Originally, the new rules were supposed to come into force on February 8, but due to a wave of resentment from users, their introduction was postponed until May 15.
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At the time, Facebook officials said they wanted to use an extra three months to better explain to people what the new rules actually mean and that the concerns were out of place. This does not change the fact that, in connection with the introduction of the new rules, competing chat applications have announced an influx of millions of new users, such as Signal, Telegram and iMessage.
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User dissatisfaction revolves around a clause allowing WhatsApp to share user information directly with parent Facebook. There would probably be nothing wrong with that, but if the “data sharing” did not cover, for example, information from conversations.
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The amount of data Facebook will have about individuals will increase dramatically. Thanks to this, the largest social network in the world will be able to better target ads, for example.
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In the European Union, however, both Facebook and WhatsApp must comply with stricter data protection rules stemming from the GDPR Regulation. Therefore, WhatsApp users in the EU will have different rules than, for example, US users.
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