UK government ministers have been warned that WhatsApp could disappear from the UK. It centres around the online safety bill, a major piece of legislation that will affect almost every area of online life in the UK.
The bill is currently making its way through the House of Lords on its way to becoming law. It would give regulator Ofcom the power to make social networks use tech to tackle content related to things like terrorism and child sexual abuse - it makes a provision for fines of up to 10% of global turnover for non-compliance, according to a report in the Guardian.
However, the Guardian reports, it would cause a problem for messaging services such as WhatsApp. That's because they use end-to-end encryption (E2EE), which makes it technologically impossible to read users' message without breaking their privacy promises to people using the service. And that, they say, is not something they will do.
