By the end of 2019 or early 2020, Facebook plans to integrate their social network’s messaging services.
In simpler words, messages from WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram can be sent on any other platform.
This move will force the developers at Facebook to change the WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram at the most basic level.
Although all three of those apps will be able to work independently (their main function), their underlying messaging infrastructure will be unified.
This move is clearly to try that the billions of users divided over the three platforms never leave the FB network.
The whole motivation for this move is to make Facebook’s rival messaging platforms redundant.
Mark Zuckerberg has ordered all the apps to have ‘end-to-end encryption’, a step which allows only the people involved in the conversation to read the messages sent and received. Simply put, an Instagram user will be able to send an encrypted message to a user on WhatsApp.
Will User Data Be As Secure As Before?
It also raises concerns over data privacy. Sure the messages are encrypted but at the end of the day all the data you have over Facebook’s three services will be synced and stored in the same server.
Because if the messages are to be sent to a completely different app then the user information has to be linked on all the three apps.
Related: Instagram Has Rolled Out A New Update And People Are Hating It
The user information will be more vulnerable as the hackers who can compromise one app can use the shared backend to infiltrate the remaining apps.
Today, all that is required for you to make an account on WhatsApp is your phone number. You might be forced to link your WhatsApp account with Instagram and Facebook. If not that, you will definitely need to add some more information on either of the three apps.
Privacy is not, however, the biggest concern of this update.
Freedom Of Choice Taken Away From Users
While acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp, Mark Zuckerberg had promised complete autonomy to both those apps.
Due to Mark Zuckerberg’s intervention in the working of both Instagram and WhatsApp, the founders of both Instagram and WhatsApp have left their respective companies.
The whole point of me and a lot of others not downloading FB Messenger is not because I have less space on phone. We do not want Messenger because it is not a priority for me. If someone can now send Messenger texts on WhatsApp then that beats the whole purpose of freedom of choice.
This concept might be good on paper but I have a feeling it will be a disaster in reality.
Also, this idea sounds very similar to what Ryan (BJ Novak) had in ‘The Office’. WUPHF anyone?
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: CBS News, Times of India, Independent +more
Find The Blogger at @bachhav_rohan
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