Facebook’s $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp, a messaging and Voice over IP service, back in 2014 was either praised as its best business move ever or it raised many eyebrows, or both.
For instance, many questions were asked on whether Facebook was getting too powerful and was actively behaving to completely erase competition, something that other tech giants have been accused of during the years. Many lawsuits and court hearings followed, and the recent social media purge, in the aftermath of the riots at Capitol Hill, has resulted in more people thinking of Big Tech as being too powerful, ultimately leading users to question their approach to privacy and data protection.
A recent in-app WhatsApp notification raised even more awareness on how much data actually flows between the messaging app and Facebook. The pop-up notified that starting from February 8, the privacy policy will change and that users must accept the new terms, should they wish to continue using the service. The policy change will not allow users to opt-out of sharing data with Facebook, however, it must be said that actually, the messaging app has been sharing data of its 2+ billion users since 2016.
This is linked to Facebook’s aim at more integration across its range of app and products, and Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly reassured customers by stating that both Facebook and WhatsApp will not be able to access communication between profiles. Facebook’s CEO has committed to expanding end-to-end encryption offerings to protect consumer’s privacy, whilst affirming that they will collect information exclusively to improve, customise, and market their services. However, many users have decided to flee the messaging app and open profiles on other apps, especially Signal and Telegram.
Signal, part of the Signal Foundation is an encrypted messaging service, founded by Brian Acton. As well as being the co-founder of WhatsApp, he partnered up with Moxie Marlinspike, co-founder of the Signal Protocol to create an app which used to provide end-to-end encryption, ultimately used by another messaging app such as WhatsApp and Skype. This has resulted in many people to question: ‘what is the difference between Signal and WhatsApp?’ Essentially it is the fact that Signal, being a non-profit organisation, does not collect data. It is in fact funded by grants and private investors, such as Brian Acton, mentioned above, who donated $50 million to create the Foundation in 2018, which now runs the app.
As mentioned before, both services are using the same encryption technology. However, Facebook collect lots of information on its users, in which there is no way to opt-out anymore. Another substitute to WhatsApp might be Telegram, an instant messaging service, founded by Pavel Durov in 2013 and headquartered in London and Dubai. In a message sent to its users on January 12, the app thanked its 500 million active users, in light of 25 million users gained in the previous 72 hours. Telegram does not offer encrypted messaging by default, but instead, it offers it as an optional feature via “Secret Chats”.
Telegram has been heavily criticised since its debut, partially to the fact that it allows the creation of groups with up to 200,000 users, whilst Signal limits groups to one thousand users, and it has been reported about terrorist and criminal organisations using the app many times already. A feature that is peculiar to Telegram is its channels, that function as public broadcasts. Everyone can sign up to any public channel, and this is actually a great tool to send messages to a wide audience.
With Telegram’s rising numbers in users and Signal being currently the most downloaded app both on the AppStore and on Android’s PlayStore, is this the end of WhatsApp?
Probably not. Despite Elon Musk’s “Use Signal” tweet, many other CEOs defended the changes in WhatsApp, citing that a lot of misinformation revolves around it. Facebook is pushing towards more integration among its app for a reason. In fact, it plans to introduce further development in terms of e-commerce and WhatsApp will certainly play a major role in this. As of now, WhatsApp Pay, is only available in India, but it is set to take over the world very soon.
This might be a “Signal” that WhatsApp’s hegemony is only about to start.
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