Telegram now counts 500m active users. 'People are rebelling against Facebook!'

The new privacy policy being implemented by WhatsApp's parent company is the straw that broke the consumer's back - Toby Shapshak

People everywhere are flocking to messaging apps like Signal and Telegram, in view of pending changes to WhatsApp's privacy policy.

The new terms will enable WhatsApp to share more data with parent company Facebook.

On Tuesday, Telegram's chief reported the app had more than 500 million monthly active users in the first weeks of January, "25 million joining in the last 72 hours alone".

Various experts have proffered diverging opinions on WhatsApp users' best course of action.

During an earlier interview on CapeTalk, social media law expert Emma Sadleir issued a stark warning about exposing children to Telegram.

Bruce Whitfield interviews Toby Shapshak, publisher of Stuff magazine:

"We're eternally on some kind of WhatsApp group... For that alone, I'm just not going to agree to the terms before February 8th and see what happens!"

What we're seeing is just the further development of Facebook strategy to prevent the US government breaking it up. I think that's the underlying motive.
Toby Shapshak, Publisher - Stuff magazine

European regulators have fined Facebook repeatedly for breaking all of the things that it said it wouldn't do with WhatsApp and it's just hoarded all of that data over.
Toby Shapshak, Publisher - Stuff magazine

Facebook basically controls the communication of the world, says Shapshak.

People are rebelling against it as they should! You can see everybody is trying the alternative... at the behest of this monolithic messaging company Facebook that has over 2.2 billion people on the 'mother ship'...
Toby Shapshak, Publisher - Stuff magazine

I think this is the straw that broke the consumer's back when it comes to privacy... If you use Facebook you probably agreed to a whole host of things you don't know you've agreed to!
Toby Shapshak, Publisher - Stuff magazine

Anyone on Telegram will tell you... I scrolled through five screens of sign-ons, very irritating!
Toby Shapshak, Publisher - Stuff magazine

With so much of our personal information already out there, why should we care that Facebook wants access to our WhatsApp data?

Shapshak says we should care.

It's our most intimate, personal, private data - where we go, what we do, who our friends are...
Toby Shapshak, Publisher - Stuff magazine

These vast messaging companies are asking us to part with all of this extremely intimate information not to make our lives better! They're doing it because they make huge amounts of profit!
Toby Shapshak, Publisher - Stuff magazine

What Facebook and Google sell is not a communication network to us - they sell us to their advertising clients!
Toby Shapshak, Publisher - Stuff magazine

Neither Signal nor Telegram is owned by the world's largest largest advertising company that makes billions through knowing what you're up to, he says.

Listen to Shapshak's passionate argument on The Money Show: