I left WhatsApp when it was acquired by Meta (née Facebook) in 2014. I actually lost friends because of it-- they didn't answer calls or texts or any other form of communication on another platform reliably. It was surprisingly difficult to stick to my guns. I did--but it very much impacted my life.
I didn’t have WhatsApp in a country where it’s synonymous to instant message. It did very much impacted my life, missed parties, etc.
I caved in during the pandemic. Lots of dear friends and family members, especially elderlies who couldn’t be bothered with anything else, and volunteer work to help the medical emergencies.
It felt ridiculous to ask people to use other means of communications under such circumstances. My noble ideologies felt very small and I said fuck it. I’m glad I did.
It’s the only Meta service I use, but I’m a heavy user. There’s no turning back.
Sad truth is most Spanish-speaking countries are effectively run on whatsapp and twitter.
Whatsapp is where your mailman will contact you to clarify an address, and twitter is where you will receive customer support for your internet.
Emails are not getting responded to or very very late. Regular phone calls are also disappearing due to staff shortage - no one to take your call.
Hah I sent an email to a Spanish website about a shipping issue.
I received a response. Three months later. They said “please send more money and we’ll ship your item”. Very helpful. I’d guess they check that email inbox once every few months based on this.
The flipside of this is that the only people who actually bothered establishing an XMPP server at scale were those who wanted to spam Google or Facebook users.
Think of it this way: why doesn't Gmail just close their SMTP gateways and defederate from e-mail? Because there's shittons of systems that expect to be able to send mail this way. They'd have to spend loads of time and energy corralling people out of open standards and into a proprietary Gmail API for no externally-visible benefit.
That doesn't apply to XMPP. It was an entirely new protocol with only two very large adopters federating with one another. Legitimate automated systems that needed to send messages didn't really exist yet, so there was no legacy cruft holding people to the open standard. But there were plenty of spammers who realized that they could get into literally every Gmail and Facebook screen with it.
In e-mail, we have a complicated setup of blocklists, heuristics, and domain authentication to handle spam. This inherently costs more time and money to set up than just having a closed messaging system with sign-ups that are controlled by one entity. But the big e-mail providers deal with it because open[0] federation is an iron rule of the e-mail system.
[0] Ok it's more like "open if you spend enough time getting an originating IP that isn't on every blocklist, setting up SPF/DKIM, getting your recipients to add you to contacts and check the spam filter, and so on"
It's similar for me, but I have WhatsApp on a separate device that's at home and I only use it for WhatsApp. This keeps it strictly isolated from my primary smartphone and the list of contacts on it. Meta still has part of the social graph that surrounds me, but not all of it. How effective that is in the end is of no concern to me. I enjoy not just giving up completely, but resisting within my means. It reminds me a bit of the people who didn't pull their masks up over their noses during the pandemic. That's exactly how we should relate to tech giants if we can't avoid them completely.
By continuing to use a problematic messaging app you are feeding its network effect. You give it the blood that keeps it alive, and propagate the privacy issues that it brings. You know that 99% of your contacts will not take any of the measures you take and just deliver entire graphs, with yourself included, to the evil Meta or whomever on a golden plate. How many have a spare smartphone solely for this app? How many will deny it full access to contacts?
Coincidentally, just like not covering the nose with a mask in protest, this half-measure only makes the problem worse.
The only way to affect this is to pull up the mask. Stop the spread. Quit using such an app with explanations, offer alternatives to people seeking to contact you, support legislation that breaks shady business models like that, etc. Sadly, few people have courage to look weird, boring or slightly crazy in this way. (Not unlike people who are afraid to be thought of as ugly if they wear the mask.)
(I have no such problems with WhatsApp, but I’m guilty of the same with regards to Telegram. It’s built intentionally insecure by default: I have literally no contacts who use E2EE chats now, because those are opt-in and so half-assedly implemented—I used to have a couple of “secret chats” but one vanished and another broke so nothing is delivered anymore; we switched to plaintext and I keep postponing quitting the app.)
How did it start? Some people adopted it, then their friends adopted it, etc. How does it stop? The same way!
If people are made aware and meet resistance (e.g., a person they really want to keep in touch with who doesn’t use that app), things change.
A boycott that does not drive the company out of business is not automatically unsuccessful: more people learn about the issue, some stores might start stocking competitor’s goods, etc. In a functioning system, if a bunch of people voted for the loser the winner would feel the pressure to adjust policies (vs. if no one did and the winner feels righteous enacting the extreme version of the policies you disagree with), and if not well next time more people may support the losing party.
Chat programs are not stores in any typical sense of the word.
