Viber ‘very’ strong in Sri Lanka
Viber, the messaging app with 1 billion users in 190 countries, is continuously growing in Sri Lanka with an increase of 118 per cent in community views and 39 per cent higher in daily activations, officials say.
Mr. Djamel Agaoua
“In terms of messages sent in 1:1 conversations, it has risen to 37 per cent higher while messages sent to groups have drastically increased by 91 per cent. We intend to further strengthen our presence and contribute to the tech industry through our diverse partnerships with credible and trusted organisations in Sri Lanka,” Djamel Agaoua, CEO Viber told the Business Times in an email interview.
“All of our partnerships in Sri Lanka aim to leverage on technology to improve and provide more ease to the lives of our users,” he went onto say noting that the company’s diverse partnerships allow them to have access to verified information and empower its users to do some of their necessities and errands through the app.
Some of these partnerships are with the Health Promotion Bureau Community and WHO which are the best source for COVID-19 information. “Getting credible and real-time news updates are possible with our media partners. We’ve also enabled our user for safer grocery shopping by partnering with Cargills and launching their e-commerce bot allowing for a convenient online shopping experience,” Mr. Agaoua said.
Viber is doing business within the legal framework of the countries in which they operate and always respects the law in all jurisdictions, Mr. Agaoua said when queried on conforming to local laws. He said the company is compliant with data protection and privacy laws applicable in their operations.
In combating groups created for illegal activities and helping the law enforcement authorities, he said that Viber decided to carefully screen for illegal and abusive content in every community or Chatbot that appears in Viber’s search engine, instead of fully opening up its platform to bad actors and dangerous messages in pursuit of growth and engagement at a high human and societal cost. “We have implemented advanced AI algorithms to try to detect malicious behaviour and have a dedicated moderation team that is handling 24/7 signals related to abuses of our policy of use.”
He said that Viber decided to finally cut ties with Facebook in line with #StopHateForProfit which is a growing campaign calling for a boycott on ads on Facebook-owned platforms led by civil rights organisations consisting of Colour Of Change, NAACP, ADL, Sleeping Giants, Free Press, and Common Sense Media. The campaign called on Facebook’s advertisers to hit pause on ad spending on Facebook and Instagram for July 2020 to demand that Facebook address racism across their platforms. How it all happened is when Facebook refused to mark posts by US President Donald Trump as misleading or inciting violence. It stands in contrast to Twitter, which marked several tweets with fact-check and warning labels for the first time. While Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said that the posts did not violate the social media giant’s rules against inciting violence, civil rights activists say the controversy is emblematic of how Facebook provides a platform for racist rhetoric.
Viber has always tried to balance the need to provide superior user experience and access to services with our firm commitment to protecting ‘our’ users’ privacy and data, ‘we’ have always been deliberately limiting our exposure to the Fb ecosystem, Mr. Agaoua said. “We’ve been hoping for a bigger change in Facebook’s approach and behaviour over the last couple of years, but this has, sadly, not happened. Due to the recent events, we would like to take a principled stand as a company and support the #StopHateForProfit, because Facebook data validation and violent rhetoric have crossed the line. We’ve been considering this decision for a while, but the recent events led to the turning point now. We are cutting the technical integration level connections and pulling out completely our ad spendings from Fb and Instagram.” It’s the right decision and clear principled position, he added. “For now we’ll still keep our Social Media accounts open on all platforms including Facebook-owned applications. It’s a difficult decision that is made even harder by the fact that a lot of our users around the world have built habits and prefers to reach out to companies, Viber being no exception, via social media channels. So we’d endeavour on a transitional path, where we’ll use these channels only where absolutely needed for the communication with our users, while actively diminishing their role down the road.”
In terms of how Viber users will react and how it’ll affect them, he said, “We believe that the billion-strong Viber family is expecting us to clearly stand behind our principles and to set an example in this new frontline for maintaining the dignity of only conversation and protecting better the users’ most valuable digital resource – their data. In addition the user experience implications are rather small and they have perfectly capable alternatives. Only 7 per cent of our users used Facebook connect and registering through your number has always been available. Giphy is also substituted with Tenor which is a great product. Overall, users have not affected anyhow.”