Facebook fears the WhatsApp privacy policy row may hurt its future

WASHINGTON: When WhatsApp users began to raise concerns about a new privacy policy being rolled out, members of a Washington pickup soccer group decided to switch their communications to rival messaging platform Signal, ditching the Facebook-owned service.

The shift was “about moving as many users away from the Facebook empire, which for my liking has become way too big and powerful,” said Bernhard Fleck, one of the players.

The flap over WhatsApp’s privacy policy — described by Facebook as a misunderstanding about efforts to bring businesses onto the platform –threatens to erode trust in the service which is increasingly important to the leading social network’s future. The California giant last month delayed implementation of a new policy which critics said could expand data collection from some two billion WhatsApp users around the world. Even with the delay in place, the policy caused an uproar and prompted a surge in interest in rival messaging services such as Signal and Telegram. A WhatsApp blog post cited “confusion” over the policy update and maintained that it “does not expand our ability to share data with Facebook.”