Chat programs are effectively clubhouses. Convincing a person that they’ve joined the wrong club, invested time and effort in the wrong club, and should make better and more informed choices in clubs…
Chat programs are not stores. That part was responding to the analogy of boycotts and elections.
Chat programs are also not clubs. There is no associated identity. No hardcore WhatsAppers it Telegrammers.
In fact, if you regularly meet actual humans, you might find out that most of them simply don’t care.
You dislike WhatsApp? Give them something equally convenient but that cares about privacy and they will just use it. Refuse to add them on WhatsApp and if you are an interesting person they will install whatever you use, even Signal, to stay in touch.
I get what you're saying, but realize your response is tone-deaf when the GP comment said that they had to give in to support the elderly and emergency responses in their area during the pandemic.
There's some opportunity cost you just can't accept. If your only two options are a) don't use Whatsapp or b) use Whatsapp to help your elderly neighbors, I'm going to think you're not a good person if you stick to your ideology in this specific case. You can't really start arguing 'what-ifs' because you don't know the details of their situation and the decisions they made, so we should take them at their word that those are the two options they considered.
All to say, the world isn't as black and white as sticking to your guns no matter what. People that want true change would do well to remember that, since a majority of folks do not think along these lines and act with much more simple motivators.
Hey, I don't want to argue with you and I wish you all the best. But you are twisting my mask comparison. In my comparison, pulling the mask all the way over your nose means giving in and using WhatsApp without any objections. The comparison is not a moral one but refers to how one behaves to an imperative that does not come from an individual but from a mass of people that surrounds one.
I also think that WhatsApp is evil, but that doesn't change the fact that a lot of communication takes place via this medium. Doing without it altogether has real opportunity costs. In this respect, it's up to each individual to decide whether and how to use it. It's similar to criticism of consumption and capitalism: in the end, you still have to buy your food somewhere and pay for it with money.
Choosing not to interact with people has opportunity costs, but we do it. For example, many of us choose not to interact with people with certain views (political or moral), even if we would gain a whole lot if we did.
The way I read it was “hmm that’s nice, people are now able to see the lunacy of that period in such a way as to make an off hand comment like that.”
The masks did nothing positive. It was the law of the land in public health that they were useless at preventing respiratory infections before people in positions of power wanted to scare people into compliance with massive overreach of their authority, then it became “mask up.” And once everybody “masked up,” all we got was yet more confirmation that yeah they are pointless in trying to prevent respiratory viral spread. Even if they kinda, sorta worked for that, which they don’t, the costs are still far too high.
All the masks contributed to was oxygen deprivation, micro plastic inhalation, and the degradation of the fabric of society. Think about it, it was bad enough for adults trying interact with faces wrapped up and concealed, “think of the children!”(actual legitimate usage of the phrase, btw) much worse for them having to do the same. People were harassed, assaulted, tased, arrested, for not wearing a “mask,” it was insanity.
You could use the damn phone as such and call. They even might appreciate it more. (Unless you have to be “chatting” continuously, of course.) And no, nobody really wants to see your face, believe me.
I was am expat in a country that used WhatsApp everywhere. Not using it myself was a huge pain on quite a few occasions, I was nearly forced into making a WhatsApp account when I had to take a Covid test before travel.
It's been slow, but I've noticed a slow trickle of users towards Signal, at least in Europe. I was happily surprised when the owners of a house we viewed defaulted to reaching us via Signal instead of whatsapp.
Most people I know are on Signal here (Germany), that includes older relatives.
Alas, for group conversations or bad connection situations (e.g. at a festival), everyone uses WA. Not sure why groups are always WA, but Signal (and actually any other messenger) sucks for bad connections.
and at unsecure communication. Their chats aren't e2ee by default, making it worse than Whatsapp. Also, videocalls in telegram are much worse compared to said messenger
No, WhatsApp is truly e2e encrypted and uses the same Ratchet algorithm in Signal, IIRC. That's why tptacek and moxie were generally positive about it.
I think there's something about key rotation and a default setting where it doesn't notify you if the keys change, or something like that, at one point.
It's most likely e2e up until the moment LEO requests information on a particular user and then Meta updates your app to a trojaned version, that just APPEARS E2E.
It also heavily encourages you to “back up” your messages to them in an unencrypted manner. It will bug you literally every time you enter the app if you opt out of this “feature”.
For what it's worth I have a few Signal group chats going. We had our video call to talk to the owners (we're moving to the Netherlands from Ireland) over Signal and it worked well, but that was on a strong wifi connection
Everyone I communicate with uses Signal now. In Europe using Signal costs the same amount as using WhatsApp, if not less because of the missing bloatware (backups etc).
