The controversy generated by the new terms and conditions of WhatsApp, which was clearly not well received by its users, seems to be continuing. This action caused a massive exodus that other applications of a similar nature have been able to take advantage of and that forced the Facebook app to delay the implementation of its plans until May 15.
In the case of Signal, during the first three weeks the app has gained more than 7.5 million users worldwide, according to figures shared by the UK Parliament’s Home Affairs Committee and collected by Tthe Guardian. While Telegram already surpassed the incredible figure of 500 million users.
In both cases, the increase appears to have been caused by the leakage of WhatsApp users. In fact, in the first week of January, Signal wasn’t even in the top 1,000 apps, but on the 9th of the month it was already positioned as the most downloaded app in the UK, according to the media.
And is that many users did not take well the news that from February 8 their data was going to be shared with Facebook on a mandatory basis. The poor communication of WhatsApp about this new update caused fear in its users that the privacy of each of them was going to be violated. This was reason enough for many of them to decide to migrate to other applications. Also, due to this update, misinformation took hold on the subject and large amounts of false information were spread.
Given this, the company was forced to go out to clarify the matter with a statement on its website ensuring that “we want to make it clear that updating the policy does not affect the privacy of your messages with friends or family in any way. ”
It is not clear how to continue this episode for the messaging application, but what is known is that your competition is gaining strength and it is highly probable that in the near future WhatsApp will no longer run alone.