Highlighting this for anyone who's come to the comments first and wonders why it's a big issue: Not using it in a lot of countries would be as unusual as telling someone you don't have a phone...
Highlighting this for anyone who's come to the comments first and wonders why it's a big issue:
In many parts of the world outside the US, the “big boss” of those who decide to get rid of Meta is WhatsApp. And how could it not be? Some research on phone habits shows that up to 99.1% of Brazilians over the age of 16 use the messaging app. Here, it is ubiquitous; the standard means of communication for many people and companies.
Not using it in a lot of countries would be as unusual as telling someone you don't have a phone number. It's just... the way people message each other.
I've had some success dragging the nerdier contingent of my friendship group across to Signal, and there's enough critical mass there that we de facto moved a few of the active group chats across, but any messages I get from family, work colleagues, and probably 70% of my friendship group will be on WhatsApp (including some who definitely have Signal because they're in those group chats, but still default to WhatsApp for direct messages out of habit).
Thank you for the outside perspective (as someone who is a chronic comments-only reader). I all too often fall into the “US is the only way of life” trap. Also +1 for signal. It’s my go to for...
Thank you for the outside perspective (as someone who is a chronic comments-only reader). I all too often fall into the “US is the only way of life” trap. Also +1 for signal. It’s my go to for everyone except family… we use slack in our family 🙃
I had a lot of resistance moving to signal. Only my immediate family would try it! My nerdy friends just didn’t see the point- they don’t value privacy.
I had a lot of resistance moving to signal. Only my immediate family would try it! My nerdy friends just didn’t see the point- they don’t value privacy.
The nerdier folk are, sadly, easier to bring to Discord or Telegram because both support bots natively. Signal and Whatsapp don't, which leaves a lot of fun out you can add with all kinds of silly...
The nerdier folk are, sadly, easier to bring to Discord or Telegram because both support bots natively.
Signal and Whatsapp don't, which leaves a lot of fun out you can add with all kinds of silly self- or premade bots.
The only ones in my circle who are Signal-only are the hardcore privacy advocates, I've yet to find any group chats on Signal, it's all 1on1.
I've never gotten into FB, Twitter nor WhatsApp. I've been heavy ICQ user, then XMPP and brought all my friends over to Pidgin, years later everyone is on Signal. Even my and wife's family. I say,...
I've never gotten into FB, Twitter nor WhatsApp. I've been heavy ICQ user, then XMPP and brought all my friends over to Pidgin, years later everyone is on Signal. Even my and wife's family.
I say, just refuse to use WhatsApp on the grounds of privacy and use Signal instead. Make them feel shitty about forcing you to share your life with tech bros.
"Zuck creeps me out. I don't want to feel as if a sweaty train molester undressed me with his eyes every time we chat. Find me on signal."
I never had WhatsApp and I don't miss it. I could live without Instagram. I use it mostly for scrolling through pictures when I have to wait somewhere. I never used Threads Facebook would tough to...
I never had WhatsApp and I don't miss it.
living without Instagram, Facebook, and Threads (lol) is easy
I could live without Instagram. I use it mostly for scrolling through pictures when I have to wait somewhere.
I never used Threads
Facebook would tough to give up. Lots of people who I want to stay in touch with who would be hard to stay in touch with without Facebook. Then there are all sorts of local event listings and local discussion groups.
Where are you from? Whatsapp here has subsumed local facebook groups, SMS, and communication with local small businesses/contractors. It's definitely the main communication method here in Ireland....
I never had WhatsApp and I don't miss it.
Where are you from? Whatsapp here has subsumed local facebook groups, SMS, and communication with local small businesses/contractors. It's definitely the main communication method here in Ireland.
Discord is used by gamers and other late millenial/early gen z hobby groups.
Telegram is used by eastern europeans, furries, sellers of TV piracy devices and drug dealers.
Signal is used by tech workers and drug dealers.
Your tech illiterate grandma might still be on Facebook, but even she's probably been set up on Whatsapp by now.
In the US (and maybe Canada, not sure) WhatsApp has a relatively weak presence. People are split up between iMessage, FB Messenger, Instagram, Telegram, WhatsApp, plain RCS/SMS, and Signal. Which...
In the US (and maybe Canada, not sure) WhatsApp has a relatively weak presence. People are split up between iMessage, FB Messenger, Instagram, Telegram, WhatsApp, plain RCS/SMS, and Signal. Which of those one uses largely depends on their social circles.
Yes, in my experience (US), I use WhatsApp only to communicate with friends I've made while living abroad or American friends who are currently living abroad that don't use FB. I know very few...
Yes, in my experience (US), I use WhatsApp only to communicate with friends I've made while living abroad or American friends who are currently living abroad that don't use FB. I know very few Americans that live here who have WhatsApp, and of those that do, 99% of the time it's because they're trying to stay connected with someone overseas.
Americans feeling the need to share their opinions about how easy it would be to drop WhatsApp is so exhausting. Yeah, no shit, everyone else already knows WhatsApp isn't big in the States. You're...
Americans feeling the need to share their opinions about how easy it would be to drop WhatsApp is so exhausting. Yeah, no shit, everyone else already knows WhatsApp isn't big in the States. You're the cultural hegemony and no one online can avoid knowing about how things work in the US. Obviously if WhatsApp is completely irrelevant in your country, the discussion about how hard it is to stop using it might not be centered around your country. Not everything is about the US.
Here in Germany I got a quote from and booked my movers entirely through WhatsApp. I think the only app I've encountered with a bigger grasp on the market is WeChat in China.
Ha. I remember a few years ago when it was a trend on social media to make the accusation that this question was a "micro aggression". I'm from the northeast United States. That hasn't been the...
Where are you from?
Ha. I remember a few years ago when it was a trend on social media to make the accusation that this question was a "micro aggression". I'm from the northeast United States.
Whatsapp here has subsumed local facebook groups
That hasn't been the case here. There was one exception. A guy from a group I was in ( we have our own Google Groups email list ) insisted on posting event listings to WhatsApp, but he stopped because a lot of people in the group didn't have/want WhatsApp
Signal is used by tech workers and drug dealers.
I should probably get Signal then :-)
Your tech illiterate grandma might still be on Facebook
I've probably been in I.T. longer than some members of Tildes have been alive. I think I would qualify as tech literate. I know it is not what you meant, but your comment could be seen as rude and ageist.
To be clear, whether it's a microaggression or not depends on context, and the context in which it was pointed out to be a microaggression (when directed at non-white people who have given no...
I remember a few years ago when it was a trend on social media to make the accusation that this question was a "micro aggression".
To be clear, whether it's a microaggression or not depends on context, and the context in which it was pointed out to be a microaggression (when directed at non-white people who have given no indication that they are from a different country in a context where you clearly would not ask a white person the same question) is extremely different from the current context. Not sure why you hold enough of a grudge over the idea that microaggressions exist to mock the concept in an unrelated thread but it's a bad look.
For the drug dealers? They're on WhatsApp where I'm at. I can message them right now on WhatsApp and have someone on my doorstep in an hour. If anything it at least sorta proves my government...
I should probably get Signal then :-)
For the drug dealers? They're on WhatsApp where I'm at. I can message them right now on WhatsApp and have someone on my doorstep in an hour. If anything it at least sorta proves my government isn't reading along without a warrant.
For the IT nerds? They probably have both. I have a couple of friends that migrated to Signal and still can't fully leave WhatsApp because the friend group generally meets through WhatsApp anyway.
I haven't used FB or any of the company's products in at least a decade. At this point I no longer know what I'm missing, if anything. When I cut it out of my life I did spend a bit of time...
I haven't used FB or any of the company's products in at least a decade. At this point I no longer know what I'm missing, if anything. When I cut it out of my life I did spend a bit of time identifying what value I felt I was getting from it and figured out where else to get that information.
Your local newspapers very likely have event listings for your community. If you frequent a few specific venues, sign up for their newsletters to stay apprised of their events.
I've never really understood the argument that without FB it would be difficult to stay in communication with people, but everyone has different situations and needs so I'm not trying to downplay them. We do live in a world awash with communication choices that may just require a touch of intention; email, text, phone calls, Telegram/Signal/Discord/Slack. There are plenty of options. In fact, I feel that my communications with family and friends have improved due to the intentionality required.
