Monday 14 June 2021
“It’s on our cap”
Whatsapp is contrite
The fact that Whatsapp users will have to tolerate a data transfer to Facebook in the future has caused a lot of trouble for the messenger. The boss now shows himself to be understanding and blames his own company for the “misunderstanding”. An advertising campaign for encryption should set it up.
After the controversy over its new usage rules, Whatsapp is promoting full encryption for the chat service. The Facebook-owned company is launching an advertising campaign on Monday in Germany and the UK, which are among its key markets. The short promotional videos emphasize that content sent on WhatsApp is basically only visible in clear text to the users involved thanks to the so-called end-to-end encryption.
Whatsapp had to struggle with criticism and a churn of users in the past few months after the announcement of new usage rules. The trigger was the assessment that with the update that came into force in mid-May, more data should be shared with the parent company Facebook. Whatsapp rejected this as a misunderstanding and repeatedly emphasized that the end-to-end encryption, with which the service itself does not have access to content, will not be weakened.
Majority of users allegedly approved new rules
Whatsapp boss Will Cathcart admitted errors in the announcement of the new rules. “We have to communicate clearly what we are doing and why.” Whatsapp missed this. “We didn’t get any clearer until we saw the confusion. It’s our responsibility,” said Cathcart. Whatsapp had planned an advertising campaign for end-to-end encryption in advance. But after the controversy of the past few months, Whatsapp has even more reasons to talk about it. In the meantime, the vast majority of users who have already been asked to agree to the new rules have accepted them, said Cathcart. He did not give exact numbers.
Originally, users who do not agree to the new rules should lose access to basic functions over time. There are no more consequences for them now. Only the new functions for communication with companies will only be able to be used after approval of the update. According to Whatsapp, they were the main reason for changing the terms of use.
Whatsapp had already rejected the announcement in January that more data would be shared with the mother. However, the introduction of the new provisions was postponed by more than three months to May 15 following criticism and a migration of users. At the same time, Whatsapp itself emphasized that the exchange of messages with companies is different than with family or friends.
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