The great Indian migration is on — no not on the highways but in cyberspace. WhatsApp, which redefined the way we connect and while away time, has now fallen out of favour with netizens. Its ranking on the Google Play Store has nosedived, while other messaging apps such as Signal and Telegram are recording a stratospheric growth in downloads.
The reason: WhatsApp plans to ease its privacy norms to help its parent, Facebook, mine data of its nearly two billion users across the world, 400 million of them in India.
This news unleashed a flood of conspiracy theories, quite ironically peddled right on WhatsApp. The platform which had acted as a conveyor belt for fake news and tarnished many a reputation was being hoisted with its own petard. Its loyal clientele are furiously sending messages, memes and forwards warning that privacy is in danger. If the new norms come into force, we will be like Bigg Boss participants to Facebook and WhatsApp bosses.
The WhatsApp’s famed green icon, which holds a pride of a place on smartphone screens, is on a shaky ground. People may not have uninstalled it yet, but the search for alternatives has begun. The initial favourite was Telegram, WhatsApp’s poor cousin, which has been around for seven years, but languishing on the sidelines. Its Russian roots (founder Pavel Durov hails from that country) evokes suspicion.
Then some famed influencers like Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Edward Snowden began pitching for Signal. The Google search for Signal shot up and the customary pleasantry “Are you on WhatsApp?” soon gave way to “Are you on Signal?” Soon friends and relatives started sending me messages on WhatsApp with the link to download Signal. It looked as weird as installing a Pepsi-dispensing machine at the Coca-Cola headquarters. On downloading Signal, I started getting a flurry of notifications whenever my contacts signed up for Signal. And it also exposed how inefficient I have been in managing my contact list. I could not recall half of those notified. Most of them were added for short-term necessities — our friendly neighbourhood cab driver whom I used to patronise before Uber came along, the plumber whom I used to approach while staying in another locality, the packer who was in charge while moving house, the car service station guy and then a couple of persons whom I had added to make Google Pay money transfers for want of cash ... the list goes on.
WhatsApp came out with an ad blitz. It also later postponed the date of the launch of its proposed privacy norms to May.
shajilkumark@gmail.com