By now, most of us must be aware of the updated WhatsApp policy dated 04 Jan 2021. Credits to Elon’s tweet for blowing it up. So, this piece is for you to know what the chatter is all about and decide whether you should board this hype train.
First things first: If you are a person who believes in “I don’t really care. My life is an open book. Let them use my data. What can they do at the most?”. Then read ahead to know how our data is exploited used.
Back Story
In 2009, two former Yahoo! employees, Jan Koum and Brian Acton came together and created a new cross-platform messaging app called WhatsApp. By 2011, WhatsApp gained enough traction to be listed in top 20 of Apple USA’s App Store. There was no stopping WhatsApp as it hit 200 million active users mark in Feb 2013. Such was the momentum that in later half of 2013, WhatsApp was peaking at 400 million active users.
All was going good, when in February of 2014, Facebook announced the acquisition of WhatsApp for USD $19 billion. This reportedly caused many users to migrate over to competitors like Telegram. Wonder why? Facebook’s reputation might have had something to do with this considering various security leaks over time. Report.
But how did WhatsApp make money until then?
WhatsApp founders never wanted to monetize the app. They were pro-freeware, always put users’ choices first and hence were against advertisements which according to them would ruin the user experience and app interface. So, to keep the app running they came up with a model of charging an annual fee of $1 from the users. The fact that they had some good rounds of funding from ex Yahoo friends and Sequioa, took care of the 50 member team of WhatsApp. Also, as we know it, users weren’t even charged $1 in some countries. :-)
The acquisition aftermath
Call it Mark’s far sight, Facebook saw huge revenue potential in WhatsApp and when the deal closed, they didn’t waste much time in earning revenue. Launch of WhatsApp Business, Business API, WhatsApp payments have all been steps towards that direction. All this was in direct contrast to the ideology of WhatsApp founders and Brian Acton was reportedly quite concerned about the new moves. With facebook’s new approach to user data, advertising and encryption, nothing seemed to resolve the differences. After details of Cambridge Analytica scandal became public in March, Brian Acton, on March 21 2018 quit, tweeting:
“It is time #deletefacebook”.
Jan Koum soon followed and just like that the duo came out of the jungle. This report by Forbes unraveled the truth to the world.
Signal - A new player in the game
Brian made sure he stood for the right thing and announced $50 million to the Signal Foundation - The foundation behind the trending app ‘Signal’. For those who don’t know:
Signal is a privacy-first, open source, cross-platform messenger app made by an independent non-profit org. Everything from chat messages to metadata is encrypted by default and users will soon have a choice to register with usernames (phone numbers currently). Signal directly competes with the likes of WhatsApp, Telegram, FB Messenger etc.
Present Conundrum
On 4 Jan 2021, after WhatsApp announced its new Privacy Policy, there has been great chaos in the WhatsApp userbase.
Starting 08 February 2021, it will start sharing information like phone numbers, location, transactional details, status, ‘about’ information, device information, IP addresses, metadata etc with Facebook.
How are they going to use all this data? How does it affect me?
WhatsApp’s reasoning: ensuring better security, fighting spams and enhancing User Experience.
Let’s be honest for a minute here. With bombardment of ads in every kind of medium such as social media, youtube, emails, e-commerce websites, sms, in-app ads, people are growing tired of it. The one place users want sanctity is private chatting applications. Companies these days do ‘user profiling’ based on the inputs they collect. Collected data is used to establish segments which are uniquely categorized and then specific marketing campaigns are run on users in that particular segment.
Looking at history of facebook, where do you think all this leads to? Ads! And guess what? Facebook announced WhatsApp Status ads at FMC in 2019. Moreover, the fact is that the new policy is a blackmail of sorts, since if the users want to continue using WhatsApp, they HAVE to accept the policy or simply get left behind.
This has left a lot of users like me, scratching heads! Looking for an alternative is tough since most of our friends and family are tied to WhatsApp and many of them simply wouldn’t leave. For the logical ones, mind you, Signal has emerged as a GREAT alternative. With influential personalities like Musk, Edward Snowden tweeting about it, there has been a massive surge in the downloads of Signal (top trending in many countries), so much that their servers couldn’t keep up with the scale out (everything good now :P). I say, try it out (maybe run it in parallel). By now you may be surprised by how many contacts have shifted base.
But Sid, what if Signal also turns out to be evil in the end? What if they are bought by some company down the line and end result is all the same?
Well, here is an answer from the creators themselves. u/signal_app on reddit:
First, we’ve designed the app from the ground up to not know anything about anything. Unlike other apps, we don’t have access to your contacts, your groups, your messages, your images, your searches, etc. So we don’t have access to any of your data to begin with, even if we wanted to do something with it (which we don’t).
Second, we’ve structured the project as a non-profit entity, so it can never be bought, has no investors, and isn’t “owned” by anyone. We did this because we wanted to be “for” something other than profit, and we wanted to make sure the organization was only incentivized to create something that is in the best interest of the people who depend on it.
NOTE: For the technical ones (Credits: a reddit user)
What prevents Signal from changing the non-profit status?
There is no incentive for Signal Foundation to lose non-profit status. That would be a “corporate suicide” for it. Even if the Signal Foundation turned evil and changed its non-profit status, it would immediately loose its assets. The source code would be available under GPL V3, so anyone would be able to fork and distribute the “good” Signal. The Foundation does not have much user data or means to collect user data. All employees (less than 40 people) are basically privacy and security activists, who would leave the company the moment it goes sour.
With the picture made clear now (I hope), I leave you with a great infographic comparing some of these apps:
Peace