Someone pings you in slack or github (or discord or on a forum post or wherever) asking for something. Perhaps some advice or a code review. After you help them out, they say "Thanks!". In normal conversation, I would respond with a "You're welcome" or "no problem" or something.

The problem I have is that while I want to be polite and acknowledge their thank you message, I don't want to generate notifications or otherwise distract people. Responding with a github comment will notify and probably email any involved persons. Slack and discord it depends on the channel, but many channels have low enough traffic that I will check every time theres a new message in that channel (and I'm sure I'm not the only one monitoring those channels).

Its not really a big deal and no one is going to get angry about it - but it can distract people or ruin their flow while working and I want to avoid that. In my mind, a reaction emoji is perfect for this. It acknowledges the comment or message if someone looks, but doesn't send notifications or light up the channel name.

...but which reaction should I use? I've never seen a "you're welcome" emoji. I've been typically using a thumbs up (:+1:), but that can look as if someone is seconding the thanks rather than me trying to acknowledge it.

Is there a better way to say "you're welcome" or "no problem" in this situation? Is there a better reaction emoji on github/slack/discord/your communication platform of choice? Should I stop worrying about possibly savings other people an email or small distraction and just say "np" or something?

I can't shake the dejavu feeling I'm getting using any kind of messaging these days. Today we have an awful lot of messaging apps, that are all roughly the same, with similar features - Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, Riot, etc. This happened once already, at the dawn of 200X IM revolution that deprecated SMS for good we also had MSN, ICQ, GTalk, Jabber, etc. This also was a set of very similar personal messaging clients and protocols, similar in any way to each other. It all changed when the multi-protocol messaging apps came out - Pidgin, QiP, Miranda and others made it easy to gather all your contacts from various protocols in one place and to keep in touch with everyone. Shortly after Jabber transports were made so you could congregate all other accounts into one single XMPP account. Even N900 that came out in 2009 had the ability to gather various accounts into one single contact list.
I feel like right now with all the segmented IM apps it's a good time for something like this to happen again, and Telegram already has wat-bridge.
What are your thoughts on that topic? Do you think the history will repeat itself? Would a new federated formate like XMPP rise up?

SMS, iMessage, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram Direct, Signal, Wire, Wickr, Telegram, GroupMe, Viber, Threema, etc.

There are dozens of competing messenger services out there, each of which is either supported by or suffers from the network effect. Futhermore, each seems to come with its own pros and cons. I'm curious about not only people's current use, but where everyone thinks we are headed. As such, I have a few questions:

1. Which messengers do you currently use at the moment? What are their advantages and disadvantages?

2. If you could magically switch all of your contacts to be on one messaging service, which would it be and why?

3. Do you think we'll ever see a realistic convergence of messaging, or are people destined to use different platforms for different contacts?

A sentence from this article on Ars Technica about the new Android Messages web interface really jumped out at me:

Android Messages started as a simple SMS app, but, with the Web client, it is turning into Google's ninth messaging service after (deep breath) Google Talk, Google Voice, Buzz, Google+ Messenger, Hangouts, Spaces, Allo, and the Slack-like Hangouts Chat.

Nine different chat services from a single company is just wild. How did Google let such an important aspect of the Android platform become such a mess, and what should Google do about it?

I've been trying to tame tracking from services like Facebook. I installed many ad blockers and tracker blockers on all of my browser, I don't install FB app on my phone, but I still install Instagram app and WhatsApp.

Something creepy (but totally expected) just happened to me. I haven't really been in contact with a friend of mine for quite some time, and we finally chatted again using WhatsApp. Not long after that I opened Instagram, and her photo was the first one I saw haha. It's funny because I don't think I've seen any photos from her in quite some time before this on my IG feed.

Might just be a coincidence, but with all discussion about how creepy they're trying to make their platform as sticky as possible, I wouldn't be surprised if IG's feed algorithm do take into account your correspondence on WhatsApp as well (I live in a country where everyone uses WhatsApp).