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The 900-member police group said they had no warning and cannot see why their 7500-follower page was taken down but has reported that FB has told them that it will review its decision.
Milan Sime Martinić
Tech Giants
WhatsApp is changing today – Users must give the app permission to send their private data to Facebook or lose account
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WhatsApp was bought by Facebook in 2014, but has thrived while promoting itself as a privacy-respecting messaging app that now has 1.5b monthly active users. This week, though, WhatApp sent out an update to users’ phones that they must ‘consent’ to a new policy or lose access.
Whatsapp will now share more of your data, including your IP address (your location) and phone number, your account registration information, your transaction data, and service-related data, interactions on WhatsApp, and other data collected based on your consent, with Facebook’s other companies. Facebook has been working towards more closely integrating Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger.
Users who do not agree to ‘consent’ to the new policy will see their WhatsApp account become inaccessible until they do ‘consent.’ These accounts will remain dormant for 120 days after which they will be ‘deleted.’
The biggest change to the user policy, which many people ignored and clicked ‘agree’ to, thinking it was just another unimportant app update message, now reads,
‘We collect information about your activity on our Services, like service-related, diagnostic, and performance information. This includes information about your activity (including how you use our Services, your Services settings, how you interact with others using our Services (including when you interact with a business), and the time, frequency, and duration of your activities and interactions), log files, and diagnostic, crash, website, and performance logs and reports. This also includes information about when you registered to use our Services; the features you use like our messaging, calling, Status, groups (including group name, group picture, group description), payments or business features; profile photo, “about” information; whether you are online, when you last used our Services (your “last seen”); and when you last updated your “about” information.’
Notably, Elon Musk tweeted on the news, saying that WhatsApp users should switch to Signal, one of several popular privacy-focused messaging apps similar to WhatsApp.
The data sharing policy change doesn’t affect people in Europe due to GDPR data protection regulations.
President Trump silenced on top social media platforms after mob storms Capitol
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The US president was locked out from posting new messages on his Facebook and Twitter accounts after an unruly group of supporters assembled outside the capitol building where Biden’s election win was being confirmed.
The lockdown on Twitter lasted 12 hours until the president removed tweets Twitter said violated its ‘civic integrity policy,’ but Zuckerburg said that Trump would be silenced on Facebook and Instagram for at least two more weeks until his presidential term was over. Facebook and Twitter are two of the main ways the president communicates with citizens and the world.
It is the first time social media platforms have chosen to limit the free speech of such an important figure.
Trump’s tweets from Jan 6, 2020, as recorded by thetrumparchive.com
Many news organizations covered the story using language such as ‘Trump Incites Rioters.’
Following Trumps ‘ban,’ there was renewed talk about treating social media platforms, where people share informative content, as publishers themselves, in part because their algorithms amplify things shared when those things are engaging. There was also talk about how the social media platforms that censored the president’s content did so as a response to content or events but without first drawing their ‘red line’ and saying which content is and isn’t allowed on their platforms.
Some of Trump’s staff resigned following the incident at the Capitol building, and there were also a lot of questions why the national guard wasn’t capable of handling the incident properly.
UPDATE January 8: Twitter permanently banned Trump’s account. Google removed Parler, an app like Twitter used by Trump supporters, from the Android app store to make it harder for people to download it, saying Google requires social media apps to have content moderation policies to remove posts that incite violence.