In a lot of the world, WhatsApp is free (I assume some kind of payment from Meta to the telecom). There's no way Signal will compete with something that is bundled with every phone contract for whatever reason.
In Australia both Signal and WhatsApp are free, aside from using the data service rather than the "telephone" service, and we pay for a monthly or annual data quota with our phone plan.
Do you have separate charges for Signal and/or WhatsApp?
Yeah I guess I confused a lot of people: the charges are for the data, not the app. They are tiny, but if you use the app heavily and rely on it, you don't want to be disconnected when your data runs out.
I read this as a phone contract having a bundled: unlimited whatsapp, Spotify, Facebook bundles where data usage is not counted towards your total data allowance in the contract. For example in my country in the middle of Europe you have bundles with unlimited traditional communication and 20 50 80GB of mobile data.
When you WhatsApp all day sending videos, gifs, messages, voice messages, pictures, documents..I can consume up to 12GB per month, this costing me an amount of my 20GB data plan. While a other provider I can choose has a 20GB data plan with a unlimited WhatsApp bundle. Sadly they don’t offer eSIM and 5G so it’s a no go for me.
This has been a big downside for years, I'm surprised it hasn't been fixed yet. Your account has to be tired to a phone number (though you can use voip) and only their mobile apps act as a primary that can register the account.
The social-media business is neither trustworthy for me as a consumer nor more fulfilling than a real conversation with a real human somewhere. I don't want a relationship with social media.
But I'm not going to be delusional about it, if literally hundreds of millions of people are depending on social-media business for their social happiness, I can see that it works for them.
I want a secure, trustworthy, minimally-viable telecommunications channel for some contacts. I support Signal, it has characteristics that I trust, including being open source.[1]
I also have shown other people how to enable Google's RCS messaging.[2] It's better than SMS.
The crypto integration put me off as well. Not because I'm opposed to crypto currencies in principle, but integrating them into a privacy focused chat app is plain idiotic.
Crypto disposals are taxable in the UK and I believe in most other countries as well. So tax authorities have a legitimate reason to look into what's going on there. There is no right to privacy when it comes to buying and selling securities.
As someone else in Eastern Europe, 99% of people I know communicate over Messenger, Instagram (if more hip), or Viber (if 40+). I believe that the messaging app situation varies a lot from one city to another or even one "group" to another.
Interesting, my contacts are mostly in Romania, Estonia, Latvia and Poland, and mostly IT savvy (as users, not programmers), so the latter could well be a factor.
Telegram is getting almost as common as whatsapp for my social circle, including friends, co-workers and family. Most people I interact with are on either platform.
Thought something similar, but for my personal network of friends and contacts. Sometimes I am pleasantly surprised to learn, that yet another person I know has or is willing to get Signal.
We need to build and keep asking people whether they have Signal or would please get it.
My whole extended family is on Line. It does it all really, and no ads or intrusion. It has only one single drawback - one device only (or one, plus a Windows PC, which is not an option for me).
Practically it's impossible to quit WhatsApp, more so in certain countries. However if you still have that old account, you can choose not to accept any of Meta'a new terms and agreements, and surprisingly they still let you use it! The last time I accepted the terms was probably around 2013.
Aside from people, a significant number of companies, and even government services, offer service through WhatsApp as well. In some parts of the world it's really impossible not to use it.
Why have they been so successful? Why didn't MMS 6.0 implement everything that exists in modern chat applications. Why is Meta anything more than the anonymous humble entities producing sms and "phone" apps?
I guess because Whatsapp provides a unified and standard way to communicate between people on different provider networks / countries for free? You get groups, text/images/location sharing, video/audio calls, cross-countries, that works very reliably, and you only need internet (which can be found almost anywhere even if that's just wifi).
MMS still don't work reliably for me (lost a message just last week that someone swear to have sent). And for a long time they were not free as well.
I'm not actually suggesting using MMS. I just wanted to illustrate that we've had instant communication technology (even "rich" multi-media) long before Whatsapp etc. Why didn't the providers of that technology (telecom companies) become Meta?
The difference is that MMS/SMS is standardized and agnostic to the client interface. While WhatsApp is proprietary and monopolizes the client.
We could easily have had a "internet direct message" standard implementing most of WhatsApps features. (Wait... Isn't that SMTP?)
Maybe I'm just ignorant, but what does WhatsApp bring that let's say email++ does not have?
MMS has been exorbitantly, insanely expensive and with extremely high failure rates in much of the world until...
... actually that's still the case in varying degrees and locations. And once you've got great market penetration in an area, there's little to no reason to switch unless the competition is noticeably better, which MMS really has no claim to.
