WhatsApp backtracks and postpones its new terms of use

Few things can change many users’ stance on an app like a misinterpreted change that goes viral. This is exactly what happened to WhatApp, which updated its terms of use a week ago.

It must be made clear that this change does not affect users in Spain or the European Union, but that has not meant that both within the old continent and outside there are many who have chosen to install alternatives.

Signas and Telegram are in luck

The two messaging applications that have taken advantage of this mess have been Signal, especially after the comment by Elon Musk, and Telegram, which has gained 25 million users in a few days.

Few images better illustrate this trend than the capture posted on Twitter by Spanish developer Carlos Fenollosa:

Of course, these companies have seldom had such an avalanche of new users and the mistaken feeling of WhatsApp users that from now on they were going to start reading their conversations has had a huge effect.

WhatsApp recoils due to fake news and misunderstandings

So much so that WhatsApp itself has announced that it will delay the entry into force of the new terms of use until May 15, 2021, in order to deal with this misinformation.

The problem is that few will trust the firm simply because it postpones the introduction of these new features for a while, which, incidentally, serve to provide a better experience to its advertisers, as they have stressed.

However, what all this news has done is make many users think whether it is important or not that apps can access so much data on their device. This graphic illustrates it quite well:

As you can see, none of the applications uses the microphone to spy on us, nor does it read our messages, but there is a difference between what Signal or Telegram do and what the FACEBOOK applications do.

The WhatsApp entry backs down and postpones its new terms of use appears first in The Free Android.