The encrypted messaging program Signal says that it’s a large amount of new users signing up to the platform, so much so that the company is seeing delays in phone number verifications of new accounts in multiple cell providers.
Who or who is responsible for so many new users interested in trying out the platform, which is run by the nonprofit Signal Foundation, there are two likely culprits: Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, and WhatsApp competitor WhatsApp.
Verification codes are currently being delayed in several providers because so many new people are currently trying to join Signal (we can barely register our excitement). We work with carriers to resolve this as quickly as possible. Hang in there.
– Sein (@signalapp) 7 January 2021
Musk, who is now the world’s richest person after surpassing Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in net worth, tweeted last night a share in which he criticized Facebook for its role around members of the mob that plagued the US capital on Wednesday. stormed, to help organize online. The tweet, an image of a series of ever-larger dominoes, juxtaposed the beginning of Facebook as a hot-or-not-rated website on the campus of Harvard University into a platform that on one somehow helped the attack on Congress Wednesday as it sought to ratify Joe Biden as the president-elect.
Musk, who has spoken out more about his criticism of Facebook in recent years, followed up the meme with a suggestion to his 41.5 million followers: download Signal, presumably instead of using a Facebook product (although Musk does not call out Facebook or WhatsApp) specifically by name in one of its posts).
As for the WhatsApp controversy, it’s a little more complicated. While it is not immediately clear whether Musk referred or is even aware of the current WhatsApp privacy vapor, there is a growing setback against the Facebook messaging app stemming from the company’s plans for a new privacy policy on 8 To introduce February.
There is a good explanation of Ars Technica here, but the short version is that WhatsApp has outlined a new privacy policy that will take effect next month that no longer contains the language that suggests it will allow users to share for sharing data with the parent company Facebook does not. Instead, the new policy explicitly outlines how WhatsApp will share data (things like your phone number, profile name and address book information) with Facebook.
“As part of the Facebook family of businesses, WhatsApp receives information from and shares it with this family of companies,” reads the new privacy policy. “We may use the information we receive from them, and they may use the information we share with them to help operate, deliver, improve, understand, adapt, support and market our Services and their offerings.”
As Ars reports, the opt-out was no longer available in the app for some time – it was a one-time option launched in 2016, and WhatsApp’s privacy policy has since referred to language. A Facebook spokesperson tells The edge that the changes coming into effect next month are aimed at addressing the sharing of data between Facebook and WhatsApp regarding messaging with businesses, and that nothing is effectively changing in terms of consumer chats.
Facebook says it announced these changes in October with the announcement of new WhatsApp customer service and shopping features, some of which went live last month. It is also said that it will comply with the opt-out preference of any WhatsApp user, although the option to deny it has not been available to new users for years PCMag. And if you live in Europe, WhatsApp will under no circumstances share data with Facebook for advertising targeting purposes, as clearly stated by Niamh Sweeney, WhatsApp’s Director of Policy for Europe, the Middle East and Africa Market, in a Twitter thread.
2/5 It has been incorrectly reported that WhatsApp’s latest update of Terms of Service and Privacy Policy requires users in the European region to agree to share data with Facebook for advertising purposes in order to continue using the Service. This is false.
– Niamh Sweeney (@NiamhSweeneyNYC) 7 January 2021
But what’s happening right now seems to be collapsing a bit of context on social media, as WhatsApp users think they should now be forced to share data with Facebook, even though it happened all the time if they did not back down in 2016 not. None of this is helped by Facebook and WhatsApp’s recent attacks on Apple for the iPhone maker’s decision to set up new self-reported labels on iOS apps and its future plans to force app makers to ask Apple for permission to detect device owners.
The new privacy policy notice also does not help Facebook’s case, as it tells users who are dissatisfied with the changes (which in turn concerns how businesses manage their chats on WhatsApp using Facebook’s backside) to ‘delete their account’ ‘, with no other. remedies provided.
All of this created a perfect storm on social media in which WhatsApp users apparently fled in large numbers from the platform to join Signal, a non-profit, encrypted messaging app that is not the largest social network on earth not. It is also worth mentioning that Signal Messenger, LLC, the software organization that manages Signal’s product development, is co-founder and funded by Brian Acton, the disillusioned co-founder of WhatsApp who shares the former privacy practices of his former employer basement.
Facebook declined to comment on the report or publish public blog post or statement regarding its planned WhatsApp privacy policy outside of Sweeney’s Europe-specific comments, which at this point only adds to the confusion. But the silver lining for Signal is that this combination of events arouses much interest in its platform as a viable mobile messaging app and an alternative to the Facebook ecosystem.