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WhatsApp may have delayed plans to share its business data with parent company Facebook due to a global outcry for privacy, but even as it pushes ahead with the plans, digital watchers say it is. unlikely that there will ever be an application exodus in Africa.
On January 4, the 2 billion WhatsApp users started receiving a message to agree to the news terms for an updated privacy policy, but unlike standard updates, which users often click without reading the one. -this immediately aroused suspicions and concerns which quickly went global. The concern was to allow WhatsApp to share user data with Facebook, Instagram and other third-party companies.
The outcry was so loud that WhatsApp has now postponed the update to mid-May, three months before the original February 8 deadline, blaming the “confusion” surrounding the announcement.
But some damage had already been done, and millions of users decided to download smaller competing email services like Signal and Telegram, which focus on user privacy.
WhatsApp is extremely popular in Africa and for some people it is often their first and only interaction with the internet. In some of the larger African countries, even unauthorized modified versions of the app are more widely used than Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. In Zimbabwe, the app accounted for about half of all internet traffic in 2017.
“WhatsApp is now part of their daily life. Ditching the app for an unknown service due to a new privacy policy is truly unthinkable. “
WhatsApp has become a one-stop-shop among mainland users for primary communication, business, and as a media tool to inform and socialize and even to spread disinformation. It has also been used to provide solutions to social problems.
“Network effects [in Africa] are powerful, “ Bryan Pon, co-founder of Caribou Data, an analytics company focused on emerging markets, told Quartz Africa.
The new privacy policy would have significantly expanded the scope of data collected from WhatsApp users to transmit to Facebook, which would be exploited in the future, says Ray Walsh, digital privacy expert at ProPrivacy, a resource for digital freedom. “User phone numbers, device-level credentials, location data, interaction information, metadata and transactions” of WhatsApp for Business users are the targets. “
At stake for WhatsApp is a widespread belief that user data and messages could be shared with Facebook, which has a problematic reputation for user privacy.
Both Signal and Telegram have profited from speculation that WhatsApp, which was one of the first mainstream encrypted messaging apps, is poised to expose its billions of users to lax privacy practices. Signal has even encountered technical issues due to the massive influx of new users and, according to Sensor Tower, has now been downloaded 8.8 million times worldwide compared to just 246,000 the week before the Jan. 4 announcement. WhatsApp. While Telegram rose to 11.3 million from 6.5 million downloads.
But unlike WhatsApp whose business integration and functionality caters to millions of business owners in Africa, neither app to date offers an African orientation.
Tosin Akapo, a Whatsapp Business user, sees no need to quit the app despite the recent policy update. “WhatsApp is the easiest,” she told Quartz Africa. “People contact me easily.” As Akapo bemoans Telegram’s limited functionality, the Nigerian businesswoman is considering downloading Signal but can’t see herself leaving WhatsApp.
“WhatsApp is now part of their daily life. Abandoning the application for an unknown service due to a new privacy policy is truly unthinkable, ”said Yao Sylvain, director of App Media Afrique in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.
Facebook’s plan to collect WhatsApp data raises questions, says Moses Karanja, a researcher at the Citizen Lab in Nairobi. “’Move fast, break things’. It used to be Facebook’s internal mantra. It seems they know that opt-ins, nudging, and attraction don’t work as well for them as command and dominance.
It can best be described as a data monopoly or in the case of Africa, digital colonization, says Julie Owono, executive director of Internet Without Borders. “African regulators have an essential role to play: to make Internet access affordable, so that everyone can have access to the Internet, and therefore exercise the fundamental right to freedom of expression, without having to give up the fundamental right to privacy. “
Ultimately, WhatsApp’s usefulness means not much will change, Pon says. “It’s too big and too ingrained in everyday life to go anywhere.”
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