This past week, the popular messaging application WhatsApp turned 10. In this first decade of its existence, from being a path breaking (and, more importantly, free) alternative to text messaging , it became a leading source of spreading misinformation and rumour. The past few years have been especially tough for the company, that is now owned by Facebook. During the 2018 elections in Brazil, WhatsApp became the medium for widespread dissemination of fake news and misinformation.
In India too the messaging application has run into a fair bit of trouble, having been implicated in the spreading of false messages that have allegedly led to cases of mob lynching. While some of the blame must be laid at the feet of Facebook, it’s time for consumers to use the platform judiciously and not fall prey to rumour and misinformation, especially in an election year.
WhatsApp was set up by two former employees of Yahoo!, Brian Acton and Jan Koum, who famously applied for jobs at Facebook but were rejected. At first, the idea behind the app was to simply show personalised statuses next to names of people on an iPhone. It was only after WhatsApp 2.0 was launched as a messaging application that the monthly active users for what was then a free app suddenly shot up to 250,000.
WhatsApp was suddenly growing so fast that they decided to switch from being free to a paid service to avoid too rapid growth. In 2010, the app introduced location sharing, in 2011 group chats, and in 2013 voice messaging. By April 2014, they had 500 million monthly active users. It was in October of that year that Facebook bought the company for $19 billion.
At the time, the acquisition was the largest purchase of a venture-backed company in history. In 2017, Facebook was fined $122 million by the EU’s antitrust authority for changing its privacy policy to allow advertisers on Facebook and Instagram to access data from WhatsApp, in spite of having informed the EU in 2014 that it couldn’t combine WhatsApp data with its other services.
Both Acton and Koum have since left the company after much publicised ethical disagreements with Facebook about the future of the app and the protection of its users’ data.
In spite of all that, the number of monthly active users of WhatsApp hit 1.5 billion in January 2018. In India, as the cost of mobile data stays low, the use of applications such as WhatsApp continues to increase. Given the massive reach of the application, responsibility of judicious use must be as much on the users of the app as it is on the owners. As with all technology, the proof of its efficacy lies in the manner in which it is used. While it is a great way to keep in touch with family, friends, and school and neighbourhood groups, users must not allow it to become an easy way to manipulate large groups of people.
