After WhatsApp's privacy policy changes, in the first four months of 2021, Telegram's installs rose 98% YoY and Signal's first-time downloads were up 1,192% YoY
Sensor Tower BlogStephanie Chan
Context & Ripple Effects
The backdrop to Sensor Tower's numbers is a January 2021 in which Telegram led all apps worldwide with 63M downloads while Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger downloads all fell from December — the first visible crack in Meta's grip on messaging after the privacy policy backlash.
Signal and Telegram are the immediate beneficiaries: Signal's first-time downloads grew 1,192% YoY and Telegram's installs 98% YoY in the first four months of 2021, converting WhatsApp's policy controversy into their largest acquisition window ever.
Meta feels it on the other side of the ledger — its four messaging/social apps (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger) all saw downloads decline from December 2020 into January 2021, per Sensor Tower's worldwide rankings.
Second-order effects
Competitors outside messaging also harvest the churn: during the October 2021 Facebook outage, Snap gained 23% Android users week-over-week while Telegram (+18%) and Signal (+15%) rose again, showing the alternatives now function as standing overflow capacity for Meta's network.
WhatsApp responds by rebuilding trust and monetization elsewhere — its username-claiming privacy feature signals a direct answer to the Signal-style positioning, while Apptopia's data shows US daily business users up 80% in 2023 after a 122% jump in 2022, anchoring retention through business messaging rather than consumer sentiment.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, messaging becomes a multi-home market: the privacy-policy trigger proved users will maintain parallel apps (Telegram/Signal alongside WhatsApp), permanently lowering switching costs in a category once defined by network-effect lock-in.
Trust itself turns into a product roadmap driver — WhatsApp's planned usernames and its pivot toward business messaging suggest platform owners must now compete on privacy architecture and enterprise utility simultaneously, not just reach.
The trend: Consumer messaging is consolidating around trust-driven multi-app behavior, where privacy policy missteps at the incumbent convert directly into structural share gains for encrypted challengers.
*checks calendar. pours coffee*. OK. Let's do this. No, we can't see your personal messages. No, we won't delete your account. Yes, you can accept at any time.
*checks calendar. Pours coffee*. OK. Let's do this. No, we still can't trust Facebook. No, mandating FB login is still not responsible innovation. Yes, you can stay away from companies that want to turn you into #DataCattle, ANYTIME. https://twitter.com/...
If you want to get in touch with me, I'll be on Signal. Also encouraging all members of groups that I'm part of to switch over to anything apart from a Facebook platform. https://twitter.com/...
It's easy to blame @WhatsApp, but the encryption is real: messages, calls and status updates always stay between you and people you choose. I see there is encryption. WA was also working to make it compatible for multi device. I may simply avoid to comment if it was not real 🤷🏻♂…
In this thread, @signalapp takes a jab at @WhatsApp, but neither address WhatsApp's ominous statement: “We *won't* delete your account”, b/c both are vulnerable to severability without Decentralized IDs + standard personal datastores. They should be working w/ us to help fix this…
*checks calendar. pours coffee*. WhatsApp actually will disable accounts that don't accept their new privacy policy, they already are harvesting your contact list and chat history and selling it to ad brokers, and it's the crown jewel of Facebook's empire. https://twitter.com/...
I remember vividly hanging out with a certain boss at WhatsApp just before the FB purchase, saying that they didn't really need encryption because people had nothing to hide and it wasn't that important conversations going on. https://twitter.com/...
WhatsApp really did some amazing things for the instant messaging space.. remember before WhatsApp? I worked for an IM company when WhatsApp came out.. I remember 😅 Facebook unfortunately did what they do best. It's time for others to step up and do better. https://twitter.com/..…
It's funny to me that one of the main funders of Signal got billions of dollars by selling WhatsApp to Facebook and is now using some of that money to kill the thing he created. https://twitter.com/...
Ever since @WhatsApp received backlash in January following its new privacy policy, its competitors @telegram and @signalapp have seen an uptick in adoption. Installs of #WhatsApp declined 43% Y/Y at the start of 2021, reaching 172.3M: https://ow.ly/... #telegram #signal https://…