The word ‘privacy’ seems such an impractical word these days and yet there is hope, because most of us made a big deal when Whatsapp changed some of its privacy rule in a surprisingly arrogant manner with a take it or leave it option to its users. Usually companies are sensitive to making such changes and decisions of these types are usually taken in a collaborative manner, not in this case. Just so you know, Whatsapp is owned by Facebook, they bought Whatsapp in 2014 for a whopping total of 19 billion US Dollars; 4 billion Cash and 12 Billion in Facebook unrestricted shares, the balance in restricted Facebook stock to employees and founders of Whatsapp.
The founders of Whatsapp created the app as a substitute to the then expensive SMS services and basically used a subscription revenue model to sustain it. The first year subscription would be usually free in many countries and the subsequent years the users would be charged 1 US Dollar per year. The math was simple with a billion plus users they could target a billion plus in US dollars per year just by subscription revenue. The founder’s background made sure privacy of users is something they took pride in and decided to maintain at all costs. They did some serious work in data encryption and took bold steps to ensure Whatsapp communication between users were not visible to even their own employees. Sensing competition Zuckerberg of cash rich Facebook made an attractive offer to buyout Whatsapp completely. Apparently the verbal deal was sealed at Zuckerberg’s home over dinner.
If you enjoyed reading this article, you can help support our journalism by adding OHeraldo as a preferred source.
The founders were in charge of looking into the day to day affairs of Whatsapp which by now was completely free but slowly things began to change. Facebook was a listed company and under pressure from its investors it needed to show results fast to justify the huge investment it had made in buying Whatsapp. It wanted to monetize by allowing targeted advertisements on Whatsapp and more importantly it wanted to harvest a billion plus user data it had received from the Whatsapp buyout. So now it made sense why Facebook paid such an exorbitant price, firstly it wanted to buy the competition (Whatsapp), secondly make sure its competitor (Google) does not get buy it, but the top reason seems now that it wanted access to the user data.
So what is this user data we are talking about that companies are ready to shell out serious money? Leave aside the technical jargon for a while; the answer is basically everything you do digitally over the internet. The financial transactions you make; the internet you browse, the social media posts along with limitless pictures or videos you share, the daily rants you air, or even the tabs you keep on others through social media. Ouch. For a moment let’s forget the deal and Facebook’s purchase price of Whatsapp, it still has costs to incur to store your data in their gigantic data centers all over the world, world class fiber optic cables and the associated infrastructure to house the hardware not forgetting the engineering staff costs. Yet Facebook is yet to charge a dime right from opening an account to giving you unlimited storage and access to their site. Like the saying goes, ‘there is no free lunch’ or shall we say we have had the free lunch and now could be payback time.
Actually payback time could be still far away at the moment as long as these companies are allowed to harvest user data, send targeted ads to its users even if the users are going to find them pesky, but for that to happen they will have to convince the Watchdog or competition commissions that their move does not abuse the users data they possess. With Facebook trying to muscle in with speed it is going to be a big challenge to the Indian regulators as to how they reign in. The European regulators have been much ahead in understanding that their citizens need privacy and have framed rules much in advance sensing a scenario like this might be in the offing.
Goans might wonder, so what if these corporations have our data in their possession, what can they possibly do rather than to target users with irritating but harmless advertisements. Well the possibilities are limitless and that needs to be addressed another day. For example Goans have to decide how much of their data should really be on the cloud in the possession of companies that give you free storage space and how much should be with them on person. For example there are users who store personal pictures on social media platforms just because they can be easily organized, nothing wrong in that but please consider the scenario where you might be told to pay to access your own data someday. Not an impossible scenario looking at what transpired between Whatsapp founders and the new Facebook owner. Who would have thought that Whatsapp founders that took pride in keeping all communication encrypted might sell the company to Facebook and users given little choice that their Whatsapp data will be now shared with Facebook?
Monetization of data is still a fair enough situation for companies to target returns on their investment, but what happens when certain authorities arm twist companies to handover user data. What happens when someone decides to take the next step of using user data against the users? Regulators have a lot of work to do, pass the right laws that will assure user privacy is of utmost importance and their data will be protected at all costs. The arrogance shown by Whatsapp in changing rules midway is a real test of the regulators as to how they are going to handle the situation and people will have to keep a watch on regulators as to whose side they are on.
Till we wait for the regulator versus Whatsapp outcome, Goans might contemplate reducing your digital footprint. No point posting and impulsively sharing till we know how our data is going to be handled in the future.
(The author is a business consultant)