I lost contact with my running and badminton clubs when I sacked off Facebook. That’s the only platform they organise on, so I just had to miss out. Had to leave though, for my own wellbeing. Lots...
I lost contact with my running and badminton clubs when I sacked off Facebook. That’s the only platform they organise on, so I just had to miss out.
Had to leave though, for my own wellbeing.
Lots of local shops have their only online presence on Facebook too.
I belong to local groups that do not post their events in the local newspapers. Sadly, Facebook is an easy choice for a place to make a free forum with calendaring. I have a number of relatives,...
Your local newspapers very likely have event listings for your community.
I belong to local groups that do not post their events in the local newspapers. Sadly, Facebook is an easy choice for a place to make a free forum with calendaring.
I've never really understood the argument that without FB it would be difficult to stay in communication with people
I have a number of relatives, friends and acquaintances who do not leave nearby. Fewer people these days do casual social phone calls - shoot the breeze. Those people ( and I ) can post to Facebook about things that happened, thoughts we had, etc -- staying in touch
The latter example is very much where WhatsApp group chats sit in a lot of markets - photos of people's kids, chat about TV shows or sports, "hey, does anyone feel like dinner on Friday?",...
The latter example is very much where WhatsApp group chats sit in a lot of markets - photos of people's kids, chat about TV shows or sports, "hey, does anyone feel like dinner on Friday?", something we saw online that a few people in the group are likely to be interested in, "anyone know a good pub near [wherever]?", etc. etc.
It's one of the things that I think has worked out pretty well, kinda the feel of really early Facebook, back before there was any real algorithm or impetus to share anything with people beyond the ones you'd happily go for a drink with IRL.
The particular people I want to stay in touch with are on Facebook. I couldn't get them to migrate, assuming that I wanted to stay in touch through a phone app -- which I do not.
The particular people I want to stay in touch with are on Facebook.
I couldn't get them to migrate, assuming that I wanted to stay in touch through a phone app -- which I do not.
Oh for sure, ultimately we go where the people are - I'd have everyone on Signal or Matrix if it were that easy to just pick a new venue! Wasn't suggesting you try to move them, just making an...
Oh for sure, ultimately we go where the people are - I'd have everyone on Signal or Matrix if it were that easy to just pick a new venue! Wasn't suggesting you try to move them, just making an observation because it's been interesting seeing people mention that group chats aren't really a thing in their lives.
WhatsApp and Signal are at least both multi-platform, which is good, because being tied to just a phone app would frustrate me too!
I’ve got no use for Meta’s bullshit. Every time I’ve used their products I’ve hated every moment of it and did my best to get it out of my life as quickly as possible. Facebook: I lasted one week...
I’ve got no use for Meta’s bullshit. Every time I’ve used their products I’ve hated every moment of it and did my best to get it out of my life as quickly as possible.
Facebook: I lasted one week in 2010 and deleted.
Oculus Go: Played with it for a few days and put it down, it’s now buried somewhere in my tech closet.
Instagram: Used it to view stories and reels my mother sent, follow a few graphic artists and standup comedians I liked, deleted it when I deleted Threads.
Threads: Lurked for a few months, dumped it and mastodon for BlueSky, which I barely use because it’s just nothing but people flogging their merch and dishing out political hot takes which I can see screencapped elsewhere.
I’m useless with social media; I’ve very little use for it outside of Tildes, Discord, and some niche subreddits.
Depends on your definition of social media, I think. Reddit in particular seems to be widely considered social media. I agree on not counting Discord. Tildes... I'm weirdly split on, for some reason.
Depends on your definition of social media, I think. Reddit in particular seems to be widely considered social media.
I agree on not counting Discord. Tildes... I'm weirdly split on, for some reason.
social media is profile-based. an individual posts content to their feed and others interact. this is not they case with here, reddit, and other forums and absolutely never the case with a chat...
social media is profile-based. an individual posts content to their feed and others interact. this is not they case with here, reddit, and other forums and absolutely never the case with a chat platform like irc, discord, etc.
anybody who considers reddit to be social media is simply wrong, even though reddit itself has tried to push it in that direction.
i think we covered all of this here just a few weeks ago.
Who made that definiton and what gives them the authority such that everyone is “wrong”? This is the Oxford dictionary definition, just as an indication that many people have a broader definition,...
Who made that definiton and what gives them the authority such that everyone is “wrong”?
This is the Oxford dictionary definition, just as an indication that many people have a broader definition, not that Oxford is particularly authoritative
websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking.
weird. i absolutely disagree and i’m surprised by this take, but i also don’t care enough to continue :) i’m off to my favorite social networking platform, bugzilla. can you mark this part of the...
weird. i absolutely disagree and i’m surprised by this take, but i also don’t care enough to continue :)
i’m off to my favorite social networking platform, bugzilla.
The point that I took from their comment is that it's an ill-defined word, so to have a meaningful conversation about social media you need to start by agreeing on how it's defined in a given...
The point that I took from their comment is that it's an ill-defined word, so to have a meaningful conversation about social media you need to start by agreeing on how it's defined in a given conversation. You seem to be starting from a position of authority about what the word means, and aren't open to other meanings. It's less about what the correct definition is and more about you disagreeing with the premise that other people define it differently, and nobody has the authority to call them wrong.
I'd say Reddit definitely fits that definition. Plenty of people use it as a platform to share their own content like comics, videos, fictional stories, crafts projects, etc. You can specifically...
I'd say Reddit definitely fits that definition. Plenty of people use it as a platform to share their own content like comics, videos, fictional stories, crafts projects, etc. You can specifically follow individual users, and I've joined a couple subreddits that are basically equivalent to someone's blog about a specific topic. (Most notably, some guy who built a shark tank called SHARK_tank_BUILD, and "Classic Depravities" which is one person writing up "deep dives into the history of the strange and bizarre part of the internet". That second one could be a standalone site honestly.)
That said, I think the definition of social media is too broad and needs refining. The definitions I can find all seem to boil down to "you have a profile, can interact with people, and can directly post content you create". A LOT of online platforms fit that description depending on who you ask, including Discord and forums in general, and I agree that those don't count.
At bare minimum I think there's a distinct public element to social media, which Discord lacks due to being a communication platform where you need to join specific servers to see anything.
exactly! social media is a cancer that puts the emphasis on the individual rather than the topic/community, which is more important. if I had more time I'd reference a bunch of studies -- one from...
exactly! social media is a cancer that puts the emphasis on the individual rather than the topic/community, which is more important.
if I had more time I'd reference a bunch of studies -- one from ~2007 or so, which is fun -- that makes this same distinction. That said, its not like anybody would change their mind about anything based on a paper based on myspace, friendster, early facebook, etc.
But that is my view of the difference in sites. I can't imagine anyone saying that SomethingAwful is a social media site. :)
yeah, for me, I'm simply not interesting enough :) facebook, instagram, and twitter used to be so fun. facebook and twitter died off completely around 2010 for me, but instagram survived for...
yeah, for me, I'm simply not interesting enough :) facebook, instagram, and twitter used to be so fun. facebook and twitter died off completely around 2010 for me, but instagram survived for another two years.
I just got into using mastodon, but the instance I'm on is very small and likely short-lived. two podcasts, Search Engine and Hard Fork created The Forkiverse to demonstrate the fediverse. Its fun, but they signed up for a plan that can really only handle around 2500 users and they quickly hit capacity. Now we're all sort of waiting for the storage to fill up and for the entire project to be retired.
All in all, all I want on the internet are a handful of smaller communities like tildes etc where everybody kind of knows everybody and you can post some bullshit, discuss or disagree, and nothing ever ends up in a big enough argument where people get hurt or leave. This is one of the main things I really appreciate about tildes above almost every other community.
I’m curious what “staying in touch” looks like these days for a Facebook user? (I’ve never used the platform for that, or intensively in the first place, and not at all for about a decade now.)...
I’m curious what “staying in touch” looks like these days for a Facebook user? (I’ve never used the platform for that, or intensively in the first place, and not at all for about a decade now.)
What makes it hard to do the same staying-in-touch outside of Facebook?
In 2026 few people do social phone calls. Calling people up and talking on the phone to just shoot the shit. It isn't appropriate for every relationship either. On Facebook people post about life...
