Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday took a dig at Apple’s own messaging platform, iMessage. In a post on Facebook and Instagram, Zuckerberg said that Meta-owned WhatsApp is more “private and secure” than iMessage. He went on to highlight the various features of WhatsApp’s privacy support and how it fares better than WhatsApp. The actual reason why Zuckerberg decided to go up against Apple could be much simpler than you may think. Meta, formerly known as Facebook, is the parent company of social media platforms WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram.
This is what Zuckerberg posted
“WhatsApp is far more private and secure than iMessage, with end-to-end encryption that works across both iPhones and Android, including group chats,” Zuckerberg posted on October 17. He goes on to say that WhatsApp also allows users to set their chats to disappear “with the tap of a button”. Zuckerberg also noted that in 2021, WhatsApp introduced end-to-end encryption on message backups as well.
Why a sudden dig at iMessage?
Now, all of these were already known by most users. Zuckerberg didn’t really announce anything new, except for his sudden dig at iMessage.
The reason behind his post could be deducted from the attached photo with his post. It is actually an advertisement billboard Meta put up at Pennsylvania Station in New York City, New York, US.
As per a report by GSMArena, citing WhatsApp head Will Cathcart’s tweet thread, this is a part of Meta’s US marketing campaign for WhatsApp which was kicked off in January and is being expanded now. It is simply intended to encourage users to use encrypted messaging, and in turn use WhatsApp to do the same.
In his thread, Cathcart talked about how around 5.5 billion SMS messages are sent daily in the US, “but SMS messages aren’t secure.”
“Some people still use SMS because it comes pre-installed on phones and many are using SMS because of the way iMessage works,” Cathcart tweeted. He went on to talk about WhatsApp’s secured encryption service that Zuckerberg also highlighted.
Is WhatsApp not popular in the US?
As per a study by Business Insider, WhatsApp sees around 75.1 million monthly users in the US. This is notably less when compared to that of India (390.1 million) or Brazil (108.4 million). WhatsApp itself has nearly 2 billion active users globally.
Now, compare this 75.1 million US users number with what Cathcart said — “around 5.5 billion SMS messages are sent daily in the US” — and its clear why Meta boss Zuckerberg became vocal against iMessages.