Digital reset

I’ve been sitting on the ledge for a while now and Whatsapp’s latest ultimatum is just what I needed to see myself out the doors. I value my freedom and privacy - way more than the perceived convenience and I’ve deleted my Whatsapp account for good. Ever since FB bought Whatsapp in 2014, they’ve been working on building a feature-set that would keep users tethered to the network - read receipts, web clients, weeding out third party clients, voice calls, removing the 1$ annual fee, file sharing, encryption, desktop clients, video calls, customer service platform for enterprises, status, enhanced video call features - you get it. The most recent move is a strategic attempt to enhance their monetizing pipeline by building the framework to better mine metadata across its various platforms - Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook and CrowdTangle. In growing economies, Payments has been one realm they have had their eyes on for a while now and this latest move will turbo-boost that intent and help them compete with PayTM, Google and Amazon Payment systems. I’m surprised they took 6 years to get here though. ...

January 10, 2021 · 3 min · 558 words · Srikanth Perinkulam