Can WhatsApp read your messages

It doesn't appear that the relevant lawsuit here is backed up by any particular technical evidence though. Meta is a company that comes under pretty hefty regulatory scrutiny and stuff like this would be a major, major legal exposure for them from a data protection / privacy perspective.

One thing I would say though that people might not tend to take into account. It's worth remembering that your keyboard on your phone is (usually) also an app — an app which you may have granted extensive permissions to when flicking through the various "Accept" / "Allow" buttons pop ups when setting your phone up or downloading a different keyboard app. So even if your WhatsApps should be relatively quite secure, it's not entirely clear what your keyboard app is doing with the words you type into WhatsApp!

You don't have to be significant to be monitored - algorithm will go through everyones messages etc and flag keywords for human attention.

Or the case we know for sure is true with Meta, they use your messages to drive targeted ads