ANKARA – Turkey’s officials confirmed that WhatsApp won’t apply the controversial data-sharing update following the probe, but the announcement was contradicted by the instant messaging application, which said it still plans to roll out the update for Turkish users.
Country’s Competition Board on Friday announced that the Facebook-owned messaging application will no longer require users in Turkey to accept the controversial update as it breached privacy while assuring that users can continue to use the platform.
The Turkish authority also launched a probe into a US-based social media giant over a possible violation of Article 6 of the country’s competition laws, which don’t allow any company to abuse their dominant positions.
A statement issued in this regard said ‘WhatsApp conveyed to us that the update in question involving data sharing would not be imposed on any users in Turkey, including those who approved it’.
Let it be known that the decision of American freeware company Whatsapp to force a controversial update sparked a global outcry after which many users switched to other messaging platforms like Signal, Telegram, and in Turkey many installed BiP.
Earlier this month, WhatsApp stepped back from its initial plan. It announced that it would not instantly cut off users who do not accept the new updates, although it would send reminders to those who do not opt-in.
Top platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, VKontakte (VK), YouTube, Dailymotion, TikTok, Spotify, Netflix, and Amazon Prime have all agreed to set up a legal entity in the country to serve as a local representative.
Turkey is not the first country to stand against controversial rules of social media giants as a German privacy watchdog issued an emergency order banning Facebook from gathering data on WhatsApp users, over concern the updated policy was in breach of stringent European data protection rules.
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