Should You Delete WhatsApp?

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I have been asked many times if I will use WhatsApp after its new privacy policy comes into effect in February. That’s not strictly true. I’ve been asked only once. Most recently by a woman on Twitter.

But my answer would be the same, no matter how many times I’m asked:

Yes. Because I’m not among the terribly naive.

The network effect of WhatsApp is too strong, so I’m guessing the yes part of my answer is self-explanatory.

Let me unpack the terribly naive part.

A lot of people are outraged by the provisions of WhatsApp’s new privacy policy to share WhatsApp data with Facebook (and Instagram).

The way I see it, ever since Facebook acquired WhatsApp in 2014, WhatsApp has been running on servers owned by Facebook, and WhatsApp data has legally belonged to Facebook. It’s terribly naive to believe that there was a Chinese Wall between Facebook and WhatsApp during these six years.

Indeed there are reports that Facebook used WhatsApp data many times in the past, despite being fined $110 million in 2017 for reneging on its promise not to do so (Source: Medianama).

So, as far as I’m concerned, the imminent change in WhatsApp’s privacy policy is a non-event, especially knowing what I know about how digital advertising works.

With my personal choice to stick to WhatsApp out of the way, let me dive deeply into some misconceptions swirling around the subject of WhatsApp v. Signal / Telegram.

Security Is Not Privacy

A close relative recently inquired if Signal / Telegram were more secure than WhatsApp.

This is what I replied:

“Secure” is related to use of encryption and other technologies to protect data from being accessed by unauthorized third parties. WhatsApp supports end-to-end encryption by default whereas encryption is an optional add-on feature on Telegram and must be enabled by users. The history of technology shows that a vast majority of users leave their software at their default settings, even if it’s easy to change away from them. So, out of the box, Telegram is less secure than WhatsApp. But the current WhatsApp v. Telegram / Signal controversy is not about protecting data from third parties but access and use of data by the first party – i.e. the owner of the software – itself. So Security is a moot point. The real issue is Privacy.

I have belabored the point that Security ≠ Privacy before in Privacy Does Not Equal Security. Just in case that was too technical, here’s another way of looking at the difference:

Security is about access of your personal data by third parties. Privacy is about the use of your personal data by the first party.

Non Profit Does Not Mean No Profit

An alum from IIT Bombay recently advocated switching our WhatsApp Group to Signal. He gave many technical justifications in support of his recommendation. While I couldn’t understand all of them, they sounded – ahem – sound. But he mucked it all up with his following remark on the “business side”:

Signal is a non-profit organization. This lack of a business model is a significant reason why the app is so focused on privacy. Since the company isn’t trying to make money, it can exist for the sole benefit of the user.

This is BS for more reasons than one:

  • It shows utter lack of understanding of how capitalism works. One of the founding principles of capitalism is to provide products and services that satisfy a customer need and thus make profits. To posit that customer needs will be better served by lack of profit motive is silly and goes against the grain of capitalism. To those of you who may point to incidents of capitalism leading to profiteering, income inequality, and so on, a detailed rebuttal to that point of view is beyond the scope of this post. By way of a tl;dr, I’ll paraphrase a famous quote about democracy by Sir Winston Churchill: “Capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the alternatives”.
  • It betrays ignorance of the definition of nonprofit / not-for-profit. I agree that the term is a good example of obfuscation but there’s tons of literature in the public domain that make it amply clear that a nonprofit / not-for-profit organization can jolly well make profits. What it can’t do is distribute the profits to its owners. In other words, it’s not profitable for its investors, not itself. The specific structure does not stop a company from having a revenue model and making revenues and profits, as companies like Kaiser-Permanente stand testimony. As you can see from the article linked to the following tweet, the American healthcare major makes whopping profits. Click here for more details.

National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the consortium of Indian and foreign banks that owns UPI, RuPay, etc. is another Not-for-Profit organization that makes profits (INR 518.95 crores ~ $70 million for FYE2020).

Signal Is Not Signal Advance Inc.

As soon as Elon Musk tweeted “Use Signal”, the stock of Signal Advance Inc. shot up from $0.60 to $3.76 per share.

Signal Advance “is a technology development firm that has been developing its proprietary Signal Advance Technology which may significantly reduce signal detection delays associated with a variety of physical sensors”.

Whereas the “cross-platform encrypted messaging service” that’s more likely referenced in Musk’s tweet is “developed by the Signal Foundation and Signal Messenger LLC”, which are not even listed companies.

As Matt Levine explains in his Money Stuff newsletter, this is not as irrational as it sounds.

…if Elon Musk tweets that you should use a product, you go buy stock in the company that makes that product, and if you can’t do that you buy stock in the company whose name is closest to that product. You might do this irrationally, because you don’t know the difference between Signal and Signal Advance, or perfectly rationally, because you expect other people to do it and you want to get there first. Really any word that Musk uses can probably be converted into a stock ticker; I assume if Elon Musk tweeted “virtue is good,” Virtu Financial Inc. would go up.

This also explains why, during the early days of the pandemic outbreak in March last year, the stock of vibrant videoconferencing company Zoom Video Communications (ZM) rose only 9% whereas that of defunct Zoom Technologies (ZOOM) rose 80%. As I pointed out at the time, it’s all about the ticker symbol.

 

In this post, I’ve woven a story around some of the peripheral issues surrounding the WhatsApp-Signal-Telegram controversy that caught my attention.

If you’re looking for something that goes to the heart of the matter and offers a comprehensive guide on the pros and cons of the three messaging apps, please click here, here and here.

By no means should this post be construed as an endorsement of WhatsApp or as a recommendation to stick with it.