In 2026 few people do social phone calls. Calling people up and talking on the phone to just shoot the shit. It isn't appropriate for every relationship either.
On Facebook people
post about life events ( just got a new car, closed on the house, got the new job, etc )
they post about thoughts they have had
post articles they were into
From any of those conversations start. AKA "staying in touch".
Even as someone who no longer goes on Facebook itself, Facebook Messenger is a way to send a casual message to someone you know in a way that is much lower pressure than a phone call.
Even as someone who no longer goes on Facebook itself, Facebook Messenger is a way to send a casual message to someone you know in a way that is much lower pressure than a phone call.
I'm not sure I understand the question. Facebook Messenger is Facebook's attached direct messaging app, and I'm pointing out that it has utility for reaching out to people directly even when not...
I'm not sure I understand the question. Facebook Messenger is Facebook's attached direct messaging app, and I'm pointing out that it has utility for reaching out to people directly even when not interacting using Facebook's other features.
Ironically of all the main non-video social media sites (twitter, insta, bsky, mastodon) Threads is the least bad for just randomly discovering stuff. I think it's mostly because it has pretty...
I never used Threads
Ironically of all the main non-video social media sites (twitter, insta, bsky, mastodon) Threads is the least bad for just randomly discovering stuff.
I think it's mostly because it has pretty robust blocking tools and the algorithm rewards interaction, but in a different way than Instagram. The community also has a "block and move on" mentality, if someone is being an ass, you block them and go about your day, don't start arguing. If someone is dicking around in the comments of your post, you can block them so that nobody can see their messages under that post, cleaning up the interaction a lot.
As for the algorithm: On instagram your first 30 minutes or so decides whether your post will be on your follower's timelines, so "professionals" have upvote rings where they like, comment/share each other's posts just after they are posted, boosting their visibility initially, cheating the system.
Threads seems to require an account to have either actual interaction (reply to messages that aren't your own) or massive virality. Accounts that just post, but never reply get buried unless you specifically follow them.
It's still Meta, but not shit. Which is really weird for me, as FB and Instagram both are completely unusable.
I'm Brazilian like the author. It's impossible to live in Brazil without WhatsApp. Even excluding social interactions, WhatsApp is used by many businesses and even by the government. I do block...
I'm Brazilian like the author. It's impossible to live in Brazil without WhatsApp. Even excluding social interactions, WhatsApp is used by many businesses and even by the government. I do block myself from WhatsApp regularly and aggressively using Lock Me Out on Android. But even then it's a gamble. If something comes up that requires WhatsApp I'm pretty much fucked.
I'm not sure why the author did so many complicated things when he could simply uninstall the app. I'm failing to grasp what is the point of doing all that complicated stuff instead.
I changed my WhatsApp profile photo and left a status message saying that I am available via SMS/RCS, Signal, and email.
That probably works if you work in IT and have lots of IT friends. Family is unlikely to adapt. Unless they're okay with being essentially an outcast, I don't think the author will stay away from WhatsApp for much longer. This is like punching the ocean.
I had very good luck forcing some family members off Facebook when I had kids. If you only post your family photos in a group Signal chat, they definitely don't want to miss out.
Family is unlikely to adapt.
I had very good luck forcing some family members off Facebook when I had kids. If you only post your family photos in a group Signal chat, they definitely don't want to miss out.
Yes, I understand. It would more similar to trying to live without a phone in the US. At some point, you need to be able to receive a call or SMS message as many places simply don't have processes...
Yes, I understand. It would more similar to trying to live without a phone in the US. At some point, you need to be able to receive a call or SMS message as many places simply don't have processes for those without. In Brazil (and many other countries), somehow Meta wormed their way into that position.
I don't think WhatsApp was at fault back then. And the hegemony took place long before Meta acquired it. It's just that the phone companies charged extra for SMS for a very long time. Even today,...
In Brazil (and many other countries), somehow Meta wormed their way into that position.
I don't think WhatsApp was at fault back then. And the hegemony took place long before Meta acquired it. It's just that the phone companies charged extra for SMS for a very long time. Even today, I'm not sure if they're unlimited. But that doesn't matter anymore.
It's really annoying to me whenever some sort of institution forces the usage of a proprietary product on my personal devices. SMS or email doesn't bother me since it's a standard that any vendor...
It's really annoying to me whenever some sort of institution forces the usage of a proprietary product on my personal devices.
SMS or email doesn't bother me since it's a standard that any vendor can interact with, and I can use the SMS or email client of my choice, but forcing me to use whatsapp to do business with you feels cheap and unprofessional on top of being annoying.
At first, it was a one-week experiment. So, I didn't want to remove WhatsApp permanently. I didn't mention family and my partner because I was able to move them to Signal. It's been years since it...
At first, it was a one-week experiment. So, I didn't want to remove WhatsApp permanently.
I didn't mention family and my partner because I was able to move them to Signal. It's been years since it happened. So, unlikely, yes, but not impossible.
I'm sorry, I'm really trying to understand. How can this be simpler than clicking on a button to uninstall and then on another to install?
I'm sorry, I'm really trying to understand. How can this be simpler than clicking on a button to uninstall and then on another to install?
I cut off access at the root, on the DNS servers of my devices. I use NextDNS, which made my life easier: I added all the Meta domains I know to the block list and activated a specific third-party list for the company's domains. It's outdated, but I imagine it covers a lot that would slip through my manual filtering.
Coming from the US, not having WhatsApp is pretty standard. The thought of having to rely on an app for communication is pretty gross to me. (Though I realize carriers can't really be trusted with...
Coming from the US, not having WhatsApp is pretty standard. The thought of having to rely on an app for communication is pretty gross to me. (Though I realize carriers can't really be trusted with texts either)
I'm very curious - does anybody know why populations of other countries rely so heavily on it? Do they not have regular texting via SMS?
WhatsApp in particular got a foot in the door in a lot of places when SMS was still charged per message, and it was already firmly embedded as the default by the time free messaging was ubiquitous...
WhatsApp in particular got a foot in the door in a lot of places when SMS was still charged per message, and it was already firmly embedded as the default by the time free messaging was ubiquitous (and especially free international messaging, which took quite a bit longer to straighten out - much more common when you can drive across three countries in the width of some US states, remember!)
Meta didn't buy it until long after it'd already formed strong enough network effects to make communicating without it an active effort, and for the vast majority of people there isn't even a reason to want to do so - like others have said, SMS is far inferior, RCS took a decade and a half to become a viable option, and sadly most people just don't care that much about evil megacorporations as long as they aren't too in-your-face about it.
I mean the US is the outlier there. No where other than Canada do people still use SMS. Even in the US, there’s a reason you’d get bullied for not having iMessage. SMS just sucks. China uses...
I mean the US is the outlier there. No where other than Canada do people still use SMS. Even in the US, there’s a reason you’d get bullied for not having iMessage. SMS just sucks.
China uses WeChat, Japan/Taiwan uses Line, Korea use KakaoTalk, pretty much everywhere else uses WhatsApp.
Not only is it just better in every way compared to SMS as a product, but in other parts of the world data availability vastly outstripped SMS availability. You’d get cheap data packages with expensive texting and calling packages.
SMS is also just very, very insecure. Even unencrypted chats on apps like WhatsApp are an improvement over it (and ofc a properly secure app like Signal is even better). This is also why you...
SMS is also just very, very insecure. Even unencrypted chats on apps like WhatsApp are an improvement over it (and ofc a properly secure app like Signal is even better). This is also why you should avoid using SMS for two-factor authentication if presented with other options.
WhatApp messaging is encrypted using the Signal Protocol. It arguably has a marginally better key verification process than Signal, so could be said to be even more "properly" secure. (caveat is...
WhatApp messaging is encrypted using the Signal Protocol. It arguably has a marginally better key verification process than Signal, so could be said to be even more "properly" secure. (caveat is that Signal may have since adopted a similar process to Whatsapp for key verification, my info could be out of date)
SMS isn't just insecure by being plaintext and easy to spoof and so on, SMS infrastructure has backdoors built into it by design. Even I avoid SMS and I'm extremely cavalier about privacy by tildes standards!
Yeah my main point in this comment was to emphasize just how insecure SMS is rather than to go into the details of how secure different messaging apps are. Almost anything is better than SMS. I...
