Teachers forced to use domestic chatting app amid WhatsApp debate, Turkish union says

The Turkish Education Ministry has been pressuring employees to use the domestic mobile chatting app Bip amid controversy over the update to WhatsApp's privacy terms and conditions. The Education Workers' Union (Eğitim-Sen) said in a statement that no workers can be forced in a subject concerning their privacy.

Friday January 22 2021 04:12 pm

Duvar English

Turkey's Education Ministry has been forcing teachers to use the domestic chatting app Bip amid controversy over the privacy terms and conditions of WhatsApp, the Education Workers' Union (Eğitim-Sen) said in an official statement on Jan. 22.

Millions of users in Turkey abandoned WhatsApp in the first weeks of 2021 after the company updated their Privacy Terms and Conditions to allow more data sharing with their parent company Facebook, which has a horrible track record with user privacy.

Officials of the Turkish Education Ministry have been forcing teachers to download Bip and use it, Eğitim-Sen said, although experts on the topic have said that the application's encryption wasn't ideal.

"Eğitim-Sen cares about the protection of all members of the education industry, which is why it's unacceptable for employees to be forced to use particular social media platforms," the union said in an official statement.

The flood of users leaving WhatsApp for other chatting apps worldwide was deemed the "largest digital migration in history" by Russian mobile app Telegram.