Email definitely did not. When WhatsApp was beginning its rise to domination, it was on tons of feature phones - mostly just calls, texts, and WhatsApp. Email implies a lot more general internet access than was generally supported or understood by people, since it supports arbitrary data and hosts.
Where in Africa? People just use Uber or alternatives, and it works fine pretty much everywhere I've been (I'm Kenyan. I've lived in South Africa for extended periods, and travelled extensively in Namibia and Tanzania). I've never once heard of anyone using WhatsApp for cab hailing. It gets pretty exhausting finding people talking about a whole continent on HN in broad strokes as though it's some small town they once went to on holiday, and can now offer their expert opinion on.
If it makes you feel any better, people also do the same sort of inaccurate cultural reductivism about the United States -- a vast geographical area containing many strongly differentiated local regional cultures -- on a daily basis.
It does, actually Quite unexpectedly, too. I have an American friend who keeps recommending places I should visit in the States, but I always respond by saying I don't want to get shot or racially profiled. It's a source of constant frustration for him. I did not expect HN to be where I'd find empathy for his perspective.
As an Australian I sympathise, it's not all HN'rs [1] but there's certainly a strong core of proud ignorance confident in their assertaions about other cultures, countries, political systems, etc.
Here I was expecting something from Tanzania or Kenya and we're back in Northern Mali!
I'm a bit old - I travelled extensively about the globe when I was younger doing geophysicsl survey work and ground truthing the transition from many paper map systems to WGS84.
Africa has some fantastic musicians.
All I can offer in return is some Australians and their collaborations ...
Tjamuku Ngurra is beautiful. I don't think I've listened to Aboriginal fusion (there's all sorts of interesting things happening there) before. My consumption of Australian music has mostly been limited to Tame Impala, whom I love, but this is special. Thank you so much for sharing.
Australian music is surprisingly broad for such a small (population wise, physically it's the same land area as mainland USofA (and together the US + Australia are less than the area of Africa ..)) .. "aboriginal fusion" (that works) is also broader than many might imagine.
That may well be true for your one experience in Tanzania. I wasn't there with you. I have neither a reason, nor the desire to counter your personal experience.
Here's what I find baffling. You had a single, curated, extremely limited travel experience, in (I'm guessing) a handful of places, in one country, over a limited time period. You extrapolated from that experience to making a bold, sweeping claim about an odd 1.2 billion people living in 54 countries. And with an air of worldly confidence, to boot. What you said of Africa is not even generally true of the city of Dar es Salaam, let alone all of Tanzania. How could it possibly be true for a whole continent? I'm genuinely in awe of both the audacity it takes to make such a claim, and the thought process that leads to it. I do feel a bit bad for singling you out (but only a little bad) since it's sadly not unusual for people to choose to talk about places in this way when they don't expect to be challenged.
I just say "can we use Signal? It's super secure." And people generally are fine to use Signal. They don't use SMS because it's expensive and many that own an iPhone in countries where Android dominate don't use iMessage because, well, few around them use iPhone and the interface (i.e., the phone number) doesn't really tell them that they won't get charged for a text message.
I've posted up in many countries, and it's rarely a show stopper.
For this use case, I use a burner Google voice number, give that to Whatsapp and don't give it access to my contacts or anything on my phone. Late model phones don't give apps IMEI or real MAC.
It's not perfect: when you connect with people they can easily associate your WhatsApp account with your identity (add contact) and also share info/pics/etc about you that you wouldn't want shared. They can do this even if you're not on WhatsApp, and Meta can use face recognition and other techniques to create a profile for you, then associate that profile with the other days and profile they have for you. It's trivial to narrow the down to a few million users then match on photo etc. Unclear if they bother, given that 99% of users just give away their privacy.
Also, Whatsapp verification uses SMS. If they'd used a verification URL, they could've (bounced through) Facebook.com, Instagram.com, etc and associated the account via (first party) cookies. I'm guessing they don't because 99% of users happily give the app all the permissions it needs and SMS is more universal.
Anecdotally, all of my friends who are part of group chats are annoyed by them. Too much noise for too little signal. On a personal level, if there’s anything in a group chat that would be relevant to me I’ll know about it from one of the participants through another medium, like an SMS or phone call or when we see each other.
If you want to know what they talk about, then you have to use the same platform. This is trivial, and doesn't have much to do with being able to quit WhatsApp.
It does have a lot to do with quitting WhatsApp - because WhatsApp is the platform that is the de-facto application for this in some parts of the world.
If they are really your only option, you can use whatever insane platform they are on long enough to forge a couple friendships, explain your stance and then quit.
If they are your friends they will understand, if not it wasn't worth the effort to begin with.
Someone does not have to understand your idiosyncrasies to be your friend.
