Do You Suddenly Need To Stop Using WhatsApp?
Do You Suddenly Need To Stop Using WhatsApp?
WhatsApp’s nightmare week has continued to get worse—a backlash against the scale of its data collection quickly followed by its sudden forcing of new terms of service on its users to share their data with Facebook. Agree to this now or delete your account, it has said. And so, as many users look for alternatives, should you do the same?
WhatsApp has a serious issue—one that hit home hard in the last week. The world’s leading messaging platform claims security and privacy are in its DNA, but it is owned by the world’s most avaricious data harvesting machine. Now, this WhatsApp balancing act has just become much harder, as it finds itself threatening users with deleted accounts unless they accept new terms that take effect on February 8.
The inevitable backlash prompted WhatsApp boss Will Cathcart to take to Twitter to set the record straight. The risk for WhatsApp, though, is that defending its awkward relationship with Facebook is a high-risk bubble that may have just burst. And millions of users around the world are now looking at alternatives.
In reality, WhatsApp has had this Facebook issue ever since the social media giant acquired the messaging app back in 2014. So, what has suddenly changed?
If you’ve been following the story over the last month, it will all seem to have started with Apple’s AAPL +0.9% introduction of mandatory privacy labels. Facebook has been the most vocal critic of Apple’s new privacy measures. But everyone knows that Facebook is a data machine. WhatsApp, which was arguably hit harder by these privacy labels, complained that its data collection was misrepresented and that Apple’s own iMessage was not subject to the same scrutiny, which was unfair.
After WhatsApp complained, Apple published iMessage’s privacy labels—almost as if it had been choreographed. The contrast was stark. WhatsApp’s metadata went much further than iMessage, all of it was linked back to a user and device identity, all those security reporters and protesters that had raised concerns over WhatsApp metadata appeared vindicated.
WhatsApp continued to defend its data privacy—attesting that little was shared with Facebook, that the labelling overlooked its security measures, that all the data was needed to operate a platform serving 2 billion users and 100 billion daily messages. Somewhat missing the point, WhatsApp also suggested that its commercial services and its plans for shopping made comparisons with iMessage unfair.
But the seeds for this latest backlash were actually sown earlier, back in October, when WhatsApp confirmed those shopping plans. Everything that has now prompted such angst was evident back then, including data linkages and WhatsApp messages between consumers and businesses potentially hosted by Facebook. All of this, WhatsApp said at the time, would enable it to “continue building a business of our own, while we provide and expand free end-to-end encrypted text, video and voice calling.”
And this is the crux. WhatsApp is free. But now the price we need to pay for that free service is becoming clear.
“Has Facebook finally broken WhatsApp,” I asked back then, when it was already clear that this risk “radical” change to WhatsApp was in train.
And so back to this week. Whether a case of woeful timing or an attempt to get all the bad news out at once, WhatsApp followed the privacy label debacle with the controversial implementation of its forced change in its terms of service. Again, this has been on the cards since last year. And, critically, it has been largely misunderstood.
This isn’t about WhatsApp sharing any more of your general data with Facebook than it does already, this is about using your data and your engagement with its platform to enable shopping and other business services, to provide a platform where businesses can communicate with you and sell to you, all for a price they will pay to WhatsApp. It’s also important to note that there are differences in Europe in what WhatsApp can do, given GDPR. WhatsApp does not share data for its European users with Facebook for the enhancement of its products and services—that hasn’t changed.