The announcement of a change in WhatsApp’s privacy policy made many users look for the most private messaging app to use. Signal and Telegram were the main candidates in cross-platform applications, with the former having the strongest privacy protection, since no personal data is linked to users.
Apple was later sued by a former US ambassador for allowing Telegram on the App Store after it was used by hate groups to threaten violence, and now former Signal employees have expressed concern that the non-messaging app profitable is failing the same problem …
bottom
The background of the story has two elements. First, WhatsApp privacy changes. Second, the right-wing social networking application Parler is no longer operating.
WhatsApp privacy changes
When WhatsApp was sold to Facebook for $ 19 billion, the messaging app promised not to share data with its new parent company. Subsequently, he took a U-turn on this, but allowed users to give up if they wished. That changed earlier this month, when the company changed its privacy policy again, to remove the opt-out.
WhatsApp later delayed the move to give the company time to try to explain its plans better, but by then the damage had already been done: More than five million people switched to Signal in the days following the controversy.
Parler ceasing to operate
The right-wing social network Parler was widely used by protesters to plan the Capitol coup attempt. The vast majority of the online coordination that led to the attack appears to have been done in Parler. This caused Apple and Google to remove the app from their respective stores and many other companies to stop doing business with the company.
This took the app and website offline, and although the company made alternative arrangements, the reality is that there are now only a few guest posts.
Former Parler users have been looking for alternative platforms and appear to have switched mainly to Telegram groups. That’s what led to the lawsuit against Apple on the grounds that Telegram now hosts hateful content.
The most private messaging app unprepared
Signal officials, both past and present, believe the app is ill-prepared for similar adoption by extremists. The Verge reports.
Signal’s rapid growth has also been a cause for concern. In the months leading up to and following the 2020 presidential election in the United States, Signal officials raised questions about the development and addition of new features that they fear will cause the platform to be used in dangerous and even harmful ways. But these warnings were largely ignored, they told me, as the company pursued a goal of reaching 100 million active users and generating enough donations to guarantee Signal’s long-term future.
Employees fear that if Signal fails to create policies and enforcement mechanisms to identify and remove malicious agents, the consequences may attract more negative attention from regulators to encryption technologies at a time when their existence is threatened across the globe. world.
They say that CEO Moxie Marlinspike seems happy to wait until the issue is already a problem, rather than taking preventive measures now.
During a general meeting, an employee asked Marlinspike how the company would react if a member of the Proud Boys or another extremist organization publicly posted a chat link to the Signal group in an effort to recruit members and coordinate the violence.
“The answer was: if and when people start to abuse Signal or do things that we think are terrible, we will say something,” said Bernstein, who was at the meeting, conducted by video chat. “But until something comes true, Moxie’s position is that he will not deal with it.”
Bernstein (disclosure: a former colleague of mine at Vox Media) added: “You could see a lot of jaw dropping. This is not a strategy – it is just hoping that things don’t go wrong. “
Like other messaging apps that use end-to-end encryption, Signal has no way of seeing the content of messages, but it can see when extremist groups post links to Signal groups. This does not seem to have happened yet, and Marlinspike says he is prepared to remove groups completely if they are misused.
The complete piece is an interesting read.
Photo: Rahul Shah de Pexels
FTC: We use affiliate links for cars that generate revenue. More.
Check out 9to5Mac on YouTube for more news from Apple: