous. Enforcing the rule of law does not mean pepper spraying a member of Congress for simply asking questions. Effective law enforcement requires restraint and accountability, not unchecked aggression."
Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) also weighed in on social media, calling the incident "outrageous."
"Rep. Grijalva was completely within her rights to stand up for her constituents," she added. "ICE is completely lawless."
Friday's incident follows federal agents' violent removal of Sen. Alexa Padilla (D-Calif.) from a June press conference held by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
Congresswoman LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) was federally indicted in June for allegedly “forcibly impeding and interfering with federal officers" during an oversight visit at a privately operated migrant detention center in Newark, New Jersey and subsequent confrontation with ICE agents outside of the lockup in which US Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman and Rob Menendez, both New Jersey Democrats, were also involved.
Violent assaults by federal agents on suspected undocumented immigrants—including US citizens—protesters, journalists, and others are a regular occurrence amid the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign.
"If federal agents are brazen enough to fire pellets directly at a member of Congress, imagine how they behave when encountering defenseless members of our community," Grijalva said late Friday on social media. "It’s time for Congress to rein in this rogue agency NOW."
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Gavin Newsom Wants a 'Big Tent Party,' But Opposes Wealth Tax Supported by Large Majority of Americans
"A wealth tax is a big tent policy unless the only people you care about are billionaires," said one progressive organizer.
Dec 05, 2025
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, considered by some to be the frontrunner to be the next Democratic presidential nominee, said during a panel on Wednesday that he wants his party to be a “big tent” that welcomes large numbers of people into the fold. But he’s “adamantly against” one of the most popular proposals Democrats have to offer: a wealth tax.
In October, progressive economists Emmanuel Saez and Robert Reich joined forces with one of California's most powerful unions, the Service Employees International Union's (SEIU) United Healthcare Workers West, to propose that California put the nation’s first-ever wealth tax on the ballot in November 2026.
They described the measure as an "emergency billionaires tax" aimed at recouping the tens of billions of dollars that will be stripped from California's 15 million Medicaid recipients over the next five years, after Republicans enacted historic cuts to the program in July with President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which dramatically reduced taxes for the wealthiest Americans.
Among those beneficiaries were the approximately 200 billionaires living in California, whose average annual income, Saez pointed out, has risen by 7.5% per year, compared with 1.5% for median-income residents.
Under the proposal, they would pay a one-time 5% tax on their total net worth, which is estimated to raise $100 billion. The vast majority of the funds, about 90%, would be used to restore Medicaid funding, while the rest would go towards funding K-12 education, which the GOP has also slashed.
The proposal in California has strong support from unions and healthcare groups. But Newsom has called it “bad policy” and “another attempt to grab money for special purposes.”
Meanwhile, several of his longtime consultants, including Dan Newman and Brian Brokaw, have launched a campaign alongside “business and tech leaders” to kill the measure, which they’ve dubbed “Stop the Squeeze." They've issued familiar warnings that pinching the wealthy too hard will drive them from the state, along with the critical tax base they provide.
At Wednesday's New York Times DealBook Summit, Andrew Ross Sorkin asked Newsom about his opposition to the wealth tax idea, comparing it to a proposal by recent New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who pledged to increase the income taxes of New Yorkers who earn more than $1 million per year by 2% in order to fund his city-wide free buses, universal childcare, and city-owned grocery store programs.
Mamdani's proposal was met with a litany of similar warnings from Big Apple bigwigs who threatened to flee the city and others around the country who said they'd never move in.
But as Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein explained in October for the American Prospect: "The evidence for this is thin: mostly memes shared by tech and finance people... Research shows that the truth of the matter is closer to the opposite. Wealthy individuals and their income move at lower rates than other income brackets, even in response to an increase of personal income tax." Many of those who sulked about Mamdani's victory have notably begun making amends with the incoming mayor.
Moreover, the comparison between Mamdani's plan and the one proposed in California is faulty to begin with. As Harold Meyerson explained, also for the Prospect: "It is a one-time-only tax, to be levied exclusively on billionaires’ current (i.e., 2025) net worth. Even if they move to Tasmania, they will still be liable for 5% of this year’s net worth."
"Crucially, the tax won’t crimp the fortunes of any billionaire who moves into the state next year or any later year, as it only applies to the billionaires living in the state this year," he added. "Therefore... the horrific specter of billionaire flight can’t be levied against the California proposal."
Nevertheless, Sorkin framed Newsom as being in an existential battle of ideas with Mamdani, asking how the two could both represent the Democratic Party when they are so "diametrically opposed."
"Well, I want to be a big-tent party," Newsom replied. "It's about addition, not subtraction."
Pushed on the question of whether there should be a "unifying theory of the case," Newsom responded that “we all want to be protected, we all want to be respected, we all want to be connected to something bigger than ourselves. We have fundamental values that I think define our party, about social justice, economic justice.”
