Argentina orders Facebook to suspend WhatsApp data sharing

[MilHojas]

Argentina orders Facebook to suspend WhatsApp data sharing

Government orders Facebook to suspend its data use policy allowing it to collect information from users of its WhatsApp messaging app.

www.batimes.com.ar

 

[antipodean]

“This app is no longer available in your country.”

 

[toongeorges]

“This app is no longer available in your country.”

Some background information about why you could consider to stop using WhatsApp:

WhatsApp founder, Brian Acton, says Facebook used him to get its acquisition past EU regulators | TechCrunch

WhatsApp founder, Brian Acton, who left Facebook a year ago -- before going on to publicly bite the hand that fed him, by voicing support for

techcrunch.com

A better messaging app than WhatsApp:

Signal Messenger: Speak Freely

Say "hello" to a different messaging experience. An unexpected focus on privacy, combined with all of the features you expect.

signal.org

 

[elhombresinnombre]

“This app is no longer available in your country.”

I thought the Facebook closure of news services in Australia was interesting. For one thing it gave readers the opportunity to peer outside the walled garden for a while; for another, from the collateral damage inflicted on other pages and organisations, it casts doubt, not just on their willingness to filter, monitor and moderate their content but on their ability to as well. And if anybody ever doubted that Facebook consider themselves a supra-national power, I don't suppose they do now. If you must have an encrypted messaging system, @toongeorges suggestion is the way to go.

 

[antipodean]

The problem is when a country is so dependent on a single app for communicating, a change or outage won’t be smooth. Here for example, often the only way to communicate with government (eg for Covid test results) is via WhatsApp. Even the president uses WhatsApp to communicate with officials for his day to day work. Already whenever WhatsApp goes down due to a glitch it is headline news in Argentine. Getting everyone to agree on it being replaced by Telegram or WeChat or Signal won’t be easy and just leads to more costs, societal frustration and mess.

I think Argentina needs to reconsider its position of leverage in this battle.

 

[¡Sencillamente yo!]

The problem is when a country is so dependent on a single app for communicating, a change or outage won’t be smooth. Here for example, often the only way to communicate with government (eg for Covid test results) is via WhatsApp. Even the president uses WhatsApp to communicate with officials for his day to day work. Already whenever WhatsApp goes down due to a glitch it is headline news in Argentine. Getting everyone to agree on it being replaced by Telegram or WeChat or Signal won’t be easy and just leads to more costs, societal frustration and mess.

I think Argentina needs to reconsider its position of leverage in this battle.

They ought to be using their paid for cell phone / land line service!

 

[FrankPintor]

Well, this would be a bad time for Whatsapp to cut off service in Argentina, the blowback would be impressive, and now there are equally good message services out there like Signal and Telegram. I would expect a lot of people have all 3 apps installed on their mobiles. I imagine it would take less than a week to duplicate Argentinian government Whatsapps to Signal or Telegram.

It's different to cutting Oz off from Facebook, there isn't any real alternative to FB yet, unfortunately, though it does at least seem to be becoming obsolete anyway.

I did think that Whatsapp backed down in Europe over the changes (due to the EU's GDPR data privacy regulations), and that they wouldn't take any action against users in other parts of the world for not accepting the new terms and conditions. Since we're mostly expats here, it shouldn't be too difficult to have a friend or family in Europe by a pre-paid SIM, have them activate it, and have it receive any activation code from Whatsapp (or anything else you want) before having it put in a drawer. Activate the online account for the SIM and feed it small amounts of money every so often so the SIM doesn't get deactivated and the number recycled, I did that 2 weeks ago when I moved to a new phone, no Argie Whatsapp number for me, and I'm protected by GDPR

 

[lunar]

Since we're mostly expats here, it shouldn't be too difficult to have a friend or family in Europe by a pre-paid SIM, have them activate it ...

Restrictions are not necessarily based on the phone number or your identity. Russia, for example, slows down all Twitter traffic without any difference where you registered your account.

 

[notebook.fix]

Sooner or later, in my humble opinion, the next upcopming app is Telegram. I love signal too but my vote is for Telegram. Telegram is more than equal to whatsapp, it's far superior in many ways for example the ability to totally erase 'sent' messages even days or weeks asfter sending (on the recipients devices as well), better emoticons, tons of features, the ability so send longer video and Audio files etc etc etc - did I mention , MORE INTUITIVE over all? There are too many features to list here. Disclaimer: I don't work for Telegram.

 

[sts7049]

Sooner or later, in my humble opinion, the next upcopming app is Telegram. I love signal too but my vote is for Telegram. Telegram is more than equal to whatsapp, it's far superior in many ways for example the ability to totally erase 'sent' messages even days or weeks asfter sending (on the recipients devices as well), better emoticons, tons of features, the ability so send longer video and Audio files etc etc etc - did I mention , MORE INTUITIVE over all? There are too many features to list here. Disclaimer: I don't work for Telegram.

not to mention, way more secure