Yeah my main point in this comment was to emphasize just how insecure SMS is rather than to go into the details of how secure different messaging apps are. Almost anything is better than SMS.
I think the people talking about security are also taking into consideration the ownership and their willingness to access your messages for profit or at the behest of law enforcement, which I assume is where Signal pulls ahead of WhatsApp. But I'm not a security expert by any stretch, so I'm not really qualified to examine or explain the details there.
Meta can't read Whatsapp messages. Because Whatsapp uses the Signal Protocol. Moxie was not messing about when he designed it, it's properly secure from end to end. Signal is not as secure as...
Meta can't read Whatsapp messages. Because Whatsapp uses the Signal Protocol. Moxie was not messing about when he designed it, it's properly secure from end to end.
Signal is not as secure as Whatsapp, but it's only really on a technicality about key verification systems. They're both genuinely secure. Unless Meta are lying about their crypto protocols, of course. Which someone would have almost certainly noticed by now (like people did with the obvious backdoor in Telegram, for example)
I'm definitely not that educated on protocols, so good to learn that WhatsApp is using such a secure one! I legit didn't know it was one of the more secure options like that.
I'm definitely not that educated on protocols, so good to learn that WhatsApp is using such a secure one! I legit didn't know it was one of the more secure options like that.
Whatsapp isn't even an option for 2 factor authentication here. Most of it is SMS and there's not much I can do about it. (And I'm mostly not interested in doing things about it.) But what you...
Whatsapp isn't even an option for 2 factor authentication here. Most of it is SMS and there's not much I can do about it. (And I'm mostly not interested in doing things about it.)
But what you said is what @adutchman said. And it's why I got my fam off FB messenger and texts. But also, I still use Google Messages because some people text. I'd love everyone in my life to pick a non apple/non meta app to use but I communicate with people on a dozen apps.
No one I know uses WhatsApp except folks with international family.
Many phones' apps these days default to more secure protocols anyway due to how insecure SMS is -- iPhones default to iMessage, and I think Google Messages defaults to RCS these days as well. I'm...
Many phones' apps these days default to more secure protocols anyway due to how insecure SMS is -- iPhones default to iMessage, and I think Google Messages defaults to RCS these days as well. I'm mostly of the same perspective where I use whatever I can for the specific tasks I need to accomplish and the specific people I need to contact. I'll prefer apps with better security/other features if I can, but often I simply don't have enough choice for it to matter.
ftr, WhatsApp would also not be secure for 2FA and I've never seen it offered as such either. The alternative to using SMS for it is to use a dedicated 2FA app like Google Authenticator.
Got it, I use a Microsoft authenticator app for work I assume messages is using RCS as well. But yeah The upside of using multiple messaging modalities is that I can curate myself depending on the...
Got it, I use a Microsoft authenticator app for work
I assume messages is using RCS as well. But yeah The upside of using multiple messaging modalities is that I can curate myself depending on the app. But it's kind of a fringe benefit.
I’m wondering if this might be a misunderstanding. When I lived in the US around 2012, most people had an iPhone if they had a smartphone. Everybody used iMessage. That isn’t SMS, that is entirely...
The thought of having to rely on an app for communication is pretty gross to me.
I’m wondering if this might be a misunderstanding. When I lived in the US around 2012, most people had an iPhone if they had a smartphone. Everybody used iMessage. That isn’t SMS, that is entirely the same as WhatsApp or Signal messages. It’s all TCP/IP, it’s not carrier texts.
In countries where iPhone isn’t the main smartphone, WhatsApp is popular because it’s cross platform, rich messaging. SMS exists everywhere.
As an Android user who has been bullied for not having iMessage: For me, it's about reliability and interoperability. I don't want a messaging service that relies on Apple. I want one that relies...
As an Android user who has been bullied for not having iMessage: For me, it's about reliability and interoperability. I don't want a messaging service that relies on Apple. I want one that relies on my carrier, who (should) be regulated by my government as a service provider for an infrastructure service. While I'm happy that RCS has been deployed and is interoperable between Android and iOS devices, I'm less happy that the rollout was dependent on Google to provide RCS functionality, rather than my carrier.
In my opinion, I find value in knowing the things I rely on as a service (Communications) are being held to some standard under regulation. After all, if I need to call 911 and my call fails because of my carrier, it becomes a matter of public safety negligence and critical infrastructure failure, not just an inconvenience caused by a server going down in California. Tie in to this the roll out of 911 over SMS (and now RCS), and I feel my argument becomes even stronger.
Ideal world I'd say we want messaging that doesn't rely on a tech company or carrier! I'd be a lot more confident in getting an IP connection of some form than getting cell service specifically -...
Ideal world I'd say we want messaging that doesn't rely on a tech company or carrier! I'd be a lot more confident in getting an IP connection of some form than getting cell service specifically - in emergencies, definitely, but also just day to day with WiFi in places that otherwise have poor coverage - but like you say, we need to stop running our messages on that incredible, distributed, nuke proof mesh network through company servers acting as single points of failure.
I don’t think the things we expect from modern communication, like group chats, voice calls, group voice calls, voice messages, stickers, pictures, etc. are offered by the carriers. They all...
I don’t think the things we expect from modern communication, like group chats, voice calls, group voice calls, voice messages, stickers, pictures, etc. are offered by the carriers. They all require data connections, they all require apps, they all require services. Sure, 911 has different requirements, but that isn’t what WhatsApp/Signal/Discord/Telegram are used for in most cases.
That isn't quite right. Those features are carrier services now. RCS handles the "modern" messaging features (high-res photos, groups, stickers). It uses data, but it is an interoperable standard,...
That isn't quite right. Those features are carrier services now.
RCS handles the "modern" messaging features (high-res photos, groups, stickers). It uses data, but it is an interoperable standard, not a proprietary app like Discord.
Calls are also data now. Almost all modern calls use VoLTE or VoNR (Voice over New Radio).
The distinction is that carrier services (RCS/VoLTE) run on dedicated, high-priority data bands with guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS), whereas apps like WhatsApp run on "best effort" public internet traffic.
Plenty of people in the US use SMS (myself included). Android devices still have ~40% of the market share here, but I don’t know anybody that uses WhatsApp for messaging.
Plenty of people in the US use SMS (myself included). Android devices still have ~40% of the market share here, but I don’t know anybody that uses WhatsApp for messaging.
I could be wrong, but I'd guess you're using a third party app for group chats, though? I know that people don't really use WhatsApp in the US, but I've found a lot more expectation to have either...
I could be wrong, but I'd guess you're using a third party app for group chats, though? I know that people don't really use WhatsApp in the US, but I've found a lot more expectation to have either Discord or FB Messenger over there.
My high school friend group made a Discord server solely because, for some reason, one person wouldn't get texts from me. I don't know if it was due to iPhone vs Android, or some weird issue with...
My high school friend group made a Discord server solely because, for some reason, one person wouldn't get texts from me. I don't know if it was due to iPhone vs Android, or some weird issue with having different carriers, but it was just too annoying to try to schedule stuff with multiple people. I think the two of us would DM over Discord for a while before we suggested everyone get on to streamline planning. I'm pretty sure a couple people have Discord solely for that server.
That makes me wonder now how many people ditched texting due to similarly inconsistent reliability...
In the US here and group chat use has been quite rare, and when it does happen tends to be short lived and centered around an event or something. Nearly all messaging is 1-to-1.
In the US here and group chat use has been quite rare, and when it does happen tends to be short lived and centered around an event or something. Nearly all messaging is 1-to-1.
I think group chats may be bigger with older generations, funnily enough. My dad had a fairly active looking group chat with his friends, and my mom has many group chats. Sometimes she'd ask me to...
I think group chats may be bigger with older generations, funnily enough. My dad had a fairly active looking group chat with his friends, and my mom has many group chats. Sometimes she'd ask me to check her texts while she was driving and there'd be full ongoing conversations between other people.
This might be true in your social circle but it absolutely is not the case throughout the US. Even my parents are in a handful of group chats, and almost everyone my age or younger is in a ton of...
This might be true in your social circle but it absolutely is not the case throughout the US. Even my parents are in a handful of group chats, and almost everyone my age or younger is in a ton of them.