Most people will not, in fact, understand why you are so picky about the chat platforms you are willing to use, and they will think (correctly, I would say) that you care more about your social media stances than you care about their friendship. So you will think they were not worth the effort to begin with, and they will think the same in return, but ultimately they are not restricting their potential friend pool nearly as much as you are. If it works out well for you, great, otherwise you have to be a bit more pragmatic.
My statement still stands. If you ask me to do hard drugs with you, I will say no. Does that mean I value my physical and mental integrity over our friendship? YES! I absolutely do.
It is perfectly fine to value certain things over friendship. You just have to be conscious of the friction that your convictions will cause and ask yourself whether it's worth it for you. Health is worth it. Chat apps? I don't know. If you ask me to use Signal, that seems reasonable enough and I'll do it, but if we're a group of 10 coordinating over Whatsapp and you want me to tell you whenever plans are being made, it's like, OK, but I'm doing the effort for our personal convos, can't you meet me halfway or something? That's the kind of friction you're going to deal with. Up to you.
If the content is compelling enough you will chat where you both agree to. If not it is like telling someone the only way you will talk is in the park by the chess tables.
Sure maybe you talk to them by chess tables sometimes, but if they won't meet you for coffee then they aren't your friends, just chess table acquaitances.
Real example: My friend group has a hiking group on WhatsApp and there is one friend who is not on it. One person will propose a hike, and will keep messaging the group with information about it. Someone then has to message that other friend and tell them about it, every time there is a slight adjustment to plans.
Let's say you are my friend, and Bob is arranging a hike for 10am on Saturday. You usually come on the hike so I let you know. Even though all the details are on the group, you ask me all the questions and I have to fill you in. Then on the morning of the hike Darcy's car breaks down and the time gets rearranged from 10am to 11am, so then I have to tell you that as well because you aren't on the group chat, and suddenly I feel like I am becoming your PA (and if I forget to tell you the time has changed then suddenly it's my fault - even though i'm not arranging the damn hike and you could have been on the group in the first place you just refuse).
Some of my best friends decided to quit certain platforms like Facebook and yes, Whatsapp too (two people). I definitely understood. I even have signal and telegram installed. But I never remember to check them. It's just not practical.
> if they are people worth your while, they'll make sure to let you know about it using other means...
Ugh, I might but it's annoying for me (your friend) to be your personal messenger whenever there is something you might be interested in on the group chat.
Why is it on me to keep you in the loop? It's why we created the group chat, Dave.
Particularly that time when you got all annoyed at me for not being invited camping - I didn't even organise the trip in the first place, it's not my job to tell you about every event on the group chat just because you won't download WhatsApp.
In countries where WhatsApp is ubiquitous, it is used for more than just messaging friends.
For example, many childcare places will send updates through WhatsApp groups. So you have to convince the business and all their clients to switch to signal or do without notifications for your child's childcare.
Because, I am guessing it was less like friendship and more like convenient boredom reduction. The WhatsApp group is there, a joke or whatever gets posted, maybe a lets go to the bar guys (or girls?) but the bond
is not strong enough that they bother to contact people who are
on another medium.
This is called "splitting", or all-or-nothing thinking. It's a common psychological defense mechanism.
You don't just have friends and non-friends. It's a spectrum. By raising the bar for reaching you some people no longer cared to be your acquaintances, and others remained connected but talked to you less frequently. And so you lose some of the contact that you had with other people because of your own actions, no one else's.
At the "far end of friendship spectrum", that is the closest form of friendship, there's no one there. Given enough obstacles that you yourself put up eventually you'll lose absolutely everyone.
"By raising the bar for reaching you some people no longer cared to be your acquaintances, and others remained connected but talked to you less frequently. And so you lose some of the contact that you had with other people because of your own actions, no one else's."
This is completely ass-backwards thinking. We don't have apps growing out of us and we are not doing things to ourselves "because of our own actions".
Leaving a bad app is a bit like leaving a country where a dangerous tyrannical dictator has set up shop. You didn't decide to rape murder and pillage your neighbors, the corrupt leader did. Getting the hell out of dodge is an extremely reasonable thing to do, and you are not cutting yourself off from your acquaintances, the evil dictator is.
Besides, app messaging is completely backwards anyways, we invented protocols because they are the best way to reliably communicate.
If you leave a "country where a dangerous tyrannical dictator has set up shop" you will also almost certainly lose friends and acquaintances. And if you don't you won't. It's always heartbreaking for all kinds of refugees. But leaving, arguably, has more upsides, for example not getting brutalized by the internal security services.
I genuinely don't get how people manage to find excuses to talk to most people. Even before I left Facebook I mostly spoke to people face to face and when that became impractical I stopped talking altogether.
