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- The Signal encryption messaging service will not replace WhatsApp, the co-founder of the two apps has predicted.
- Signal’s downloads have skyrocketed since rival WhatsApp announced it would encourage users to share certain personal data with parent company Facebook.
- Brian Acton, executive chairman of the Signal Foundation, said there was room for both apps. “I don’t feel like doing anything WhatsApp does,” he told TechCrunch.
- He expected people to rely on Signal to talk to their family and close friends, while continuing to talk to other people through WhatsApp, he said.
- Acton co-founded WhatsApp and then sold it to Facebook for $ 22 billion in 2014, before leaving the company in 2017.
- Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.
Downloads of the encrypted messaging app Signal have skyrocketed since rival WhatsApp announced it would encourage users to share certain personal data with parent company Facebook – but Signal will not replace WhatsApp, the co-founder of of them.
The two apps serve different purposes, Brian Acton told TechCrunch on Wednesday. Acton is the executive chairman of the Signal Foundation, which he co-founded after quitting WhatsApp in 2017. Acton co-founded WhatsApp and then sold it to Facebook for $ 22 billion in 2014.
“I have no desire to do anything that WhatsApp does,” Acton said, although he did not specify which WhatsApp features he did not plan to replicate.
He expected people to rely on Signal to talk to their family and close friends, while continuing to talk to other people through WhatsApp, he said.
“My desire is to give people a choice,” Acton told the publication. “It’s not strictly a win-win scenario.
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Acton sharply criticized Facebook: in 2018, he urged Facebook users to delete their accounts.
He left WhatsApp in 2017 “due to differences in customer data usage and targeted advertising.”
He then co-founded Signal in 2018, with current CEO Moxie Marlinspike, as a rival chat app, using $ 50 million of his own money. Since its inception, Signal has focused on privacy and has promised never to sell user data or display ads in the app.
On January 6, WhatsApp announced that it was changing its terms of service to require users to share certain personal data, including phone numbers and locations, with Facebook. Users will lose access in February if they do not accept the changes.
WhatsApp has since clarified that this only affects users outside the European Union and the UK, and said the change “in no way affects the privacy of your messages with your friends or family.” .
The changes are now pushing people to use Signal, Acton told TechCrunch.
“The smaller of events helped trigger the larger of results,” he said.
Signal was installed about 7.5 million times on the App Store and Google Play between Jan.6 and Jan.10, app analytics company Sensor Tower told Insider, a 4,200% increase from compared to the previous week.
Telegram, another encrypted messaging app, has also seen soaring downloads following WhatsApp’s data sharing announcement. It added more than 25 million new users between Saturday and Tuesday.
“We’re also excited to have conversations about online privacy and digital security and people are looking to Signal for the answers to those questions,” Acton told TechCrunch.
And because Signal is funded by user donations rather than ads or the sale of data, the small team of less than 50 employees is motivated to keep improving the app, Acton said.
“The idea is that we want to earn this donation,” he told TechCrunch. “The only way to earn this gift is to create an innovative and delicious product.”
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