WhatsApp’s upcoming privacy policy update has subjected the corporate to tons of criticism from users across the world . Many have also started migrating to other messaging apps like Telegram and Signal, which coincidentally has been founded by WhatsApp’s cofounder Brian Acton along side Moxie Marlinspike.
Concerned with these migrations and criticism, WhatsApp CEO Will Cathcart took to Twitter on Saturday (January 9) to clear the air around these privacy policies. Cathcart insisted that the info sharing practices of WhatsApp with Facebook remains unchanged, and therefore the updated policy will only allow the app to urge metadata about business communication.
“Not everyone may realize how common it’s to WhatsApp message businesses in many countries. In fact, about 175 million people message a business account every day on WhatsApp and more want to try to to so,” he tweeted.
Cathcart further elaborated that companies want tools to quickly and effectively answer customer feedback and it’s really difficult without the info sharing policy in situ . He noted that features like ‘Shop’ and ‘Pay’ help customers buy things on WhatsApp from businesses of their choice. the corporate had first mentioned these features during a blog post published in October 2020.
He added that WhatsApp’s chats and calls will still be end-to-end encrypted, and can not be visible to anyone but the user itself. “We’re during a competition on privacy with others and that’s excellent for the planet . People should have choices in how they convey and feel confident that nobody else can see their chats. There are people that afflict this, including some governments,” he added.