"We have pre-distribution Democrats, and we have re-distribution Democrats," he continued. "Therein lies the dialectic and therein lies the debate."
Polling is scarce so far on the likelihood of such a measure passing in California. But nationally, polls suggest that the vast majority of Democrats fall on the "re-distribution" side of Newsom's "dialectic." In fact, the majority of all Americans do, regardless of party affiliation.
Last year, Inequality.org examined 55 national and state polls about a number of different taxation policies and found:
A billionaire income tax garnered the most support across party identification. On average, two out of three (67%) of Americans supported the tax including 84% of Democrats, 64% of Independents, and 51% of Republicans.
In national polls, a wealth tax had similarly high levels of support. More than three out of five Americans supported the tax including 78% of Democrats, 62% of Independents, and 51% of Republicans.
That sentiment only seems to have grown since the return of President Donald Trump. An Economist/YouGov poll released in early November found that 72% of Americans said that taxes on billionaires should be raised—including 95% of Democrats, 75% of independents, and 48% of Republicans. Across the board, just 15% said they should not be raised.
Support remains high when the proposal is more specific as well. On the eve of Mamdani's election, despitre months of fearmongering, 64% of New Yorkers said they backed his proposal, including a slight plurality of self-identified conservatives, according to a Siena College poll.
Many observers were perplexed by how Newsom proposes to maintain a “big tent” while opposing policies supported by most of the people inside it.
"A wealth tax is a big tent policy unless the only people you care about are billionaires," wrote Jonathan Cohn, the political director for Progressive Mass, a grassroots organization in Massachusetts, on social media.
"Gavin Newsom—estimated net worth between $20 and $30 million—says he's opposed to a billionaire wealth tax. Color me shocked," wrote the Columbia University lecturer Anthony Zenkus. "Democrats holding him up as a potential savior for 2028 is a clear example of not reading the room."
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Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Case That Could Bless Trump's Bid to End Birthright Citizenship
"That the Supreme Court is actually entertaining Trump’s unconstitutional attack on birthright citizenship is the clearest example yet that the Roberts Court is broken beyond repair," said one critic.
Dec 05, 2025
The United States Supreme Court on Friday agreed to decide whether US President Donald Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship—as guaranteed under the 14th Amendment for more than 150 years—is constitutional.
Next spring, the justices will hear oral arguments in Trump's appeal of a lower court ruling that struck down parts of an executive order—titled Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship—signed on the first day of the president's second term. Under the directive, which has not taken effect due to legal challenges, people born in the United States would not be automatically entitled to US citizenship if their parents are in the country temporarily or without legal authorization.
Enacted in 1868, the 14th Amendment affirms that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."
While the Trump administration argues that the 14th Amendment was adopted to grant US citizenship to freed slaves, not travelers or undocumented immigrants, two key Supreme Court cases have affirmed birthright citizenship under the Constitution—United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) and Afroyim v. Rusk (1967).
Here is the question presented. It's a relatively clean vehicle for the Supreme Court to finally decide whether it is lawful for the president to deny birthright citizenship to the children of immigrants. www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25...
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— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjsdc.bsky.social) December 5, 2025 at 10:55 AM
Several district court judges have issued universal preliminary injunctions to block Trump's order. However, the Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority found in June that “universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts."
In July, a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit unanimously ruled that executive order is an unconstitutional violation of the plain language of the 14th Amendment. In total, four federal courts and two appellate courts have blocked Trump's order.
“No president can change the 14th Amendment’s fundamental promise of citizenship,” Cecillia Wang, national legal director at the ACLU—which is leading the nationwide class action challenge to Trump's order—said in a statement Friday. “We look forward to putting this issue to rest once and for all in the Supreme Court this term.”
Brett Edkins, managing director of policy and political affairs at the advocacy group Stand Up America, was among those who suggested that the high court justices should have refused to hear the case given the long-settled precedent regarding the 14th Amendment.
“This case is a right-wing fantasy, full stop. That the Supreme Court is actually entertaining Trump’s unconstitutional attack on birthright citizenship is the clearest example yet that the Roberts Court is broken beyond repair," Edkins continued, referring to Chief Justice John Roberts.
"Even if the court ultimately rules against Trump, in a laughable display of its supposed independence, the fact that fringe attacks on our most basic rights as citizens are being seriously considered is outrageous and alarming," he added.
Aarti Kohli, executive director of the Asian Law Caucus, said that “it’s deeply troubling that we must waste precious judicial resources relitigating what has been settled constitutional law for over a century," adding that "every federal judge who has considered this executive order has found it unconstitutional."
Tianna Mays, legal director for Democracy Defenders Fund, asserted, “The attack on the fundamental right of birthright citizenship is an attack on the 14th Amendment and our Constitution."
"We are confident the court will affirm this basic right, which has stood for over a century," Mays added. "Millions of families across the country deserve and require that clarity and stability.”
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