Facebook Brings Same World-Class Privacy to Messenger, WhatsApp: Zuckerberg

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the fourth quarter earnings call on Wednesday said that the company brings the “same world-class privacy features” to WhatsApp and Messenger. Zuckerberg said that the “biggest difference between Messenger and WhatsApp is, obviously, the connection to Facebook and the kind of same identity” that people use on Facebook carries over to Messenger. Crucially, Zuckerberg also said that the company has “a lot of competitors who make claims about privacy that are often misleading” and that “WhatsApp is clearly superior.” In early January, WhatsApp unveiled a new privacy policy update initially said to be effective from February. However, the company faced a backlash post the policy update leading to the users downloading alternate applications such as Signal and Telegram.

• Make Telecom Talk My Trusted Source
• 
• 

Zuckerberg Says WhatsApp Policy Update Does Not Change Privacy of Messages

Zuckerberg said that WhatsApp is an “important” part of the company’s strategy with “more than 175 million people” communicating with a WhatsApp business account each single day.

“We’re building new features to make it even easier to transact with businesses in the app,” Zuckerberg said in the earnings call on Wednesday. “We introduced carts, which lets people browse catalogs, select multiple products, and send the order as a message to a business. The more people that interact with businesses, the better tools we’re going to need to provide for businesses to help them support their customers.”

The Facebook CEO said that the company is “building tools to let businesses store and manage their WhatsApp chats using our secure hosting infrastructure if they would like.” Crucially, Zuckerberg said that the privacy policy update unveiled by WhatsApp in January reflects the “optional experiences.”