Last Updated on April 4, 2022 by admin
Facebook Inc.’s WhatsApp recently made a declaration to its 2 billion users just a few days back that it will update its privacy policy with effect from 8th February 2021, and users need to accept the terms & conditions by the date to continue the use of the messaging service. Ever since this update has been released, there has been a bombardment of criticism from all across the globe, especially from entrepreneurs and government organizations.
You might not know, but even the world’s richest person and entrepreneur, Elon Musk, made a tweet where he urged people to switch to Signal.
Have a look at another tweet from Indian business tycoon Anand Mahindra (the chairman of Mahindra Group)
Have a look at this another tweet from Vijay Shekhar Sharma (founder of PayTM)
This tweet marathon can keep going on because there are tons of statements out there, majorly from the influential members of the global business community opposing WhatsApp. They are rather suggesting their stakeholders migrate to its rival, Signal. So what is this hype all about? Why businessmen from different parts of the world are opposing the platform. The answer is the update.
Table of Contents
Why is this Update a Concern?
All the WhatsApp users have received a notification on their smartphones where the messaging service has informed them how the user data is handled and how the businesses can make use of Facebook hosted services for storing and managing the data. As a matter of fact, the data exchange with Facebook is already taking place.
To put it all in simple words, it is strongly believed that users’ privacy is being compromised for the sake of targeted advertising agendas of Facebook. The new terms of the update will share personal information of the users interacting with the WhatsApp business accounts to Facebook. Once the data reach Facebook, then the same shall be used for targeted advertising.
The ads shall not appear on WhatsApp because the app does not show ads yet to its users. There will be no direct usage of personal messages because of end-to-end encryption, but the increased data sharing with Facebook shall be used to optimize the ad experiences across other products of the social media giant like Instagram and Facebook.
The new policy update is a sign of WhatsApp’s deeper integration into Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg already talked about his cross-platform objective in 2019 all across Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. He labeled his objective as “Interoperability.”
You might have observed that this interoperability has been already achieved to some extent with the integration of Facebook Messenger and Instagram’s Direct Messages. Now the same is about to take place with WhatsApp.
However, the exchange of user’s data from WhatsApp to Facebook for targeted advertising is a loss of privacy and users’ confidential data. It is just not an ethical way of doing business.
What’s WhatsApp take on all of this?
WhatsApp has stated that it does not read/share your chats with its parent company – Facebook. It even published an FAQ section to clarify the terms of the updated privacy policy to respond to the concerns that the company shares the personal information of users to Facebook.
WhatsApp has highlighted that the update shall not affect the privacy of messages with friends and family but relates to messaging business houses via the platform. The company further emphasized that it does not monitor the personal messages of the users or record their calls. The company has also made it clear that it does not check the users’ shared location and doesn’t share the user’s contact details with Facebook. You can check this below infographic to understand better:
Could This Be The Biggest User Migration In The Tech Industry?
Most of the influential business members have started advocating Signal to keep their privacy protected. Signal has achieved massive growth since the release of the Whatsapp update. This messaging service has already begun providing ways to the users for easy migration of conversation and profile from other messaging services to its platform. According to data from Sensor Tower, Signal was downloaded by 17.8 million users in just six days.
Also, it is not only Signal but other messaging services like Telegram that have observed unprecedented growth. Telegram is also known for defending its users’ privacy. Telegram also revealed that it had surpassed 500 million total active users all across the world.
All of this is a big concern for the social media giant Facebook. They will have to come up with more than just tweets and FAQs to win-back the trust of their lost users. If they cannot take effective action, this could be the biggest user migration in the tech industry. It will change the way businesses are done online.
