Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s media office and the country’s defense ministry told journalists they are quitting WhatsApp Inc. and are joining a worldwide flight of the popular messaging app due to new terms of use that have raised privacy concerns.
The Presidency will move its WhatsApp groups to the encrypted messaging app BiP, a unit of Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri AS, on Jan.11, it said in messages to the groups. The Ministry of Defense followed on Sunday. The switch coincides with Erdogan’s broader campaign against social media platforms that activists say is intended to quell dissent.
Changes to WhatsApp’s terms and services from February 8 allow it to share data with the parent company Users of Facebook Inc. must agree to the new terms, which allow for more targeted advertising, or lose access to their accounts with WhatsApp.
WhatsApp Rival Signal reports growing pains as new users increase
The pressure to make more money with WhatsApp has come at a time when Facebook’s revenue growth is nearing rock bottom. While messaging is up more than 50% in many of the countries hardest hit by the coronavirus, those increases are have not translated into more ad dollars as the popular services are not platforms on which Facebook has a robust ad business.
With WhatsApp’s data protection on the verge of weakening, the world’s richest man, technology entrepreneur Elon Musk, has issued a call to switch from WhatsApp to an encrypted rival Signal, leading to an increase in 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 application has been downloaded more than 53 million times since its launch in 2013, Turkcell said.
Erdogan’s office urged journalists in its statement to switch to BiP. The Turkey Wealth Fund in 2020 took a majority stake in Turkcell, the country’s largest mobile phone operator.
Turkey tightens control over social media after Erdogan calls out violation
Erdogan’s jettison of WhatsApp is his latest move against social media giants, recently fined Turkey for not appointing local representatives as required by a new law. Activists accusing him of increasingly authoritarian ways say the required appointments are part of a broader effort to gain more control over the platforms, with Turkey threatening to render them useless domestically if they don’t comply.
Turkish authorities regularly arrest social media users on charges of, among other things, insulting Erdogan, and banned Wikipedia for three years until a court ruled a year ago that the restriction violated freedom of expression. Access to Twitter Inc. is hindered.
Chinese-owned TikTok, which was one of the companies fined including Facebook, agreed last week to appoint a local representative.
(Updates with the Department of Defense also leaving WhatsApp adds context to Facebook revenue in fourth place)