SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies via video conference during an Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law Subcommittee hearing on Capitol Hill on July 29, 2020 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Graeme Jennings--Pool/Getty Images)
Coalition Mobilizes to Protect Billions of WhatsApp Users From Facebook's Privacy Invasion
"We can't let Mark Zuckerberg continue to get filthy rich off of this exploitation of our personal info. We must reclaim our privacy."
May 03, 2021
A coalition of more than three dozen social justice, labor, and digital rights organizations launched a campaign Monday aimed at stopping Facebook from further rolling back privacy protections on WhatsApp, a messaging service that billions of people worldwide use to send encrypted messages to family members, friends, and colleagues.
After purchasing WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg vowed that the service would "operate completely autonomously" and that Facebook would "absolutely not" change the way the app uses personal data.
"This latest move to encroach upon the privacy of WhatsApp users is further proof that Facebook is using exploitative practices and abusing its dominant market power."
--Burcu Kilic, Public Citizen
But in 2016, Facebook rolled out what it characterized as a routine terms and conditions update that gave the tech behemoth access to WhatsApp users' account information, phone numbers, IP addresses, browser details, and other data unless users opted out within a 30-day window. Users who joined after 2016--around a billion people--did not get the chance to opt-out.
Then in January, WhatsApp presented users with a choice: either allow Facebook to share some of their personal data with its family of companies, or lose access to messages on their account. In the face of widespread backlash against the policy changes, WhatsApp delayed the new update until May 15.
Burcu Kilic, digital rights program director for consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said in a statement Monday that "this latest move to encroach upon the privacy of WhatsApp users is further proof that Facebook is using exploitative practices and abusing its dominant market power."
"Facebook must be broken up, not permitted to further integrate the disparate services it never should have been permitted to agglomerate," said Kilic. "We call on legislators worldwide to 'Stop Facebook and Save WhatsApp."
Because of its relatively strict data privacy regulations, the European Union is exempt from the WhatsApp change--an exemption that the digital rights coalition argues should be extended to all. Many of WhatsApp's roughly two billion users reside in India and Brazil.
On its new website, the Save WhatsApp coalition--which includes Fight for the Future, Indonesia for Global Justice, and the Center for Digital Democracy--warns that the new privacy policy "will give Facebook even more power to extract money from WhatsApp communications" by targeting users with more personalized advertisements.
With the latest change, the coalition argues, Facebook is "proving once again that it will not miss a chance to abuse its monopoly position to extract as much data from us as possible, by relying on the fact that we will soon have nowhere left to go communicate out of their reach."
"We must prevent this privacy discrimination by calling our regulators to rapidly take a stand and oppose and stop the data flows between WhatsApp and Facebook," the coalition says. "Those who can are leaving WhatsApp in large numbers because of concerns of increasing abusive tactics. But many cannot."
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
A coalition of more than three dozen social justice, labor, and digital rights organizations launched a campaign Monday aimed at stopping Facebook from further rolling back privacy protections on WhatsApp, a messaging service that billions of people worldwide use to send encrypted messages to family members, friends, and colleagues.
After purchasing WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg vowed that the service would "operate completely autonomously" and that Facebook would "absolutely not" change the way the app uses personal data.
"This latest move to encroach upon the privacy of WhatsApp users is further proof that Facebook is using exploitative practices and abusing its dominant market power."
--Burcu Kilic, Public Citizen
But in 2016, Facebook rolled out what it characterized as a routine terms and conditions update that gave the tech behemoth access to WhatsApp users' account information, phone numbers, IP addresses, browser details, and other data unless users opted out within a 30-day window. Users who joined after 2016--around a billion people--did not get the chance to opt-out.
Then in January, WhatsApp presented users with a choice: either allow Facebook to share some of their personal data with its family of companies, or lose access to messages on their account. In the face of widespread backlash against the policy changes, WhatsApp delayed the new update until May 15.
Burcu Kilic, digital rights program director for consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said in a statement Monday that "this latest move to encroach upon the privacy of WhatsApp users is further proof that Facebook is using exploitative practices and abusing its dominant market power."
"Facebook must be broken up, not permitted to further integrate the disparate services it never should have been permitted to agglomerate," said Kilic. "We call on legislators worldwide to 'Stop Facebook and Save WhatsApp."
Because of its relatively strict data privacy regulations, the European Union is exempt from the WhatsApp change--an exemption that the digital rights coalition argues should be extended to all. Many of WhatsApp's roughly two billion users reside in India and Brazil.
On its new website, the Save WhatsApp coalition--which includes Fight for the Future, Indonesia for Global Justice, and the Center for Digital Democracy--warns that the new privacy policy "will give Facebook even more power to extract money from WhatsApp communications" by targeting users with more personalized advertisements.
With the latest change, the coalition argues, Facebook is "proving once again that it will not miss a chance to abuse its monopoly position to extract as much data from us as possible, by relying on the fact that we will soon have nowhere left to go communicate out of their reach."
"We must prevent this privacy discrimination by calling our regulators to rapidly take a stand and oppose and stop the data flows between WhatsApp and Facebook," the coalition says. "Those who can are leaving WhatsApp in large numbers because of concerns of increasing abusive tactics. But many cannot."
A coalition of more than three dozen social justice, labor, and digital rights organizations launched a campaign Monday aimed at stopping Facebook from further rolling back privacy protections on WhatsApp, a messaging service that billions of people worldwide use to send encrypted messages to family members, friends, and colleagues.
After purchasing WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg vowed that the service would "operate completely autonomously" and that Facebook would "absolutely not" change the way the app uses personal data.
"This latest move to encroach upon the privacy of WhatsApp users is further proof that Facebook is using exploitative practices and abusing its dominant market power."
--Burcu Kilic, Public Citizen
But in 2016, Facebook rolled out what it characterized as a routine terms and conditions update that gave the tech behemoth access to WhatsApp users' account information, phone numbers, IP addresses, browser details, and other data unless users opted out within a 30-day window. Users who joined after 2016--around a billion people--did not get the chance to opt-out.
Then in January, WhatsApp presented users with a choice: either allow Facebook to share some of their personal data with its family of companies, or lose access to messages on their account. In the face of widespread backlash against the policy changes, WhatsApp delayed the new update until May 15.
Burcu Kilic, digital rights program director for consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said in a statement Monday that "this latest move to encroach upon the privacy of WhatsApp users is further proof that Facebook is using exploitative practices and abusing its dominant market power."
"Facebook must be broken up, not permitted to further integrate the disparate services it never should have been permitted to agglomerate," said Kilic. "We call on legislators worldwide to 'Stop Facebook and Save WhatsApp."
Because of its relatively strict data privacy regulations, the European Union is exempt from the WhatsApp change--an exemption that the digital rights coalition argues should be extended to all. Many of WhatsApp's roughly two billion users reside in India and Brazil.
On its new website, the Save WhatsApp coalition--which includes Fight for the Future, Indonesia for Global Justice, and the Center for Digital Democracy--warns that the new privacy policy "will give Facebook even more power to extract money from WhatsApp communications" by targeting users with more personalized advertisements.
With the latest change, the coalition argues, Facebook is "proving once again that it will not miss a chance to abuse its monopoly position to extract as much data from us as possible, by relying on the fact that we will soon have nowhere left to go communicate out of their reach."
"We must prevent this privacy discrimination by calling our regulators to rapidly take a stand and oppose and stop the data flows between WhatsApp and Facebook," the coalition says. "Those who can are leaving WhatsApp in large numbers because of concerns of increasing abusive tactics. But many cannot."
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.