Where everybody knows your name
Messaging services are providing a more private internet
This has advantages and risks
W
HATSAPP, WHICH 2bn people use to send some 100bn messages a day, is rarely in the news. When it is, the stories are mostly about whether, in order to increase competition, it should be hived off from its corporate parent, Facebook a company rarely out of the news.
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The difference in visibility is basic to the businesses involved. A social-media firm like Facebook exists to get things noticed, because its business model is based on selling attention to advertisers. What and who gain attention, and what can be done to withhold it from particular people and ideas, are contested issues. Messaging services like WhatsApp for the most part simply let people stay in touch with their families and chat with groups of friends and associates. In many places they increasingly offer ways to get in touch wit
Getty Images / WIRED
With US president Donald Trump booted from Twitter and conservative-friendly social network Parler taken off the internet by Amazon Web Services, the internetâs far-right has become digitally homeless. Or not.
Telegram, the privacy-first messaging app founded and led by Russian exile Pavel Durov, seems poised to give those people a new home. According to data analytics company Sensor Tower, by Sunday the app had become the second-most downloaded in the US. On January 12, Telegram claimed that it had attracted 25 million new users in just 72 hours. Great news for growth â the catch is that some of it can be chalked up to a far-right inundation.