Hello there. The last few weeks have been filled with news about these three entities and I feel we should talk a little about them. Unfortunately most information coming out is kind of negative but don’t fret as each of them have reiterated their unrelenting dedication to “protect your data”. There is nothing to fear as they have everything in hand, and continue to use and manipulate information as per usual.
WhatsApp Controversy
Well what to say about these guys. Have been bought by Facebook in 2014 for a whopping 19 billion dollars. It seems huge for a messaging app keeping in mind Facebook launched a Messenger a couple of years earlier. What could have been the reason for the acquisition? Well there has been a slew of responses to the question, as per Zuckerberg:
The idea, he said, is to develop a group of basic internet services that would be free of charge to use – ‘a 911 for the internet.’ These could be a social networking service like Facebook, a messaging service, maybe search and other things like weather. Providing a bundle of these free of charge to users will work like a gateway drug of sorts – users who may be able to afford data services and phones these days just don’t see the point of why they would pay for those data services. This would give them some context for why they are important, and that will lead them to pay for more services like this – or so the hope goes.
WhatsApp Is Actually Worth More Than $19B, Says Facebook’s Zuckerberg, And It Was Internet.org That Sealed The Deal | TechCrunch
What did really come of this Internet.org initiative? I wont’t go into details here but I did find a thorough analysis on it here. Please take the time to read it as it goes into a lot of details about it and does come to a rather clear conclusion, but I should not spoil it for you (its obvious, that’s all I’m going to say).
WhatsApp at the time of purchase was a paid service, a rather symbolic 1$ a year, which from what I remember you could easily go around it. Obviously this has been removed because:
On January 18, 2016, WhatsApp’s co-founder Jan Koum announced that it would no longer charge users a $1 annual subscription fee, in an effort to remove a barrier faced by users without credit cards. He also said that the app would not display any third-party ads, and that it would have new features such as the ability to communicate with businesses.
WhatsApp to Drop Subscription Fee – WSJ (archive.org)
Not a year later this happened.
On May 18, 2017, it was reported that the European Commission would fine Facebook €110 million for “misleading” it during the 2014 takeover of WhatsApp. The Commission alleged that in 2014 when Facebook acquired the messaging app, it “falsely claimed it was technically impossible to automatically combine user information from Facebook and WhatsApp.” However, in the summer of 2016, WhatsApp had begun sharing user information with its parent company, allowing information such as phone numbers to be used for targeted Facebook advertisements. Facebook acknowledged the breach, but said the errors in their 2014 filings were “not intentional”.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/api/files/document/print/en/ip_17_1369/IP_17_1369_EN.pdf
Now this is where it all began, not in 2021 with the current news stories regarding the updated terms of service. Its been at least 4 years since they have been doing this and now they just have to tell us officially because of the new opportunity they are introducing. Makes you think doesn’t it.
Coming to the present days where everything so far comes together we have the latest “little” problem suroundding our favorite chat app:
In January 2021, WhatsApp announced a new Privacy Policy which users will be forced to accept by February 8, 2021, or stop using the app. The new policy will allow WhatsApp to share data with its parent, Facebook.
The new policy does not apply in EU, since it violates the principles of GDPR. Facing a pushback about Facebook data sharing and lack of clarity, WhatsApp postponed the implementation of the privacy policy update scheduled from February 8 2021 to May 15 2021
WhatsApp delays privacy update amid Facebook data sharing ‘confusion’ (cnbc.com)
Granted its not all bad. For the time being they have postponed it for a little bit and have made steps to mitigate the issue with a dashboard expanding on what the change mean for users. Its an olive branch extended to their millions of users ready to jump ship.
Over its history WhatsApp has been seen a secure, reliable and simple service that through its pervasive use has allowed us to communicate securely with friends and family. Now that most of us use it and have come to consider it essential to our daily lives, they have chosen to throw a curve ball banking on the fact that not many of us will have the power to just stop using it and switch to something else, at least not right away. Its association with Facebook’s dodgy track record with privacy, data or security has not done a lot for WhatsApp in this situation.
One might question how soon will it be until we get some ads in our chats related to our conversation subject. That would be so cool.
Google Facebook
Ohhhh…they are everywhere. They work so hard to dominate their respective interests its just hard to watch. Presumably you have heard the latest regarding these two, if not let me show you what im talking about.
Behind a Secret Deal Between Google and Facebook
Facebook was going to compete with Google for some advertising sales but backed away from the plan after the companies cut a preferential deal, according to court documents.
Behind a Secret Deal Between Google and Facebook – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Its no surprise here, if you didn’t expect this to happen then you are a moron. Simple. I will let you investigate it a little bit and I will come back with more information on this as the case develops. I will be interesting to watch. One little nugget at the end. Fun one.
While both companies said that the deal is not an antitrust matter, they included a clause in the agreement that requires the parties to “cooperate and assist” each other if they are investigated for competition concerns over the partnership.
“The word ‘antitrust’ is mentioned no less than 20 times” throughout the agreement, the draft complaint said.
https://www.nytimes.com/