I use a mix of RCS and SMS mostly. I find RCS a bit unreliable as it needs data. I have to frequently fall back on SMS. It's okay though. I sent a pic of me in my new footy shirt to my eldest just...
I use a mix of RCS and SMS mostly. I find RCS a bit unreliable as it needs data. I have to frequently fall back on SMS. It's okay though. I sent a pic of me in my new footy shirt to my eldest just now on RCS , he got it fine. Good quality. I also don't have group chats. No more than one person at a time would be interested in my inane witterings anyway.
I suppose I should clarify that I use MMS as well. Group chats aren't an issue. MMS is usually good enough for sending media. If I really need to send something with higher quality, I'll just send...
I suppose I should clarify that I use MMS as well. Group chats aren't an issue. MMS is usually good enough for sending media. If I really need to send something with higher quality, I'll just send a link
Carriers' greed, basically. Even nowadays they charge or limit free SMS messages in some plans. Also, in early 2010's SMS was unreliable and to this day it lacks many features (a gap being filled...
Carriers' greed, basically. Even nowadays they charge or limit free SMS messages in some plans. Also, in early 2010's SMS was unreliable and to this day it lacks many features (a gap being filled by RCS), like reading receipts and high-res photos. WhatsApp was simple, easy to use, and free. No wonder Zuck bought it after seeing its huge popularity through spying users' phones with Facebook owned Onavo VPN.
The US vs non-US split on this is pretty dramatic. I tried not using WhatsApp for like a good three years and had to eventually give up. Like, everyone is on WhatsApp. iMessage works for iPhone...
The US vs non-US split on this is pretty dramatic.
I tried not using WhatsApp for like a good three years and had to eventually give up. Like, everyone is on WhatsApp. iMessage works for iPhone users, but the truth is even iPhone users are accustomed to checking WhatsApp anyway and will likely miss your texts.
I don't think I've ever heard of an iPhone user here using iMessage. No one even uses facetime (Netherlands), they use WhatsApp video calling - because, of course, everyone has WhatsApp so why go...
I don't think I've ever heard of an iPhone user here using iMessage. No one even uses facetime (Netherlands), they use WhatsApp video calling - because, of course, everyone has WhatsApp so why go to another app?
WhatsApp is how I talk to my pet groomer, every tradesmen in existence, it's even how I talk to my freaking pharmacy (obviously not about specific prescriptions, but if I need to ask them where my shipment I was expecting in x date is, I text them via WhatsApp.)
It is not possible to live in the Netherlands without it. You will at some point need it, no matter how off-the-grid you want to be. You'll need a painter at some point, or customer service for a niche thing, or anything small enough not to have their own chatbot on their website - and the only way to contact them is WhatsApp.
I originally was jealous that other countries used third party messengers for everything while the defacto standard in the US was still SMS. The more I think about it, the more I actually would...
I originally was jealous that other countries used third party messengers for everything while the defacto standard in the US was still SMS. The more I think about it, the more I actually would rather just use SMS (or RCS, where supported) than be forced by social pressure to put a meta app on my phone.
Count Australia in as another country which doesn't have such a pervasive use of WhatsApp. My initial thought about the headline was that it couldn't be serious - saying this in Australia would be...
Count Australia in as another country which doesn't have such a pervasive use of WhatsApp. My initial thought about the headline was that it couldn't be serious - saying this in Australia would be either playing for laughs or incredibly melodramatic. It made a lot more sense after reading that whatsapp has managed to become the standard messaging app elsewhere.
To the point governmental bodies use it. It's probably a bit hard to fathom if you haven't experienced it, but WhatsApp is genuinely the default messaging platform. My local municipality, friends,...
that whatsapp has managed to become the standard messaging app elsewhere.
To the point governmental bodies use it. It's probably a bit hard to fathom if you haven't experienced it, but WhatsApp is genuinely the default messaging platform. My local municipality, friends, family, employers, everyone.
It's not just "largest market share" big, it's "so big other players might as well not exist" big.
This is ultimately why thoroughly legalized adversarial interoperabilty is the only possible solution to destroying the tech monopolists. If you want to make it possible to eliminate Whatsapp,...
This is ultimately why thoroughly legalized adversarial interoperabilty is the only possible solution to destroying the tech monopolists.
If you want to make it possible to eliminate Whatsapp, competitors must be able to write 100% compatible Whatsapp integrations without Whatsapp's approval.
There is no technical barrier to Signal integrating Whatsapp functionality, and upgrading chats to Signal when clients detect that the other is using Signal. Just like Apple does with iMessage, SMS, and OpenBubbles. There is merely a legal baton which lets the company sue a third party to oblivion.
Interoperability via reverse engineering is what turned the 90s chat programs into defacto open standards. Trillian users represent. Let's bring it back to its glory days, but with Discord, Slack, Teams, Matrix, Facebook, Whatsapp, Google Meet, Google's chat program of the month, and riot.im.
Well... not really. It's not enough to legalize interoperability (afiak, it's not currently illegal in most places, if you could figure out how, there's no real legal mechanism for WhatsApp to...
Well... not really. It's not enough to legalize interoperability (afiak, it's not currently illegal in most places, if you could figure out how, there's no real legal mechanism for WhatsApp to stop you from interacting with their API).
You'd have to mandate interoperability. There are technical barriers to interacting with an API that a company doesn't want you to interact with.
There are authentication mechanisms built into all of these apps that make it very difficult or impossible to use them outside of that app. Once a particular method is found, it's also not too difficult for the company to change the API and their clients simultaneously to stop it. So it's and endless game of wack a mole that becomes a horrible experience for the third party app users.
Using a third party app also violates their terms of service, so even if you do figure out how to reverse engineer it, you're risking your account being banned by doing so. That's not a legal mechanism, that's the company actively tamping down on uncontrolled usage.
The only way you prevent that is by forcing companies to interoperate, and punishing the ones that seek to make it difficult.
Easier said than done and there's a lot of political lobbying that you'd have to overcome from big tech companies to make it happen.
Anticircumvention laws are the primary barriers there, and they do exist in most jurisdictions. That's what prevents somebody decompiling the first-party app and extracting the auth process and...
there's no real legal mechanism for WhatsApp to stop you from interacting with their API
Anticircumvention laws are the primary barriers there, and they do exist in most jurisdictions. That's what prevents somebody decompiling the first-party app and extracting the auth process and API calls. It's what makes it illegal to make and distribute tools which make it easier to do that.
Using a third party app also violates their terms of service, so even if you do figure out how to reverse engineer it, you're risking your account being banned by doing so. That's not a legal mechanism, that's the company actively tamping down on uncontrolled usage.
Terms of service are, almost by definition, entirely a legal construct. You legalize third-party acess by making that term unenforcable unless the first party can prove the third party is causing significan harm. So a third-party app that scrapes the whole of Facebook every login could be banned, but not one that interops with a user's chats.
Once a particular method is found, it's also not too difficult for the company to change the API and their clients simultaneously to stop it. So it's and endless game of wack a mole that becomes a horrible experience for the third party app users.
I wouldn't say it's easy, especially if circumvention tools are legalized. Adblockers are still effective over 20 years later is because there are heavy diminishing returns on continually making your service harder to interop with. Especially when you have thousands of motivated users (or other companies) with a vested interest in breaking your new lock. Especially if there's a large number of low-user third-parties.
Suppose GrapheneOS manages to create a perfect iOS sandbox to run iOS apps alongside Android apps. Would Apple be able to shift the entirety of their ecosystem quickly enough and frequently enough to keep ahead of it without fracturing their app store advantage? What if Microsoft and Samsung also threw their weight behind it?
Do you think Salesforce will continue having a lot of enterprise customers if those paying enterprise customers are required to rework their custom addons and integrations every few months to cope with these breaking changes?
Terms of service are rarely going to let a company sue a user for damages. They're usually more like just policy acknowledgement to shield the company from being sued for deleting someone's...
Terms of service are rarely going to let a company sue a user for damages. They're usually more like just policy acknowledgement to shield the company from being sued for deleting someone's account.
I don't know of any current legal mechanism that would prevent a company from deleting your account on your platform though.
Suppose GrapheneOS manages to create a perfect iOS sandbox to run iOS apps alongside Android apps. Would Apple be able to shift the entirety of their ecosystem quickly enough and frequently enough to keep ahead of it without fracturing their app store advantage
I think they would, yeah. They have the advantage of the fact that they control both the service and the endpoints. They can rapidly push changes to obfuscate the communication between both, and it becomes more or less seamless to the users. They just get an OS update pushed to them.
I think it's pretty telling that no third parties have been able to create a perfect ios sandbox as of yet, despite there being a strong financial incentive to do so.
The third parties are stuck reverse engineering the new protocol changes which takes a while, and in the mean time, all of the users of the third party apps are dead in the water.
It was a lot more feasible in the 90s and early 2000s when strong encryption and mature obfuscation techniques were less proliferated.
Making a third party app used to be as simple as sniffing the traffic from a client and then building a piece of software to emulate that traffic.
Big tech companies have a lot more tools in their toolbox to lock their services down now though.
Well, I guess if I gave up all my hobbies. WhatsApp is how my gyms coordinate classes and who is teaching/attending, when events are happening, tournament registration, holidays, etc.
Well, I guess if I gave up all my hobbies. WhatsApp is how my gyms coordinate classes and who is teaching/attending, when events are happening, tournament registration, holidays, etc.
I'm replying on the headline. Short amswer: Yes. Long answer: Yes. I never installed it on my phone. Part of that is I had Pinephone at the time, which is basically Linux computer so I would have...
I'm replying on the headline.
Short amswer: Yes.
Long answer: Yes.
I never installed it on my phone. Part of that is I had Pinephone at the time, which is basically Linux computer so I would have to get it running somehow in the first place, and I installed Element, which is Matrix.org client. And since then I'm installing Element to family members and talking my friends into using it. I now have Android phone yet I still use Element exclusively.
I'm seen as outcast by many of them though. But since I'm that IT weirdo anyway, I couldn't care less about my image.
Why don't I jump on the WA train then? There are more reasons and ways to look at that. Some of them are:
owned by Meta; I don't want to throw even more of my pruvacy at them than I already do by browsing the web and having Facebook links everywhere... I have Facebook account, but only for my work and only on my work laptop, I don't use it in my private life
it boasts having end-to-end encryption (E2EE) but literally nobody around me ever questioned why they don't have to input they private key when installing WA on their new phone (this is what you have to do with Element/Matrix or you lose all history because you can't decrypt it); even worse, people don't realize that it may have E2EE but Meta owns your keys - when I tell them it's like wanting to go into your own house but having someone else to come by and unlock it for you because that stranger is the only one who has keys they just shake it off... People don't realize what is being done to their own data when they use the app and even worse - they don't care. Well, I care!
How I do without WA with friends who don't want to use Element ("I won't use it because you don't want to use WA")? If I want to tell them something I use what the phone is best for - call. When something less immediate is needed, I do the second best thing the phone does - SMS. And when I need to send them photo? I will let you make a guess... ... ... Yeah, you probably got it right - e-mail. And when I make some video at some place and they want it shared with them I teach them how to use Quick Share (Airdrop for Android for all the Apple people here) and share the video FAST and in really truly original quality (last time I sent 500MB video in 10 seconds using that).
There are ways to live without WhatsApp, all it takes is your own willpower (or stubborness, I guess).
EDIT: Finally read the article/blog post. Nice read, author gets to many great points - the best one being "Long conversations on WA (or whatever IM) can be done in one pretty short call".
I have quite literally never used it, so yes! I did read the article and realize this is mostly referring to countries where it is the overwhelming "winner", where I am (US).
I have quite literally never used it, so yes! I did read the article and realize this is mostly referring to countries where it is the overwhelming "winner", where I am (US).
While it is functionally impossible to drop WhatsApp where I am, I think I have a good personal policy for using the service. I've also made sure to properly broadcast that policy over the years....
While it is functionally impossible to drop WhatsApp where I am, I think I have a good personal policy for using the service. I've also made sure to properly broadcast that policy over the years. My profile pic is of my WhatsApp icon with the 999+ notification bubble and my bio/status says to call if something is urgent. Family and friends know I never look at group chats and that any activity under my name is most likely from my wife or kid. There's a handfull of pinned chats that take priority and send notifications. Everything else is noise I may or may not attend to.
Professionally on the other hand, is a complete disaster. I work for a pretty shallow company structure and the owners have a thing about making sure everyone is "on the same page".
So every little thing is a WhatsApp group that everyone is a part of. Every customer and supplier is a seperate group chat. There is a staff group and also a group just for managers and then a group for Admin/Office managers and one for Floor Managers and a group for drivers and dispatch and one just for dispatch.
But it makes no difference because a lot of people are in all of them. And while the owners have the time to go through the 88 office groups, no one else does.
I don't like WhatsApp and other IM apps because it comes with expectations that everyone has of each other but no one can agree on what they are. A lot of people expect it to flow back and forth like a conversation leaving part way is rude. Other people treat it like email and get to messages in their own time. A few special people flip flop based on if they are sending or receiving msgs.
Some people see it as a sort of information sharing hub but that becomes less and less useful the longer some chats drag on. For other people its a social space that can very often balloon into a meaningless mass. Its a business platform and sales channel. A hub for short form content. Project management software. An LLM interface for some reason. A marketing space...
Its used for everything, but isn't everything. Its a text and media sharing platform. A part of bigger solutions. But its so ingrained in culture, people are constantly reinventing bad utilities on top of it.
I'm in the US and never use any of the apps mentioned. I have SMS on my phone and the only person I use text with regularly is my brother. There are, perhaps, four others that I use text with...
I'm in the US and never use any of the apps mentioned. I have SMS on my phone and the only person I use text with regularly is my brother. There are, perhaps, four others that I use text with occasionally. Other than that, I make calls. I have no need for group texts.
Most annoying is the fact that so many sites/companies insist on sending texts as confirmation that I am who I say I am.
Highlighting this for anyone who's come to the comments first and wonders why it's a big issue:
Not using it in a lot of countries would be as unusual as telling someone you don't have a phone number. It's just... the way people message each other.
I've had some success dragging the nerdier contingent of my friendship group across to Signal, and there's enough critical mass there that we de facto moved a few of the active group chats across, but any messages I get from family, work colleagues, and probably 70% of my friendship group will be on WhatsApp (including some who definitely have Signal because they're in those group chats, but still default to WhatsApp for direct messages out of habit).
Thank you for the outside perspective (as someone who is a chronic comments-only reader). I all too often fall into the “US is the only way of life” trap. Also +1 for signal. It’s my go to for everyone except family… we use slack in our family 🙃
Masochists...
I had a lot of resistance moving to signal. Only my immediate family would try it! My nerdy friends just didn’t see the point- they don’t value privacy.
Right. A significant number of businesses do everything via Whatsapp. There's not really an american equivalent that I know of.
The nerdier folk are, sadly, easier to bring to Discord or Telegram because both support bots natively.
Signal and Whatsapp don't, which leaves a lot of fun out you can add with all kinds of silly self- or premade bots.
The only ones in my circle who are Signal-only are the hardcore privacy advocates, I've yet to find any group chats on Signal, it's all 1on1.
I've never gotten into FB, Twitter nor WhatsApp. I've been heavy ICQ user, then XMPP and brought all my friends over to Pidgin, years later everyone is on Signal. Even my and wife's family.
I say, just refuse to use WhatsApp on the grounds of privacy and use Signal instead. Make them feel shitty about forcing you to share your life with tech bros.
"Zuck creeps me out. I don't want to feel as if a sweaty train molester undressed me with his eyes every time we chat. Find me on signal."
I never had WhatsApp and I don't miss it.
I could live without Instagram. I use it mostly for scrolling through pictures when I have to wait somewhere.
I never used Threads
Facebook would tough to give up. Lots of people who I want to stay in touch with who would be hard to stay in touch with without Facebook. Then there are all sorts of local event listings and local discussion groups.
Where are you from? Whatsapp here has subsumed local facebook groups, SMS, and communication with local small businesses/contractors. It's definitely the main communication method here in Ireland.
Discord is used by gamers and other late millenial/early gen z hobby groups.
Telegram is used by eastern europeans, furries, sellers of TV piracy devices and drug dealers.
Signal is used by tech workers and drug dealers.
Your tech illiterate grandma might still be on Facebook, but even she's probably been set up on Whatsapp by now.
In the US (and maybe Canada, not sure) WhatsApp has a relatively weak presence. People are split up between iMessage, FB Messenger, Instagram, Telegram, WhatsApp, plain RCS/SMS, and Signal. Which of those one uses largely depends on their social circles.
Yes, in my experience (US), I use WhatsApp only to communicate with friends I've made while living abroad or American friends who are currently living abroad that don't use FB. I know very few Americans that live here who have WhatsApp, and of those that do, 99% of the time it's because they're trying to stay connected with someone overseas.
Americans feeling the need to share their opinions about how easy it would be to drop WhatsApp is so exhausting. Yeah, no shit, everyone else already knows WhatsApp isn't big in the States. You're the cultural hegemony and no one online can avoid knowing about how things work in the US. Obviously if WhatsApp is completely irrelevant in your country, the discussion about how hard it is to stop using it might not be centered around your country. Not everything is about the US.
Here in Germany I got a quote from and booked my movers entirely through WhatsApp. I think the only app I've encountered with a bigger grasp on the market is WeChat in China.
Ha. I remember a few years ago when it was a trend on social media to make the accusation that this question was a "micro aggression". I'm from the northeast United States.
That hasn't been the case here. There was one exception. A guy from a group I was in ( we have our own Google Groups email list ) insisted on posting event listings to WhatsApp, but he stopped because a lot of people in the group didn't have/want WhatsApp
I should probably get Signal then :-)
I've probably been in I.T. longer than some members of Tildes have been alive. I think I would qualify as tech literate. I know it is not what you meant, but your comment could be seen as rude and ageist.
To be clear, whether it's a microaggression or not depends on context, and the context in which it was pointed out to be a microaggression (when directed at non-white people who have given no indication that they are from a different country in a context where you clearly would not ask a white person the same question) is extremely different from the current context. Not sure why you hold enough of a grudge over the idea that microaggressions exist to mock the concept in an unrelated thread but it's a bad look.
Thank you I couldn't figure out what that was referring to. But yeah the "where are you really from" thing is absolutely different than this.
For the drug dealers? They're on WhatsApp where I'm at. I can message them right now on WhatsApp and have someone on my doorstep in an hour. If anything it at least sorta proves my government isn't reading along without a warrant.
For the IT nerds? They probably have both. I have a couple of friends that migrated to Signal and still can't fully leave WhatsApp because the friend group generally meets through WhatsApp anyway.
I haven't used FB or any of the company's products in at least a decade. At this point I no longer know what I'm missing, if anything. When I cut it out of my life I did spend a bit of time identifying what value I felt I was getting from it and figured out where else to get that information.
Your local newspapers very likely have event listings for your community. If you frequent a few specific venues, sign up for their newsletters to stay apprised of their events.
I've never really understood the argument that without FB it would be difficult to stay in communication with people, but everyone has different situations and needs so I'm not trying to downplay them. We do live in a world awash with communication choices that may just require a touch of intention; email, text, phone calls, Telegram/Signal/Discord/Slack. There are plenty of options. In fact, I feel that my communications with family and friends have improved due to the intentionality required.
I lost contact with my running and badminton clubs when I sacked off Facebook. That’s the only platform they organise on, so I just had to miss out.
Had to leave though, for my own wellbeing.
Lots of local shops have their only online presence on Facebook too.
I belong to local groups that do not post their events in the local newspapers. Sadly, Facebook is an easy choice for a place to make a free forum with calendaring.
I have a number of relatives, friends and acquaintances who do not leave nearby. Fewer people these days do casual social phone calls - shoot the breeze. Those people ( and I ) can post to Facebook about things that happened, thoughts we had, etc -- staying in touch
The latter example is very much where WhatsApp group chats sit in a lot of markets - photos of people's kids, chat about TV shows or sports, "hey, does anyone feel like dinner on Friday?", something we saw online that a few people in the group are likely to be interested in, "anyone know a good pub near [wherever]?", etc. etc.
It's one of the things that I think has worked out pretty well, kinda the feel of really early Facebook, back before there was any real algorithm or impetus to share anything with people beyond the ones you'd happily go for a drink with IRL.
The particular people I want to stay in touch with are on Facebook.
I couldn't get them to migrate, assuming that I wanted to stay in touch through a phone app -- which I do not.
Oh for sure, ultimately we go where the people are - I'd have everyone on Signal or Matrix if it were that easy to just pick a new venue! Wasn't suggesting you try to move them, just making an observation because it's been interesting seeing people mention that group chats aren't really a thing in their lives.
WhatsApp and Signal are at least both multi-platform, which is good, because being tied to just a phone app would frustrate me too!
I’ve got no use for Meta’s bullshit. Every time I’ve used their products I’ve hated every moment of it and did my best to get it out of my life as quickly as possible.
Facebook: I lasted one week in 2010 and deleted.
Oculus Go: Played with it for a few days and put it down, it’s now buried somewhere in my tech closet.
Instagram: Used it to view stories and reels my mother sent, follow a few graphic artists and standup comedians I liked, deleted it when I deleted Threads.
Threads: Lurked for a few months, dumped it and mastodon for BlueSky, which I barely use because it’s just nothing but people flogging their merch and dishing out political hot takes which I can see screencapped elsewhere.
I’m useless with social media; I’ve very little use for it outside of Tildes, Discord, and some niche subreddits.
tildes, discord, reddit, and similar sites aren’t social media.
Depends on your definition of social media, I think. Reddit in particular seems to be widely considered social media.
I agree on not counting Discord. Tildes... I'm weirdly split on, for some reason.
social media is profile-based. an individual posts content to their feed and others interact. this is not they case with here, reddit, and other forums and absolutely never the case with a chat platform like irc, discord, etc.
anybody who considers reddit to be social media is simply wrong, even though reddit itself has tried to push it in that direction.
i think we covered all of this here just a few weeks ago.
Who made that definiton and what gives them the authority such that everyone is “wrong”?
This is the Oxford dictionary definition, just as an indication that many people have a broader definition, not that Oxford is particularly authoritative
you think irc is social networking‽
Yes, arguably moreso than some other modern chat apps, since irc is really focused on rooms and less on individual 1-1 messaging.
weird. i absolutely disagree and i’m surprised by this take, but i also don’t care enough to continue :)
i’m off to my favorite social networking platform, bugzilla.
can you mark this part of the thread as noise?
The point that I took from their comment is that it's an ill-defined word, so to have a meaningful conversation about social media you need to start by agreeing on how it's defined in a given conversation. You seem to be starting from a position of authority about what the word means, and aren't open to other meanings. It's less about what the correct definition is and more about you disagreeing with the premise that other people define it differently, and nobody has the authority to call them wrong.
I'd say Reddit definitely fits that definition. Plenty of people use it as a platform to share their own content like comics, videos, fictional stories, crafts projects, etc. You can specifically follow individual users, and I've joined a couple subreddits that are basically equivalent to someone's blog about a specific topic. (Most notably, some guy who built a shark tank called SHARK_tank_BUILD, and "Classic Depravities" which is one person writing up "deep dives into the history of the strange and bizarre part of the internet". That second one could be a standalone site honestly.)
That said, I think the definition of social media is too broad and needs refining. The definitions I can find all seem to boil down to "you have a profile, can interact with people, and can directly post content you create". A LOT of online platforms fit that description depending on who you ask, including Discord and forums in general, and I agree that those don't count.
At bare minimum I think there's a distinct public element to social media, which Discord lacks due to being a communication platform where you need to join specific servers to see anything.
They all are. They're sites or programs used to socialize. They have a more anonymous slant, but they're still media we use to socialize.
Then I have zero use for social media
exactly! social media is a cancer that puts the emphasis on the individual rather than the topic/community, which is more important.
if I had more time I'd reference a bunch of studies -- one from ~2007 or so, which is fun -- that makes this same distinction. That said, its not like anybody would change their mind about anything based on a paper based on myspace, friendster, early facebook, etc.
But that is my view of the difference in sites. I can't imagine anyone saying that SomethingAwful is a social media site. :)
I think that’s why I’m not a big fan of social media. I want to be one voice in the conversation, not the main focus.
yeah, for me, I'm simply not interesting enough :) facebook, instagram, and twitter used to be so fun. facebook and twitter died off completely around 2010 for me, but instagram survived for another two years.
