Users shun WhatsApp to join Telegram, Signal amid data concerns

Agencies
January 9, 2021

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New Delhi, Jan 9: As WhatsApp teases users to either give their consent to sharing data with Facebook or lose their accounts after February 8, rival Telegram's Founder and CEO Pavel Durov on Saturday slammed the social media giant, saying it is no surprise that the flight of users from WhatsApp to Telegram, already ongoing for a few years, has accelerated.

According to Durov, Facebook has an entire department devoted to figuring out why Telegram is so popular.

"Imagine dozens of employees working on just that full-time. I am happy to save Facebook tens of millions of dollars and give away our secret for free: respect your users," he said in a statement.

At about 500 million users and growing, Telegram has become a major problem for the Facebook corporation.

"Unable to compete with Telegram in quality and privacy, Facebook's WhatsApp seems to have switched to covert marketing: Wikipedia editors have recently exposed multiple paid bots adding biased information into the WhatsApp Wikipedia article," Durov claimed.

"We have also detected bots which spread inaccurate information about Telegram on social media".

Millions of people are outraged by the latest change in WhatsApp Terms, which now say users must feed all their private data to Facebook's ad engine.

In 2019 alone, Facebook spent almost $10 billion on marketing.

Durov said that unlike Facebook, Telegram doesn't spend any money, let alone billions of dollars, on marketing.

"We believe that people are smart enough to choose what is best for them. And, judging by the half a billion people using Telegram, this belief is justified," he said.

Not just Telegram but another encrypted messaging app Signal has seen a surge in new sign ins after Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk vouched for it.

"Verification codes are currently delayed across several providers because so many new people are trying to join Signal right now (we can barely register our excitement). We are working with carriers to resolve this as quickly as possible. Hang in there," Signal tweeted.

"Everyone should be able to register without delay again. Thanks to all of the carriers who flipped the right switches so that people can keep switching," the company further said.

Over 400 million Indian WhatsApp users this week received an in-app notification from WhatsApp as part of an upcoming global roll-out for over 2 billion users, asking them to either accept the changes in its Terms of Service and privacy policy by February 8 or their accounts will be deleted.

The in-app notification did not elicit much details but clicking on the links clearly mentioned the key changes in how WhatsApp will collect and process users' information going forward, and the partnership with Facebook, its parent company, as part of a larger unification drive between the family of apps.

To recall, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in October said that the company is working hard to merge Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp so that they can start to function a little bit more like one connected interoperable system.

In a bid to allow cross-messaging among its family of apps, Facebook has reportedly started merging Instagram and Messenger chats. The social network has already integrated Messenger rooms with WhatsApp on the Web.

Comments

Fred
 - 
Sunday, 10 Jan 2021

People are now becoming interested in their privacy and it is a good signal for what comes into other sectors especially the world of finance. The surge in the use of Bitcoin and crypto of late could be also attributed to the taste people are developing for privacy. Even in Bitcoin, tools like Bitcoinmix and others are also recording spiking usage, all for privacy. Many people are now becoming woke.

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News Network
May 4,2024

Mangaluru: Dakshina Kannada Deputy Commissioner (DC) Mullai Muhilan MP said that election for the South West Teachers and Graduates constituencies will be held on June 3.

The notification for the same will be issued on May 9. The last date for filing nominations is May 16. The nominations must be submitted to Regional Commissioner in Mysuru and the last date for withdrawal of nomination is May 17.

The counting of votes will be held on June 6.

As of December 30, 2023 there are 6753 voters in DK district in the South West Teachers Constituency out of which 4520 are women. On the other hand, there are 16,869 graduate voters in the district for the South West graduates constituency.

The voters can submit their application for enrollment in electoral list of the South West Teachers and graduates constituency till May 6. The applications can be submitted at Mangaluru City Corporation or all the taluk offices.

Bulk applications can be submitted by Bar Association, Doctors association, Chartered Accountants Association, registered engineers association for the graduates constituency.

Those who are graduates prior to November 11, 2020 can enroll for voters list in the graduates constituency  by submitting Form 18 along with photo copy of marks card, Aadhaar card, voters' identity card and residential address.

For getting oneself enrolled in the teachers constituency voters, an individual should be teaching for minimum three years prior to November 1, 2023 in high school or higher educational institutions.

For the teachers constituency, educational institutions can submit applications in bulk. If wrong details are furnished in these applications, then they will be punishable under Section 31 of Representation of People Act, warned the DC.

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May 5,2024

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New Delhi, May 5: Actor-turned-politician Kangana Ranaut intended to target an opposition leader but mistakenly ended up attacking her BJP colleague instead. 

A similarity in names - Tejashwi and Tejasvi - was behind Ms Ranaut's fumble. "There's a party of spoilt princes... whether it's Rahul Gandhi who wants to grow potatoes on the Moon, or Tejasvi Surya who does hooliganism and eats fish," she had said.

RJD leader and former Bihar deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav was supposed to be the original target of her diatribe as one of his videos where he was seen eating fish became a major flashpoint between the BJP and the opposition recently.

Tejasvi Surya, incorrectly referred to by Ms Ranaut during an election rally yesterday, is BJP's Lok Sabha candidate from Bengaluru South constituency in Karnataka.

Meanwhile, Mr Yadav has responded to a clip of Kangana Ranaut's statement. "Ye mohtarma kaun hai?" (Who is this lady?), he posted on X.

Kangana Ranaut has been verbally bashing the Congress party since the BJP fielded her as their Lok Sabha candidate from Himachal Pradesh's Mandi. Congress leaders Vikramaditya Singh - her opponent in Mandi - and Rahul Gandhi have been the main targets on her dartboard.

While addressing a public rally in the Sundernagar area of Mandi Parliamentary Constituency yesterday, Ms Ranaut took a jibe at Mr Singh and Mr Gandhi over dynasty politics and said that both of them have a magic stick for development and talk only about non-practical things.

The Congress hit back saying the 37-year-old actor should first check the facts about her party leaders and speak about dynastic politics. National Media Coordinator for the Congress, Amrit Kaur, also questioned her qualifications on which she got a BJP ticket from Mandi.

The Mandi Lok Sabha constituency will go to polls on June 1, in the seventh phase of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

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May 10,2024

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New Delhi: In a big blow to Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, a Delhi court has ordered the framing of charges against the former Wrestling Federation of India chief in the sexual harassment allegations levelled by women wrestlers. The court has said there is sufficient evidence on record to do so, and the trial against him can now begin. 

Friday's order by the Rouse Avenue court comes days after the BJP decided not to repeat Mr Singh, who is the party MP from Uttar Pradesh's Kaiserganj, as the candidate from the constituency and decided to field his son Karan Bhushan Singh instead. 

The court has ordered the framing of charges under Indian Penal Code sections Ordered to frame charges against Brij Bhushan under sections 354 (outraging a woman's modesty), 354-A (sexual harassment) and 506 (criminal intimidation). The Delhi Police had filed a chargesheet against under these sections and one additional section - 354D (stalking) - on June 15 last year. 

Charges should also be framed against the former assistant secretary of the Federation, Vinod Tomar, under Section 506, the court said. 

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Priyanka Rajpoot said the charges will be framed against Mr Singh for sexually harassing five wrestlers and that he stands discharged in the allegations levelled by the sixth.

The six-time MP has been at the centre of a huge political storm since last year, when sexual harassment charges were levelled against him and protesters had hit the streets led by Olympic medallists Sakshee Malikkh and Bajrang Punia, as well as Commonwealth Games and Asian Games medallist Vinesh Phogat.

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