After all the buzz over recent privacy policy changes to Whatsapp that saw everyone on social media suddenly become data privacy experts, WhatsApp has decided to delay the rollout of its policy by three months to help clear up any confusion. And to stop the current exodus of users to other competitors like Telegram, Signal, and WeChat.
A lot of the concerns around WhatsApp sharing data with Facebook was that the company would be sharing all of the private things you are messaging to the company and using that for advertising purposes, or even claiming that Facebook would be listening in on all your conversations. Like they either have the time or would even care to do so.
The company wants to make it clear that the core foundation of private communications being completely encrypted and private will remain, with Whatsapp not able to actually see the contents of this info. It also provided some tips on how you can ensure your data is kept safe, should you continue to be concerned.
The update includes new options people will have to message a business on WhatsApp and provides further transparency about how we collect and use data. While not everyone shops with a business on WhatsApp today, we think that more people will choose to do so in the future and its important people are aware of these services. This update does not expand our ability to share data with Facebook.
The changes to the company’s data privacy policy are related to the business side of the app and how customers interact with their clients, and can utilise some of that data for further commercialisation, advertising, and interaction across both WhatsApp and Facebook.
Of course, Whatsapp didn’t do itself any favours by how poorly it communicated these changes to people, and Facebook’s notoriously bad reputation in dealing with private data only added fuel to the fire. Hopefully, they can do a better job this time in either removing the confusion or perhaps finding a better way of sharing data in a way that makes users feel safe.
It’s perhaps worth mentioning though that a platform like WhatsApp needs to monetise itself in some form or another and that its competitors will eventually need to do similar things to make money (as WeChat already does) and even offer similar data privacy policies. All this is unlikely to change the low opinion people have of Facebook though and it could be tough for WhatsApp to still recover from here.
Last Updated: January 18, 2021
HvR
January 18, 2021 at 06:49
I’m actually surprised how badly journalists have been reporting have been reporting on this; again in this article I see 3 outright lies being put forward by Craig playing down very legit privacy concerns.
Original Heretic
January 18, 2021 at 07:11
Genuine curiosity here, what are the lies?
I myself and hopping off WhatsApp, already started the transition to Telegram.
Edit: I’ve been way too busy recently to do proper research on this, I just know I hate FB, haven’t used it in years.
Original Heretic
January 18, 2021 at 07:11
Genuine curiosity here, what are the lies?
I myself and hopping off WhatsApp, already started the transition to Telegram.
Edit: I’ve been way too busy recently to do proper research on this, I just know I hate FB, haven’t used it in years.
HvR
January 18, 2021 at 07:52
1. Facebook does not care about messaging contents, where we know they care to both build better analytic models on their users and for better ad targeting models and that they wanted to remove or work around encryption ever since acquiring WA. Revealed by Brain Acton in interviews on why he left FB costing him almost $1billion in shares.
2. Repeating an pushing Facebook and WA narrative as if it can be trusted, never mentioning that Facebook has long and rich history of lieing to the user base and even regulators. Best example here was that FB and WA would never link accounts, resulted in a 100 million euro fine.
3. ALL the competitors will have to do this. Signal does not as to its core it is a non-profit organization it does need to have billions of dollar revenue stream per year.
The next 2 points are not lies but omissions I find very troubling in all the reporting. Nobody ever talks about the ability of an app to scan both sent and received data on the before encryption and after decryption. They specifically excluded EU from these changes which has privacy laws in place protecting the data that FB and WA “does not care about”
Original Heretic
January 18, 2021 at 08:13
Let’s hope the consumers can hurt them a bit.
I’ve seen the updates on Telegram, where they’re already at more than 500 million new users in the span of about 72 hours. That was a week ago already.
Krabby Paddy
January 18, 2021 at 08:41
Just a correction. 500 million users total. 25 million new users in 72 hours. Still a lot though.
Original Heretic
January 18, 2021 at 08:50
Ah yes, apologies.