Facebook corporation owning both Messenger and WhatsApp applications has known privacy issues. Multiple scandals actually made us already used to this company strategy. And the strategy is that you are the product. You are and always will be for them. Everything you do and they know about it they will eagerly use. Even if that means crossing moral lines and breaking the law. Is your data safe in Facebook? Even if you have the hardest passwords - it is not. In fact your data was and will be sold, manipulated or even distributed for free over the Internet. Just to remind you that Facebook is the company that actually asked users for passwords to their private e-mails, stored those passwords and after a while released them all to the Internet without any notification. It also used and is still using Messenger application to copy all private data from mobile phones (like contacts, recent calls, text of all the SMS messages received and sent) to their servers to spy on users without telling them. Also it manipulates the content you're seeing in it's products to make you change the way of thinking or confirm your thinking if they like. It also bans all posts and sometimes even messages about the topics it doesn't like or are related to competition of their products (that includes all cryptocurrencies as Facebook is about to release it's own cryptocurrency soon). It is obviously also proven to violate GDPR laws. There are even some full documentary movies shot about those problems and companies like Facebook. One of the examples is the latest "The creepy line"
But knowing that they are using illegal and immoral practices to keep their monopoly profitable how people can still use it as nothing happened?
Because everybody's there. That's the thing. People use it because they don't know the alternatives, because old habits die hard, but first of all just because others are doing it too so this is a platform to reach everyone.
So why could it be OUR duty to stop using it?
First of all because we (here on Steemit) are a kind of people that are more interested in privacy, have some more knowledge and more importantly: are more technical in average than average Facebook user. Technical people are more likely to be listened to when it comes to technical stuff - this is obvious. It's like being interested in what medicines good doctor uses for himself and his family. What kind of car modifications car expert did in his/her car and what he/she recommends. In what stocks good trader recently invested. We can be a good example of change.
Secondly, the title of this article referred to Messenger and WhatsApp only. It's a good start and a major limitation on spying on people as it locks out Facebook out of our smartphones. Removing those applications can sometimes be difficult as some of them come preinstalled on our mobiles but still there are many ways to deal with it. If you still want to browse Facebook and receive Facebook messages you can try an alternative application once you remove the official ones. One of such is FaceSlim downloadable from the web or available in F-Droid free application store on Android. To communicate you can also use Telegram or Signal. Those are messengers without security or privacy issues. They also use battery less intensively than Messenger. Having this all done you can always suggest your friends that: yes, you still use Facebook but to communicate with you faster and be able to talk safely on any topic you suggest to use Telegram/Signal instead. This will at least make people curious and keep you still connected to them without major flaws of having Messenger installed.
But if they already have all my data copied is there a point to quit now?
Well, to some degree yes. Obviously this will limit your private new data flow to their servers. You can also influence your surroundings to use the alternatives. Also Facebook allowed to delete some of your private data from their servers by clicking on proper option on following links:
- https://www.facebook.com/mobile/facebook/contacts/?tab=contacts
- https://www.facebook.com/mobile/messenger/contacts/
This data is not required for their services to work and removing it will not remove your Facebook contacts. On the other hand if they just pretend to delete something or really do it is questionable. It also won't make sense to clean those if you still have Messenger installed as those will be fetched from your mobile anyway very soon.
It seems that after all it's all up to you.
As for messaging software alternatives, many security experts recommends Signal over Telegram, because only Telegram's client is open source, nobody knows what is going on on the server side. Signal's both client and server side software are open source and has been audited by independent experts. Of course it has some issues, but looks like best option for people that like to think about their security and privacy.