While the leadership of WhatsApp instant messaging announced new terms of service and privacy policy effective February 8, 2021, Turkey launched an antitrust investigation on Monday January 11; many users are looking for alternatives.
New terms of use for WhatsApp messaging
WhatsApp, which has more than 2 billion users worldwide, released an update to its policy on Thursday, January 7, in which instant messaging users * must agree to hand over some of their personal data (phone number , “transaction” data, or even IP address, partly allowing the user to be located) to Facebook (the parent company), for commercial purposes, failing which, they will lose access to the messaging service.
Will Cathcart, head of WhatsApp at Facebook, clarified on Twitter that the messaging service will continue to provide end-to-end encryption ** on private communications, and explained that the terms of updates reflect the new shopping features. and online payment on WhatsApp, designed to facilitate communication between customers and businesses ***.
An investigation launched by the Turkish Competition Authority
The Turkish Competition Authority said on Monday (January 11th) that it was launching an investigation to assess whether the policy change violated Turkish competition laws, aimed at preventing companies from abusing their dominant market position. .
Separately, in a statement, she announced that the new WhatsApp usage requirements, which will allow the app to share more data with Facebook from February 8, should be suspended until this investigation is completed. finished.
The #WhatsAppSiliyoruz campaign and the boom in new downloads
Since receiving the news at the end of last week, many Turks have announced that they are quitting WhatsApp: hashtags on social networks such as #WhatsAppSiliyoruz (“We are deleting WhatsApp”) were widely relayed last weekend in Turkey.
At the same time, downloads increased for competing services such as Signal (dubbed by Elon Musk or Edward Snowden) and Telegram.
Encouraging the Turkish authorities to use local couriers
The head of Turkey’s presidential office for digital transformation, Ali Taha Koç, urged citizens to switch to Turkish-made messaging apps, such as BiP or Dedi.
Ali Taha Koç said that Turkish citizens should oppose “digital fascism” (terms used by President Erdogan) and remove the Whatsapp application from their devices.
“We need to protect our digital data with local and national software and develop it according to our needs,” he said in a tweet, adding in another tweet that BiP (Turkcell) and Dedi had more to offer than foreign courier services.
Much more than its foreign counterparts, #BEEP and #Said we have national products such as. We invite all our citizens to use domestic and national practices. ???????? https://t.co/xAFZw6J6ZG
– Ali Taha Koç (@AliTahaKoc) January 9, 2021
According to a statement released Monday, January 11 by Turkcell (the country’s largest mobile operator), in the past three days 4.6 million new users have joined the BiP application.
Over the weekend, several ministries and state offices announced that they would start using BiP instead of WhatsApp.
Still, digital rights activists have expressed concerns about the privacy policies offered by BIP, noting that its terms of service were not necessarily more secure than those offered by WhatsApp.
Indeed BiP would not use end-to-end encryption, which gives it the ability to collect users’ chat data with their phone number and contact list.
While many Turks have ended the use of WhatsApp, many are still undecided, in particular because of their general mistrust of social networks and the protection of their personal data.
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* The new terms differ between the European Union (under GDPR) and the rest of the world. In the case of the EU and the UK, the data will only be used to develop the functionality offered to WhatsApp Business accounts.
** End-to-end encryption is a communication system where only the people who communicate can read the messages exchanged. It therefore prevents any attempt at surveillance or falsification, because no third party can decipher the data communicated or stored.
*** Facebook does not make any money with WhatsApp, so it seems that it wants to eventually make it a platform that can be used by companies to communicate with their customers. Data shared with Facebook is therefore essential for this, making it possible to offer more options to Facebook partners who would market its services at higher prices.
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