WhatsApp came up with its new policy on January 4th, 2021. It created a rage among people for several reasons. According to the policy, WhatsApp gave people time till February 8th, 2021. This meant users could either accept the policy or delete their accounts. People got confused because of the “accept or delete”. This new privacy policy costs WhatsApp millions of users.
Let’s talk about what happened in the past few weeks.
Consequences of misconception
As a result of misconception and lack of information, people got mad at this new policy. They thought that WhatsApp will have the rights to share:
- Personal information
- Contact numbers
- IP addresses
- Transactions
The confusion went worse with influencers. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, urged people to use Signal. Several people shifted to Signal. About 25 million people joined Telegram right after 72 hours of the new policy.
The truth of the matter of the Whatsapp new policy
On January 12th, 2021, WhatsApp cleared all confusion. They put up articles and tweeted. The following were the real changes:
- WhatsApp will share businesses’ information to target ads
- The new policy will help store and manage business WhatsApp chats
- WhatsApp will share business info to enhance Facebook hosting services
Moreover, WhatsApp stated that no account will be deleted. WhatsApp also delayed its new privacy policy until May 15th, 2021. Time will allow people to think and understand it. Meanwhile, WhatsApp says it will continue posting clarifications.
Overview
Perhaps the backlash was because WhatsApp created an urgency to accept the policy. The urgency created suspicion that WhatsApp is doing something shady. They did not sit back and think over it. Many of us probably never read the 4000-word policy! The consequences of confusion were really clear. WhatsApp lost millions of its users in a jiffy. While other messenger apps got the advantage of the misconception. Let us see if WhatsApp can become the new business marketing app or will it remain text messaging.
