As you all know, WhatsApp is now being criticized for its new privacy policy updates, and people all over the internet are looking for WhatsApp alternatives. Now keeping the entire controversial privacy policy aside I believe this WhatsApp uninstall campaign is being caused because people are mislead. The points to be kept in mind are:
1) No major change in WhatsApp privacy policy.
2) Lack of WhatsApp alternatives with a similar user base.
3) Lack of features.
Let's start with the first one, recently WhatsApp released a twelve-page updated policy that is long, boring, and too technical for an average person. But one of the most important things this update is doing is establishing how WhatsApp will use your metadata. So to answer your questions, Can WhatsApp see your chat? No. Can WhatsApp see your photos? No. Can WhatsApp see your video calls or group calls? Again No.
Most things remain the same, as WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption, so all your chats, video calls, voice calls, photos, and anything else you share are still end-to-end encrypted, and nobody can see them.
WhatsApp does not encrypt the metadata that carries communication between two endpoints. Metadata does not allow anyone to read your messages. It does not allow the government, law authority, or even WhatsApp advertiser to know whom and when you message and for how long. From here, I can see where Facebook is coming. Facebook is essentially an advertising company that makes money by showing user-targeted ads. So from their perspective, it makes sense to give a free messaging service and collect metadata in return. While I'm not saying it's right to collect data for targeting ads. But it's already happening in Instagram or Gmail or even chrome.
The next reason I think the WhatsApp alternative is overrated is the userbase. WhatsApp currently no doubt is the largest messaging service in the world with over 2 billion monthly active users while telegram, on the other hand, has 400 million, and Signal has 10 to 20 million monthly active users which are soon going to change. To give you perspective, if 200 people use WhatsApp, only forty people use Telegram, and just one or two people use Signal. So if you move to Signal it's less likely to have your family members and friends on Signal and that's the biggest reason most people can't jump from WhatsApp. But now is the time to make people aware of Signal ask them to leave WhatsApp.
The third thing to consider before leaving WhatsApp is features, WhatsApp is the oldest player in the town with a large userbase and most importantly essential features well the new players such as telegram, Signal lack essential features. For example, to begin with, Telegram is not open source as the popular opinion as the chats are not end-to-end encrypted by default. Personally, Telegram feels a bit shady at times with telegram groups that share illegal torrents and stuff. It needs some moderation before it can go mainstream. Signal, on the other hand, is good, everything is end-to-end encrypted, but it lacks WhatsApp stories, broadcast list, gif, real-time location sharing, and cloud backup WhatsApp payments, etc
Now, we know some features are exclusive in signal and Telegram like the note to self, secret chats, and much more but, you will lose out on WhatsApp features that you have gone used to over a long period. Now what you should do is instead of looking for short term solutions like WhatsApp alternative, look for long term solution such as making your voice heard to the government so they can make better privacy laws in India and force Facebook and all of its sibling companies to comply with the law and it has already been done in the EU(European Union ) if you don't know, the Whatapp privacy policy in the EU is quite different from the rest of the world. While users in the European Union can opt-out of data sharing with Facebook the rest of the world and even India does not have the same choice.
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| Whatsapp policy for EU |
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| Whatsapp policy outside EU |
That's pretty much it, So will you continue using Whatsapp? or Are you gonna switch to some other app? Share your views in the comment section below.
Good info provided . I think there is no need to change there is basic policy update so nothing to worry about till the chats and shared things are end to end encrypted .
ReplyDeleteYa, I agree with you
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