Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s media office and the country’s defense ministry told reporters he was giving up WhatsApp Inc., joining a global flight of the popular messaging app in connection with the new terms of use that have raised privacy issues.
The presidency will move its WhatsApp groups to the BiP encrypted messaging application, a unit of Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri AS, on January 11, said in messages to the groups. The Ministry of Defense followed suit on Sunday. The switch coincides with Erdogan’s broader campaign against social platforms, which activists say is meant to stifle dissent.
Changes to WhatsApp terms and services starting February 8 will allow it to share data with the parent company Facebook Inc. users they must agree to the new terms, which would allow better targeted ads or they will lose access to their WhatsApp accounts.
The WhatsApp Rival signal reports increasing pain as new users grow
The momentum to generate more money from WhatsApp came at a time when Facebook’s revenue growth is near a record high. While messaging has grown by more than 50% in many of the countries most affected by coronavirus, according to the company, these increases have not translated into more advertising dollars, because popular services are not platforms where Facebook has a robust advertising business.
With WhatsApp data protection set to weaken, the world’s richest man, tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, has launched a call to switch from WhatsApp to encrypted rival Signal, leading to an increase in the number of new users of that service.
Turkcell reported a similar pattern in Turkey, with about 1 million new users joining BiP Messenger in the past 24 hours, according to a company statement on Sunday. The app has been downloaded more than 53 million times since it was launched in 2013, Turkcell said.
Erdogan’s office, in its statement, asked journalists to move to BiP. Turkey wealth fund took a majority stake in Turkcell, the country’s largest mobile operator in 2020.
Turkey is tightening its grip on social media after Erdogan shouted wrongly
Erdogan’s resignation from WhatsApp is his latest action against social media giants, which Turkey recently fined for not appointing local representatives, according to the requirements of a new law. Activists accusing him of increasingly authoritarian ways say the necessary appointments are part of a wider effort to gain more control over the platforms, with Turkey threatening to make them inadequate internally if it does not comply.
Turkish authorities regularly arrest social media users on charges, including insulting Erdogan, and banned Wikipedia for three years, until a court ruled a year ago that the restriction violates free speech. Access to Twitter Inc. was prevented.
China-owned TikTok, which was among the companies, including Facebook that were fined, agreed last week to appoint a local representative.
(Updates to the Ministry of Defense also dropped WhatsApp, adding context to Facebook’s revenue in the fourth)