Tech mogul and Tesla boss Elon Musk is a prominent face on social media. Not only does he bestow the best memes, but Musk also shares his two cents on the recent privacy concern reports on Big Techs.
Musk took to Twitter last Thursday on January 7, to slam Facebook after the social media behemoth rolled out new privacy policy updates. Effective from February 8, it requires WhatsApp users to give their consent to share their data with Facebook.
"Use Signal," he tweets, which also gained a retweet from Twitter's CEO Jack Dorsey.
For the records, WhatsApp has been a part of the Facebook Companies since Facebook acquired the company for $19 billion in 2014. Facebook itself is a familiar face regarding privacy concerns; hence million of users are angered by the new policy.
So, what's so special about Signal? And why, out of the blue, did Elon Musk decide to shade Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook?
Long-Lasting Bad Blood
In fact, Musk's endorsement of Signal is not the first time Tesla's boss found himself in the muddy water of feud against Facebook. With a large presence on Twitter, Musk uses his voice to promote safe internet and often uses memes as preaching media.
This is called the domino effect pic.twitter.com/qpbEW54RvM
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 7, 2021
In 2018, following the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal where the British law firm harvested millions of Facebook users' data for political purposes, Musk had his personal and his companies' Facebook page removed. These also included Tesla and SpaceX, Musk's well-known companies.
"It's not a political statement and I didn't do this because someone dared me to do it. Just don't like Facebook. Gives me the willies. Sorry," Musk tweets.
Later on, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made his testimony to the judges and apologized for the data mishap. "This was a breach of trust, and I'm sorry we didn't do more at the time," writes Zuckerberg on a full-length newspaper ad. "I promise to do better for you.
What's So Special?
Signal is a one-tap application, and unlike most Big Techs, Signal is an open-source founded by the non-profit Signal Foundation, which means that your data remains safe. Besides Musk and Dorsey, several other high-profile names have also used Signal, including Edward Snowden.
"Facebook is probably more comfortable selling ads than buying them, but they'll do what they have to do in order to be the top result when some people search for 'Signal' in the App Store," Signal's Twitter writes.
With end-to-end encryption and phone number verification, it's easy to verify Signal users' identities independently. It does not store your user data, let alone sharing with a massive parent company like WhatsApp. It also offers on-screen privacy options, like app-specific locks, blank notification pop-ups, disappearing texts, and face-blurring anti-surveillance tools.
While the app itself is still far from the safest place thanks to occasional bugs, Signal has gained popularity among tech-savvy people.