I think this sentiment underplays how useful casual acquaintances are, on their own but more importantly as a step towards forming those strong bonds in the first place.
As an adult, how do you make the strong bonds that lead to people going out of their way to remember to invite you to things? Maybe you meet someone and click immediately, more likely it's someone you know from work, and commonly it's acquaintances from seemingly superficial activities that become close friends after you're mingled and mixed with enough folks to find your tribe.
"everyone complains about group chats being noisy" but there's a good reason they're still in there (obviously a big part of it is fomo but it's not obvious to me that everyone's lives would be better rejecting them. Human social dynamics are messy and not efficient).
That second step is the hardest part. How on earth do you make new close friends, I try to be the first to reach out but people seem too guarded or busy the only way they'll meet is if the gathering is large enough but the problem with that is those are very hard to organize since everyone has their own schedule.
I think the answer to that.... is that you can't, unless by accident :( All of my close-ish friends I met randomly and we just clicked.
But like, the world is going in a direction sadly where meaningful human friendships are disappearing, being replaced with endless acquittances who do not care about you, and you do not care about them either. Which I find really sad.
Most of organising problems are btw due to the lack of effort, not a true lack of time. "I am busy" is usually just a convenient excuse to why you don't want to do something together, not that you don't actually have time. (You do have time binging netflix, do ya?)
I guess I should be out more so I can have those "accidents" with like-minded people. Ironic how we're more connected than ever yet so distant to each other. You'd think it would make things a lot easier but it's like it's done the opposite.
I have personally found that "being out more" doesn't help with it at all. The accidents happen in unexpected places and times. Going "out" mostly gets you the "usual" activities - where you are almost guaranteed to not find anything like that.
Yeah, the internet has been a blessing in the past in terms of socialisation, but nowadays, it has made it even worse than before. IRL activities are dying because everyone is on social media - but not spending any time with each other, just scrolling alone. I find it very sad.
With that being said, if you want to chat, I'd be happy to :)
Every additional form of communication you take part in is a burden to some degree, and depending on the person they may only have the capacity for a handful before it becomes overwhelming. Personally I can handle like 4 forms of primary communication before either further forms become mostly ignored or it starts hurting my ability to communicate with anyone on anything. I can understand that someone, no matter how much they may want to stay in touch, may just be unable to through some forms of communication.
Yep, I use SMS and email, and don't see a need for anything else. Neither of these impose any particular demand on anyone who wants to contact me; they don't need to install any apps or set up any new accounts.
Who says they ignored them? Everyone seems to be jumping to this conclusion that these people weren't friends and that they disliked him in the first place.
We've all lost touch with friends. That's how things happen in life. We move on and what not. If you're using one app to talk to all your buddies and one person messages you on a different app. It's very easy to not even notice the other app especially if they don't have it installed or don't get notifications and only go in and check messages once a day and go through the list so they don't get constantly distracted.
I was ready to post the same thing. If someone is unwilling to communicate with you, well… I have some bad news for ya: they aren’t much of a friend.
I don’t use any of these social media sites, don’t use WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, or whatever else is out there, and still manage to have a robust social life and actual friends. They know my phone number if they want to talk, and I know their numbers. It doesn’t have to be complicated or mediated by some megacorp.
Did the same for a very long time until recently I had to join a group for colleagues from Istanbul. Just wanted to be notified of any social activities in that group still refuse to use it for anything else. It even cost me a job opportunity one time. You should see the look on peoples faces when I ask them to email me something.
When you die and go to secular-heaven you will be able to tell Saint Dawkins that you successfully resisted the billionaires by not giving them the pleasure of messaging your friends on their platforms, and will be permitted entry. Just don't tell him you were resisting from your iPhone.
Kind of like Marquess Brownlee reviewing tech phones, recommending a ton of them, being asked constantly which one of them he uses, saying it's one of the phones he recommended.
And then seeing him in non phone review videos reading stuff constantly from... his iPhone :-)
Can you tell me in words the value (V1) or values that you're filtering for with this life choice? And whether there are other values (Vall) that you hold and would like your friends to hold. And talk to me about the correlation between V1 and Vall.
Because my opinion is that my friends willingness (or preference) to use a non secure messaging app owned by a giant tech corp has very very very low correlation with whether I'd like them to be a friend.
I'd also point out that this is exactly how bubbles occur. "Everyone I know hates WhatsApp/Facebook/whatever" says the person who refuses to communicate via those platforms.
> I'd also point out that this is exactly how bubbles occur
No it isn't. You'd be surprised in the variety of people that you meet when you don't use algorithmic systems to do so. Just because you only maintain relationships with people who are not so glued to WhatsApp that they won't communicate through any other means, does not mean you have created a bubble for yourself.
It's true you are always able to avoid bubbles, and nothing I say precludes that ability.
However, information bubbles are a function of friction and defaults. If communication lessens with a people who don't share a particular view (ie, that Whatsapp has to be avoided) then that friction lessens exposure to that viewpoint, forming a bubble.
> you meet when you don't use algorithmic systems to do so.
AFAIK there is no algorithmic system on Whatsapp to meet people.
i use whatsapp to call my grandma and my aunt among other people, because that's what they use. Actually, my parents too, now that i think about it, they fall back to whatsapp all the time. How in tf is that an "algorithmic people-meeting system"??? did it pick a grandma for me according to some algorithm?
> think about it, they fall back to whatsapp all the time. How in tf is that an "algorithmic people-meeting system"???
It isn't. Nor did I say it was. The person I replied to said that not using WhatsApp is how social bubbles are formed. It isn't. That's what I was refuting.
People who use WhatsApp also go places, do things and talk to people. They don't sit at home alone in their room on WhatsApp 24/7. That's what Hacker News is for.
This is a useful thing to consider when using social media or, say, dating apps in general, come to think of it.
Like you, the choice of messaging app is quite beside the point (except FB Messenger being out of the question for reasons I'll explain). So, I still use a combination of WhatsApp, Signal and Skype.
If a friendship depended on me having a Twitter/FB/TikTok/Instagram profile though, I'm more likely to let that fade away. Similarly with dating: it'd be a dealbreaker to have to maintain a social media presence or find someone solely through Tinder or Bumble or whatever. I enjoy life more without social media in it, and without tech companies gatekeeping human connection through a mobile app. Some things just have to stay offline for the sake of me and my mental health.
Most non-techies don't give a crap indeed. Maybe these people haven't traveled much at all. When you are in the middle of a non-US city, you're trying to get the keys to your stay and the night is falling, you fire up that one messenger you're not supposed to use because zuck bad, and figure out the key situation in 1 second. Then you lecture your newfound "whatsapp bubble friend" who brought you the keys about how low and unethical it is of them to use whatsapp.
- They don't need your contact list to still build your contact graph.
- They still collect things like your location, your call history, etc. In Brazil it's quite common for people to use WhatsApp to call their doctors. This means that Facebook can know what type of health issues you have just by checking if you are calling/texting a specialist.
- They are still owned by Facebook and they take whatever data they can to feed the Borg.
- I can not prove it, but I am convinced that they scan the video stream in the device.
Taking your first three points as true, the trade is you get free global multi-way instant messaging, including pictures and video/audio clips, and video calling, for no cost other than minimal data costs.
Lots of people are currently willing to make that trade, at least until a competitor comes along that offers something better.
Why wouldn't you assume they do? Sorry if that sounds argumentative, it's not my intent. As I understand it, their software processes everything you send to/through them. (And it's easy to imagine reasons why they would be interested in doing so)
If I tell a friend "I am not going to use WhatsApp. But you can call me, email me, text me, use Signal, use Matrix, knock on my door..." and this friend refuses to keep in touch, who is the one "dictating" the messaging system?
This is madness, I will say it explicitly, spelt-out.
There exist systems which may violate your privacy, and you think that a possible demand to use them from any third party would be "fair", aproblematic?!
Good normalcy is that if some acquaintance put as a condition any controversial constraint, such as destructive behaviour ("binge drinking" etc.), irresponsible behaviour, degrading behaviour (that spyware is part of this latter) - the reply is simply "No".
And that would be antisocial behaviour, "No, I will not get tattooed (etc.) just because you would like that"?!
Children have replaced Men in this world.
Edit: oh, and by the way: behaviour that would stick to the framework of proper Society would be «[anti-]social»?!?!?! That is a dire reversal terms, and it shows the (satanic) perversity these """societies""" have reached.
I'm not asking them to change their mode of communication with others. I'm just saying that I'm not going to join something that I believe to be harmful out of peer pressure.
> Some of you really are absolutely socially inept.
So if someone tells you "I'm sorry, I am not available at this channel, can we arrange some other method?" and you refuse to accomodate you take the other as socially inept?
I hope you do not have the expectation that in order to contact """friends""" one would ever adopt bestial behaviour. It takes a beast to act like a beast. Everybody will live according to nature.
Your post seems to be assumptions loaded. It sounds as if you were accusing strawmen of expecting people to behave rationally, wisely etc. That image has been superseded even in the theoretical grounds in which it had been used historically as a premise (e.g. Economics).
