In January 2021, WhatsApp updated its privacy policy detailing what types of information
it was sharing with Facebook, its parent company. The new privacy policy also said that WhatsApp
business accounts could store their chats on Facebook servers.
In order to continue using WhatsApp, users had to accept the update by February 8.
This caused an immense commotion worldwide
where millions of users ran to install other messaging apps.
In that same week, Signal saw 7.5 million downloads and Telegram registered 25 million new users.
Meanwhile, WhatsApp tried to clarify that messages were still private and secure.
As millions of users kept installing other apps, WhatsApp first moved the deadline for
accepting the new privacy policy to May 15 and eventually decided that users could continue
using WhatsApp even if they didn’t accept the update.
From what we could see in the news and social media, this was an unprecedented “app" migration
and we thought it was a unique opportunity to study how users choose the messaging apps that they want to
use in response to an update that they didn’t want.
We launched a survey soon after what would have been the first deadline for accepting
the new privacy policy. The survey included questions about users' messaging app ecosystems
and also about their response to the update.
We asked participants what other messaging apps they used besides WhatsApp,
how often they used them and what types of relationships they had with the contacts in them.
We also asked them whether they changed their use of WhatsApp and their use of other apps
since the update announcement
for example, whether they uninstalled whatsapp or used it less often
or whether they installed new apps or used other apps they already had more often.
In May, soon after the final deadline for accepting the update, we distributed a second survey to the same participants
resulting in 1525 Whatsapp users from Mexico, Spain, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.
Here, we asked the same questions again to see if there were changes in the apps they used
between February and May, and we asked additional questions about their response to the update.
In particular, we asked if the update made them want to switch from WhatsApp to other apps
and if they had managed to switch as much as they wanted.
We also asked about what apps they tried as an alternative to WhatsApp, why they chose those apps
and what challenges they faced while trying to switch.
In this presentation we focus on the data we collected in the second survey,
but in the paper we include insights about the comparison between February and May.
We found that about a quarter of participants wanted to switch to other apps, but only a few succeeded
mainly because of strong network effects, differences in functionality of different apps, and feeling a loss of control over where they could communicate with whom.
Trying to switch messaging apps was a difficult and challenging experience because installing a new app is easy,
but leaving an app is not.
We think that these results point to a need for interoperability between messaging apps,
so that users can message anybody without being forced to use the same app.
Our data support the need for messaging interoperability in a number of ways: First of all, we
found that because of this update, 26% of participants wanted to switch, but only a
quarter of those, 6% of all participants, felt that they managed to move at least some
communication from WhatsApp to other apps. 27% had increased their use of other apps,
either by installing new ones or using the ones they already had more often. However,
only 16% reported using WhatsApp less, and merely 6 participants uninstalled it.
These findings are only the first pieces in our data that suggest that increasing the
use of other apps does not necessarily help to stop using WhatsApp. Let’s look a little
deeper. All participants used WhatsApp, but it wasn’t the only app they used.
Participants used a median of 5 apps in total and 4 apps regularly, including one "primary"
app that they used very frequently. For 78% of participants, this primary app was WhatsApp.
Now, despite using a median of 5 apps, participants reported an average of only 6
contacts with whom they chatten across multiple apps—mainly romantic partners, friends,
and relatives. Overall, they communicated with a median of 2 types of relationships
per app, but, the median for WhatsApp was 6.
Previous research talks about how people distribute different contacts across different apps as
a way of drawing boundaries between them. However, here, it looks like WhatsApp it the
place to chat with anybody, making it particularly hard to leave. Another finding that points
to how hard it was to leave WhatsApp is that the participants that managed to switch did
not just try to move to one other app—they tried a median of 3 apps, either by installing
new ones or using the ones they already had more often.
A third of the participants trying to switch identified that it was challenging to agree
with different contacts on which app they should move to.
For example, they struggled with: “[The] extra task of having to remember which contacts are in which app” and
"Trying to move all you contacts to find out that most of them are not moving to the same app you’re using"
The most common apps chosen as alternatives were Telegram and Signal, mostly because of
their privacy and security features. However, almost a third of the participants chose to
move to either Facebook Messenger or Instagram, which we ironic because both are also owned
by Facebook and don’t offer end-to-end encryption by default. Their privacy policies explicitly
say that they can use the content of conversations for improving their products, or users’
location for targeted advertising. We see this as a red flag about how hard it is to
make informed choices about messaging apps.
Some of the most frustrating challenges of switching reported by participants included
“Reading through the terms and conditions of the new apps” as well as struggling with differences in functionality across apps.
Our data suggest that the main source of these barriers comes from the forced symmetry between
messaging apps, that is, that the users of an app can only message other users of the
same app. We believe that a promising solution is to
enable some degree of interoperability so that users can message anybody they want regardless
of the apps they use. To make this happen, we think that a multidisciplinary
approach is necessary, where HCI researchers, designers, and privacy & security experts
work together with policymakers. Many countries and regions are working on regulating competition
in digital markets, requiring platforms to “open up” and offer interoperability with
competitors. However, current proposals are not very specific
about what types of functionality should be interoperable, and they don't always require
messaging interoperability as a strong obligation. Our study contributes new evidence that network
effects hurt freedom of choice in the messaging app market, and we hope it will help push
regulation forward where messaging interoperability is a requirement. However, what specific functionality
should be interoperable is still an open question. So that’s why we encourage more research
on how interoperability affects interpersonal communication. For example, what would
happen if an app deleted its conversation history after 24 hours but the other apps
kept it? Or what would happen with apps that support animated stickers that other apps
can’t show? Thank you for listening. For more details
on our data, please refer to the paper and you can also get the dataset and scripts that
reproduce the results in our supplementary material.