Originally set to go live on February 8, WhatsApp parent company Facebook has just announced that it will delay the deployment of the controversial Data-Sharing Update by three months (03). Citing “a lot of misinformation” about the extent of this policy and the kind of data that will be collected by Facebook as the reason for this delay.
The confusion surrounding the update, coupled with no other option to disagree beyond shutting down the account, has led to further scrutiny in India, Italy, and Turkey, not to mention an exodus of users to privacy-focused messaging competitors such as Signal and Telegram.
In the intervening days, Signal has become one of the most downloaded apps on Android and iOS, in part boosted by a tweet from Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who urged his followers to “Use Signal.” Earlier this week, Telegram said that it surpassed the 500 million active user mark, gaining over 25 million new users worldwide in 72 hours.
It’s worth noting that WhatsApp has in fact shared some user account information with Facebook since 2016, such as phone numbers, except for those who opted out of the sharing when it revamped the privacy policy that year and gave users a one-time ability not to have their account data turned over to Facebook.
With this delay, Facebook-WhatsApp hope to “clear up the misinformation around how privacy and security works on the WhatsApp”.