I have no control over what they do. If they’re so attached to using whatsapp that they’d stop being friends with me rather than use signal, the friendship wasn’t worth a lot in the first place.
I recently started using WhatsApp regularly because it's the only convenient end-to-end encrypted messaging app I know. The only thing they seem to be getting out of it is some metadata and the opportunity to sell services to businesses. Seems like an acceptable compromise to me.
Previously I used Matrix/Element but never got it to work reliably with my friends (decryption issues, session verification obsession). And Signal has no web app. So WhatsApp it is for now.
Here’s a fact: Meta grossed $117 billion in 2022. Almost as much as a major car manufacturer. They’re doing things with that data. It’s a scary amount of power.
Not having WhatsApp here in Brazil is tough - Basically my entire family and close friends(?) use it as an asynchronous way of communication, which is good at the end of the day. But not answering regular phone calls is not good.
Unfortunately I cannot just walk away from it because of this.
I did the same in 2014 and lost touch with lots of friends. I am now in touch with a very few via Signal and email or phone. But I couldn't convert many to use Signal, even though they I got them to try it with a lot of effort.
I left FB when somebody on HN leaked they were feeding data straight to some military intelligence agency pipeline. I lost many acquaintances because of it but I saved a huge amount of time and completed two graduate degrees after.
The HN search doesn't show anything like that. I wish I saved the link somewhere. It was a long time ago but IIRC they had some bug that browser was directly contacting the agency instead of doing it via a backend or redirects so people monitoring their own online traffic could see the target servers directly.
I did the same (although some years after the acquisition) and had a similar experience, though over the years I've managed to claw back some of the friends I lost. Though it's still hard to communicate with them.
In my view, and as someone who's never used instant messaging, it should be a small accommodation to make for a friendship. In the same way that I would be happy to provide a vegetarian option at a dinner.
The analogy doesn't work because providing a vegetarian option is something you only have to do once, or at least only the few times the vegetarian friend has dinner at your house. Changing your messaging platform for a friend is more like becoming a vegetarian yourself and convincing all your other friends to go vegetarian to please your friend (because a messaging app is only useful if most of your friends are on it).
There was a time when you could contact anyone on any platform through a centralized application which simply called into libpurple. Really the problem here is that you along with everyone else have caved into big tech's insistence on being incompatible with everything.
Also, more people understand your morale position of "I don't want to kill animals".
Few people understand "this messenger is slightly less privacy focused. It's owned by Meta. It's against my principles".
I am vegan so I would definitely break ties with friends that make mean "jokes" about veganism or myself. But I certainly would never let go of friends because they want me to use WhatsApp.
Probably true. Still, perceptions change over time. Not too long ago vegetarianism (never mind veganism!) was widely seen as an irrational fringe position.
Similarly, I live sans messaging for the simple reason that I never upgraded to a smartphone. In the 2000s this solicited reactions of amazed befuddlement and surprise, occasionally mirth. Nowadays, in my experience, most people intuitively understand the decision.
I don’t get your analogy having multiple messaging apps on your device is not forcing you to do anything. Just to get in the right messaging app to talk to your different communities. I mean my kids are doing that all the time between snap (their friends), whatsapp (family) or Signal (me) (and I’m pretty sure they use at least a lot more channels (discord, insta, etc.)
That can work if groups of contacts are still grouped by app, like friends and family using different apps and you don't need to talk to both at once. But in the example given by the OP, if one friend wants to use a different app than other friends, it would be really awkward. You'd have to copy every message to your friends twice -- once on the app with the other friends and once in the app for the contrarian friend. In practice, that friend would be left out of many social events.
Sure. The point was more about the many small frictions that may or may not exist in any given friendship, with a lack of messaging capacity being no more egregious than any other.
Demanding all your friends switch or kill their messaging apps is quite another matter, and an eccentric one at that.
Let's say that person A refuses to use $APP and person B only communicates through $APP.
Then, from A's perspective, it is just a small accommodation for B to communicate through alternative means. And from B's perspective, it is just a small accommodation for A to use $APP.
"Look, I am not letting Zuck suck up my personal data and watch ads if there is an alternative that's owned by a non-profit, does not show ads and end-to-end encrypts everything as a rule."
Asking to use Zucks apps anyway as a small accommodation would paint the one asking as an ignorant who is being unreasonable and does not take care of their digital hygiene properly. Sure, they might resent the other person for pointing their own failings out, but it's hard to actually argue.
I think it's pretty clear at this point that most non-techies place no value on digital privacy. So, from the perspective of someone whose friends all use Zuck's app, the other person is trying to complicate their life for no benefit.
Within their value system, they're not being ignorant. Rather, they're perfectly rational.
