WhatsApp is the most popular messaging platform in the United Kingdom.
It is being used by more than seven in 10 adults who are online, communication regulator, Ofcom, says.
However, WhatsApp may be blocked from being used in the UK, and here is why.
WhatsApp has an end-to-end encryption feature that scrambles messages so even the company running the service cannot view the contents.
However, the Online Safety Bill of the UK is threatening the operations of the social media app over the feature.
The National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) believes the bill would make it compulsory for platforms to identify and destroy child abuse content.
The charity’s Richard Collard said the Online Safety Bill “will rightly make it a legal requirement for platforms to identify and disrupt child sexual abuse taking place on their sites and services“.
On the other hand, Critics of the bill say it grants Ofcom the power to require private encrypted-messaging apps.
It also provides for other services to adopt “accredited technology” to identify and remove child-abuse material.
But WhatsApp says it would rather be blocked in the UK than undermine its encrypted-messaging system if the Online Safety Bill requires it to do so.
WhatsApp head, Will Cathcart, said it would refuse to comply if asked to weaken the privacy of encrypted messages.
Undermining the privacy of WhatsApp messages in the UK would do so for all users, Mr Cathcart said.
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“Our users all around the world want security – 98% of our users are outside the UK, they do not want us to lower the security of the product,” he said.
“We’ve recently been blocked in Iran, for example. We’ve never seen a liberal democracy do that,” he added.
WhatsApp, Signal Ready To Push Back
The Signal app had previously said it could stop providing services in the UK if the bill required it to scan messages.
Signal “would absolutely, 100% walk” and stop providing services in the UK if required to weaken its encrypted messaging system, Signal president Meredith Whittaker once told BBC News.
She later tweeted to the WhatsApp head that she was “looking forward to working with @wcathcart and others to push back”.
A day later, Mr Cathcart replied: “And very important we work together (and honoured to get to do so) to push back.”
When asked if he would go as far as Signal, Mr Cathcart said: “We won’t lower the security of WhatsApp.
“We have never done that – and we have accepted being blocked in other parts of the world.”
He is also scared that the UK may be setting an example other nations might follow.
