WhatsApp messaging app comes under fire in higher education

The messaging app Signal is rapidly gaining ground in the Netherlands. It is now at the top of the Dutch download charts. Entire groups of friends are banning WhatsApp, even though this sometimes leads to debate and hassle. Higher education institutions are also considering making the switch, reports DUB.

Mistrust of WhatsApp has grown after policy changes at parent company Meta, which also owns Instagram and Facebook. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in January that his company would no longer employ fact-checkers in the United States. Critics are concerned about the spread of fake news and hate speech.

Since then, higher education institutions in the Netherlands have been looking for an alternative. Employees of the Utrecht University of Applied Sciences (HU) were recently advised to switch to Signal. Avans University of Applied Sciences has also been discussing a switch. HU argues that Signal keeps users’ data private, unlike WhatsApp. Besides, Signal is a non-profit organisation, which means it has other interests compared to a commercial company such as Meta. Finally, Signal is completely open source, so the programming language can be verified.
Full report on the DUB site