Online Platform Privacy Policies: South African WhatsApp Users’ Perceptions and Reactions to the January 2021 Changes

Abstract

On the 4th of January 2021, WhatsApp proposed a policy update that required its users to consent to have some of their data on the application linked to Facebook to boost the commercialisation of their users’ data for their insights. The move received widespread attention and criticism from some users, media, regulators, and organisations that have an interest in user data protection. The pervasiveness of WhatsApp meant that close to 2 billion users around the world were likely to be impacted by the policy. The event also caused some further debate about the ethical standards of individuals’ privacy and data security online. This qualitative interpretive case study aims to explore what WhatsApp users based in South Africa knew about the policy, how they perceived it, and how their perceptions influenced their reactions to the policy and WhatsApp usage in general. The results suggest that users who were studied accepted the policy out of necessity, not choice, citing WhatsApp's omnipresence and lack of similarly ubiquitous alternatives as their main reasons for staying with the service.