WhatsApp may have delayed its plans to share its business user data with the parent company Facebook due to the global outcry for privacy, but even if it moves forward with the plans, digital observers say the app is unlikely to be exodus from Africa.
On January 4, the 2 billion WhatsApp users started receiving a message to accept the new terms of an updated privacy policy, but, unlike standard updates, which users usually click without reading this, immediately generated suspicion and concerns that quickly went global. The concern was to allow WhatsApp to share user data with Facebook, Instagram and other third-party companies.
The outcry was so loud that WhatsApp has now postponed the update to mid-May, three months before the initial deadline of February 8, blaming the “confusion” surrounding the announcement.
But some damage has already been done and millions of users have started to download smaller rival messaging services, like Signal and Telegram, which emphasize user privacy.
WhatsApp is extremely popular in Africa and, for some people, it is usually their first and only interaction with the internet. In some of the largest African countries, even unauthorized modified versions of the application are more widely used than Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. In Zimbabwe, the app accounted for about half of all Internet traffic in 2017.
“WhatsApp is now part of their daily lives. Abandoning the app for an unknown service because of a new privacy policy is really unthinkable. “
WhatsApp has become a one-stop shop for users on the continent for primary communication, business and as a media tool to inform and socialize and even to spread misinformation. It has also been used to help provide solutions to social problems.
“The network effects [in Africa] are powerful, ” Bryan Pon, co-founder of Caribou Data, an analytics company focused on emerging markets, told Quartz Africa.
The new privacy policy would have greatly increased the scope of data collected from WhatsApp users to be passed on to Facebook, which would be leveraged in the future, says Ray Walsh, a digital privacy expert at ProPrivacy, a resource for digital freedom . “User phone numbers, device-level identifiers, location data, interaction and metadata and transaction information” of WhatsApp for Business users are the targets. “
What is at stake for WhatsApp is the widespread belief that users’ data and messages can be shared with Facebook, which has a problematic reputation regarding user privacy.
Both Signal and Telegram have benefited from speculation about how WhatsApp, which was one of the first conventional encrypted messaging apps, is set to expose its billions of users to negligent privacy practices. Signal even encountered technical problems due to the large influx of new users and, according to Sensor Tower, it has already been downloaded 8.8 million times worldwide from just 246,000 in the week prior to the WhatsApp announcement on January 4. While Telegram jumped from 6.5 million downloads to 11.3 million.
But unlike WhatsApp, whose integration and business functionality serves millions of business owners in Africa, none of the apps offer a focus on Africa yet.
Tosin Akapo, a Whatsapp Business user, sees no need to leave the app, despite the recent policy update. “WhatsApp is the easiest,” she tells Quartz Africa. “People get in touch with me easily.” While Akapo regrets the limited functionality of Telegram, the Nigerian businesswoman plans to download Signal, but does not see herself leaving WhatsApp.
“WhatsApp is now part of their daily lives. Abandoning the app for an unknown service because of a new privacy policy is really unthinkable, ”said Yao Sylvain, director of App Media Afrique in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
Facebook’s plan to collect WhatsApp data raises doubts, says Moses Karanja, a researcher at the Citizen Lab in Nairobi. “” Move fast, break things’. This used to be Facebook’s internal mantra. It seems that they know that opt-ins, nudges and attraction don’t work as well for them as commanding and dominating. “
This can be described, at best, as a data monopoly or, in the case of Africa, digital colonization, says Julie Owono, executive director of Internet Without Borders. “African regulators have an essential role to play: ensuring that access to the Internet is accessible, so that everyone can access the Internet and, therefore, exercising the fundamental right to freedom of expression, without having to give up the fundamental right to privacy. “
Ultimately, WhatsApp’s usefulness means that little will change, says Pon. “It is too big and too ingrained in daily life to go anywhere.”
Sign up for the Quartz Africa Weekly Brief here for news and analysis on business, technology and innovation in Africa in your inbox