The Great Migration (from WhatsApp to Telegram, Bip, Signal and others)
WhatsApp Messenger, an instant messaging, calling and communication application developed for smartphones (and with WhatsApp Web for computers), was developed in the US state of California by two people named Biran Acton and Jan Koum in January 2009. WhatsApp, thought to be the SMS of the Internet, became a popular application in a short time. So much so that by 2013, it increased its communication network by around 500%. This situation did not go unnoticed by the world’s giant technology companies, and Facebook eventually bought WhatsApp in early 2014 (in February). And not with such an amount. He bought $19 Billion in total, along with $ 4 Billion Cash, $ 12 Billion Stock and $ 3 Billion Restricted Stock (I don’t know what that means either). WhatsApp is currently among the most used cyber services in the world. As seen in the table below, it has 2 Billion Users worldwide.
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| Number of Users (Million) |
Since its establishment, WhatsApp has been continuously appearing against users with new services, new terms of use and privacy settings. It is indisputable that it adds many innovations to our lives with its communication and technological solutions. However, as I mentioned in my book @Sosyal Medya (See: Dr. Serkan Savaş (2020), “@Sosyal Medya”, Kutlu Yayınevi, Page: 12, Istanbul), a situation imposed on us by social media sites and applications: any feature added or removed, and it’s up to you to accept it. Until 2021 …
So what happened in 2021?
WhatsApp announced a new privacy policy to its users and stated that these conditions should be accepted until February 8, 2021, otherwise WhatsApp would not be available.
What is this in the Privacy (!) Policy? I will not share at length with you all the principles. You can find it all at: Privacy Policy — February 2021 (whatsapp.com), but let’s take a look at the parts that interest us. It says:
We are part of Facebook Companies. WhatsApp for the purpose of executing, providing, improving, understanding, customizing, supporting and marketing our services; It has to collect or collect certain information, including when you install, use or access our Services.
So what is this information?
Information You Provide
- Account Information: Number, profile photo, about me …
- Your messages: With end-to-end encryption (!) Meaning: Nobody can read it … (The person you sent and now Mark Zuckerberg :))
- Your links: So the people in your directory,
- Status Information: Status photos you post.
- Transaction and Payment Data: Your account information.
- Customer Support and Other Communications: like e-mail etc...
Automatically Collected Information
- Usage and Registration Information: performance, usage times, group information, online information etc …
- Device and Connection Information: Brand, model, version, signal strength, battery level, network used, browser, connection information, ip, time zone etc…
- Location Information: Country, city, IP etc…
- Cookies: For web-based services.
Third Party Information
- Information Provided by Others about You,
- User Complaints,
- Businesses in WhatsApp,
- Third Party Service Providers,
- Third Party Services.
They collect all these data under the name of service and privacy principles. So the essence of the matter is they collect information about you and your environment from you, your device, and everyone around you. Especially, the party he often refers to as the third party is “Facebook”. So their side...
How do they use this information?
On this issue, let’s first look at WhatsApp’s own statements:
How We Use Information
We use the information we have to operate, provide, improve, understand, customize, support and market our Services, subject to the choices you make and applicable laws.
Information You and We Share
You share your information as you use our services and communicate through our Services. We also share your information in order to operate, offer, improve, understand, customize, support and market our Services.
- Sending Your Information to People You Prefer to Communicate. As you use our Services and communicate through our Services, you share your information, including messages.
- Information Related to Your Account.
- Your Contacts and Others. Users, including businesses you communicate with, may store or share your information (including your phone number or messages) with other people on and outside of our Services.
- Businesses on WhatsApp.
- Third Party Service Providers (i.e. Facebook).
- Third Party Services.
So far I have talked about what these principles are. Now let’s comment a little. In fact, many of the permissions and uses similar to the above are also available on most social media sites and apps that you have already used. BUT WITH AN IMPORTANT DIFFERENCE… Your Messages and Contents…
Now let’s put aside the classic “What should the CIA do with your messages” jokes here. The situation is different. We will look at this in two dimensions. Users and Groups…
In essence, of course, there is a different dimension than “CIA is listening to us” and that is ADVERTISING. See what WhatsApp says:
No Third Party Banner Ads. We still do not allow third-party banner ads on our services. We do not intend to use these ads, but will update this Privacy Policy if we use it in the future.
Yes, in fact, this situation is currently floating around ADVERTISING as MAIN THEME. In other words, by looking at your message content, creating a Digital Profile of your interest, perception, liking and environmental factors, these steps are to sell you more services and products.
I want to open a paragraph here. Following the news that Donalp Trump manipulated the elections by analyzing Facebook user data in the previous elections, looking at the event as an advertisement is also a bit of good will. So we should not pass by saying a message;
With today’s Machine Learning Algorithms, the results of Text and Image Processing Algorithms are incredible. With Big Data studies, even the Nerve and Habit maps of a huge society can be created like a Mosaic. I don’t want to drown the article in scientific terms, but let’s not just look at it as advertising. If there is an advertisement size of 70–80%, we can say that there are other sizes in 20–30%. (Maybe more!)
Now let’s take a look at the Groups side.
You all belong to these groups. You have dozens of groups including Public-Private-Friend. Here I want to talk about public groups. Especially due to the Covid-19 outbreak, almost all institutions started to make official correspondence via WhatsApp. Can you imagine the chaos environment that access to the content of these correspondence can create? Official documents, images, articles are included in the database of Facebook, the commercial company.
Now there is an option like this: “Even if they do not present us these principles, they are kept in their databases”.
So why did people trust these apps? Because they said “end-to-end encryption”. So between sender and receiver. But with this update, “Mark Zuckerberg (!)” Also joins the conversation. In other words, it is a matter of preference for people to voluntarily present their public posts to everyone. However, in person-to-person and / or group chats, who will read the messages is determined by the person themselves. It should not be determined by Facebook …
Since we have positioned the main theme on ADVERTISING, then let’s continue as follows. An environmental profile will be created by keeping the information you chat with more frequently. The photos you send to friends will return to you as ad suggestions, just like “seeing the advertisement of that product on all your social media and pages for weeks after searching the same Google search engine”. The chat you have made for a computer recommendation in your group of friends will be able to return as ad suggestions that will be presented to you on different sites later that day.
Will WhatsApp give up on this?
I do not think so. Generally, these updates are presented to us as impositions, as I mentioned in my @Social Media book. We are expected to accept. But if WhatsApp takes a step back due to excessive user loss, it could be a digital awakening.
Finally, I want to refer to the title of my article. Why Digital Natives and Immigrants?
In the works that named the generations as X, Y, Z (You can reach my seminars on my YouTube page), it was named as Digital Natives (See: Mark Prensky: Digital Natives, Analog Immigrants, 2001), especially due to the generation behavior that emerged with technological developments after 2000. The generation before 2000 was called Analogue Immigrants who migrated to this digital world. Twenty years have passed and now the whole world is moving towards digital wisdom. The age of Artificial Intelligence is approaching. For this reason, Digital Natives and Analog Migrations (which are now considered indigenous) from the WhatsApp application, which is a world giant; migrating to various other applications such as Telegram, Bip, Signal etc.. Let’s see who will be the new chat star. We will follow and see together …
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