Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s media office is leaving WhatsApp Inc., joining a global flight from the famous messaging app about updated terms of use that have raised questions about privacy.
On Jan. 11, the Presidency will transfer its WhatsApp groups to the encrypted messenger app BiP, a branch of Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetler AS, it said in a message to the groups on Saturday.The switch coincides with Erdogan’s broader campaign against social-media platforms that activists say is meant to stifle dissent.
Changes to the terms and services of WhatsApp effective Feb. 8 would encourage data to be exchanged with Facebook Inc, the parent company. Users must comply with the revised terms or lose access to their WhatsApp accounts.
A call to turn to the competing Signal app has been provided by the world’s richest man, technology pioneer Elon Musk, leading to an increase of new users of its service.
Turkcell posted a similar trend in Turkey, according to a company statement on Sunday, with around 1 million new users joining BiP Messenger in the past 24 hours.the country’s biggest mobile phone operator, in 2020.
The rejection of WhatsApp by Erdogan is his latest strike toward social media giants, recently fined by Turkey for not naming local leaders as required by a new rule. Activists accused him of being more totalitarian say that the appointments needed are part of a larger mechanism that would throttle the networks in Turkey to the point of being unusable.
Turkish authorities routinely jail social media users on charges including offending Erdogan and suspended Wikipedia for three years before a court ruled a year ago that free expression was infringed by the prohibition.