I just got into using mastodon, but the instance I'm on is very small and likely short-lived. two podcasts, Search Engine and Hard Fork created The Forkiverse to demonstrate the fediverse. Its fun, but they signed up for a plan that can really only handle around 2500 users and they quickly hit capacity. Now we're all sort of waiting for the storage to fill up and for the entire project to be retired.
All in all, all I want on the internet are a handful of smaller communities like tildes etc where everybody kind of knows everybody and you can post some bullshit, discuss or disagree, and nothing ever ends up in a big enough argument where people get hurt or leave. This is one of the main things I really appreciate about tildes above almost every other community.
I’m curious what “staying in touch” looks like these days for a Facebook user? (I’ve never used the platform for that, or intensively in the first place, and not at all for about a decade now.)
What makes it hard to do the same staying-in-touch outside of Facebook?
In 2026 few people do social phone calls. Calling people up and talking on the phone to just shoot the shit. It isn't appropriate for every relationship either.
On Facebook people
From any of those conversations start. AKA "staying in touch".
Even as someone who no longer goes on Facebook itself, Facebook Messenger is a way to send a casual message to someone you know in a way that is much lower pressure than a phone call.
Why use messenger if I/the people I know have Facebook?
I'm not sure I understand the question. Facebook Messenger is Facebook's attached direct messaging app, and I'm pointing out that it has utility for reaching out to people directly even when not interacting using Facebook's other features.
Ironically of all the main non-video social media sites (twitter, insta, bsky, mastodon) Threads is the least bad for just randomly discovering stuff.
I think it's mostly because it has pretty robust blocking tools and the algorithm rewards interaction, but in a different way than Instagram. The community also has a "block and move on" mentality, if someone is being an ass, you block them and go about your day, don't start arguing. If someone is dicking around in the comments of your post, you can block them so that nobody can see their messages under that post, cleaning up the interaction a lot.
As for the algorithm: On instagram your first 30 minutes or so decides whether your post will be on your follower's timelines, so "professionals" have upvote rings where they like, comment/share each other's posts just after they are posted, boosting their visibility initially, cheating the system.
Threads seems to require an account to have either actual interaction (reply to messages that aren't your own) or massive virality. Accounts that just post, but never reply get buried unless you specifically follow them.
It's still Meta, but not shit. Which is really weird for me, as FB and Instagram both are completely unusable.
I'm Brazilian like the author. It's impossible to live in Brazil without WhatsApp. Even excluding social interactions, WhatsApp is used by many businesses and even by the government. I do block myself from WhatsApp regularly and aggressively using Lock Me Out on Android. But even then it's a gamble. If something comes up that requires WhatsApp I'm pretty much fucked.
I'm not sure why the author did so many complicated things when he could simply uninstall the app. I'm failing to grasp what is the point of doing all that complicated stuff instead.
That probably works if you work in IT and have lots of IT friends. Family is unlikely to adapt. Unless they're okay with being essentially an outcast, I don't think the author will stay away from WhatsApp for much longer. This is like punching the ocean.
I had very good luck forcing some family members off Facebook when I had kids. If you only post your family photos in a group Signal chat, they definitely don't want to miss out.
On the other hand, if you have family like mine, cutting yourself off could be a blessing.
There are many other situations in which you are forced to use WhatsApp, like school, college, and most workplaces.
I'm sorry about your family :(
Yes, I understand. It would more similar to trying to live without a phone in the US. At some point, you need to be able to receive a call or SMS message as many places simply don't have processes for those without. In Brazil (and many other countries), somehow Meta wormed their way into that position.
I don't think WhatsApp was at fault back then. And the hegemony took place long before Meta acquired it. It's just that the phone companies charged extra for SMS for a very long time. Even today, I'm not sure if they're unlimited. But that doesn't matter anymore.
It's really annoying to me whenever some sort of institution forces the usage of a proprietary product on my personal devices.
SMS or email doesn't bother me since it's a standard that any vendor can interact with, and I can use the SMS or email client of my choice, but forcing me to use whatsapp to do business with you feels cheap and unprofessional on top of being annoying.
At first, it was a one-week experiment. So, I didn't want to remove WhatsApp permanently.
I didn't mention family and my partner because I was able to move them to Signal. It's been years since it happened. So, unlikely, yes, but not impossible.
I'm sorry, I'm really trying to understand. How can this be simpler than clicking on a button to uninstall and then on another to install?
Coming from the US, not having WhatsApp is pretty standard. The thought of having to rely on an app for communication is pretty gross to me. (Though I realize carriers can't really be trusted with texts either)
I'm very curious - does anybody know why populations of other countries rely so heavily on it? Do they not have regular texting via SMS?
WhatsApp in particular got a foot in the door in a lot of places when SMS was still charged per message, and it was already firmly embedded as the default by the time free messaging was ubiquitous (and especially free international messaging, which took quite a bit longer to straighten out - much more common when you can drive across three countries in the width of some US states, remember!)
Meta didn't buy it until long after it'd already formed strong enough network effects to make communicating without it an active effort, and for the vast majority of people there isn't even a reason to want to do so - like others have said, SMS is far inferior, RCS took a decade and a half to become a viable option, and sadly most people just don't care that much about evil megacorporations as long as they aren't too in-your-face about it.
I mean the US is the outlier there. No where other than Canada do people still use SMS. Even in the US, there’s a reason you’d get bullied for not having iMessage. SMS just sucks.
China uses WeChat, Japan/Taiwan uses Line, Korea use KakaoTalk, pretty much everywhere else uses WhatsApp.
Not only is it just better in every way compared to SMS as a product, but in other parts of the world data availability vastly outstripped SMS availability. You’d get cheap data packages with expensive texting and calling packages.
Because people are shitty?
Besides sucking, it is way less secure. Security-wise you're way better off using Whatsapp (Signal would be even better of course)
Right, if it's security, Signal, if it's ease of use... any number of a dozen apps that aren't locked to one platform
SMS is also just very, very insecure. Even unencrypted chats on apps like WhatsApp are an improvement over it (and ofc a properly secure app like Signal is even better). This is also why you should avoid using SMS for two-factor authentication if presented with other options.
WhatApp messaging is encrypted using the Signal Protocol. It arguably has a marginally better key verification process than Signal, so could be said to be even more "properly" secure. (caveat is that Signal may have since adopted a similar process to Whatsapp for key verification, my info could be out of date)
SMS isn't just insecure by being plaintext and easy to spoof and so on, SMS infrastructure has backdoors built into it by design. Even I avoid SMS and I'm extremely cavalier about privacy by tildes standards!
Yeah my main point in this comment was to emphasize just how insecure SMS is rather than to go into the details of how secure different messaging apps are. Almost anything is better than SMS.
I think the people talking about security are also taking into consideration the ownership and their willingness to access your messages for profit or at the behest of law enforcement, which I assume is where Signal pulls ahead of WhatsApp. But I'm not a security expert by any stretch, so I'm not really qualified to examine or explain the details there.
Meta can't read Whatsapp messages. Because Whatsapp uses the Signal Protocol. Moxie was not messing about when he designed it, it's properly secure from end to end.
Signal is not as secure as Whatsapp, but it's only really on a technicality about key verification systems. They're both genuinely secure. Unless Meta are lying about their crypto protocols, of course. Which someone would have almost certainly noticed by now (like people did with the obvious backdoor in Telegram, for example)
I'm definitely not that educated on protocols, so good to learn that WhatsApp is using such a secure one! I legit didn't know it was one of the more secure options like that.
Whatsapp isn't even an option for 2 factor authentication here. Most of it is SMS and there's not much I can do about it. (And I'm mostly not interested in doing things about it.)
But what you said is what @adutchman said. And it's why I got my fam off FB messenger and texts. But also, I still use Google Messages because some people text. I'd love everyone in my life to pick a non apple/non meta app to use but I communicate with people on a dozen apps.
No one I know uses WhatsApp except folks with international family.
Many phones' apps these days default to more secure protocols anyway due to how insecure SMS is -- iPhones default to iMessage, and I think Google Messages defaults to RCS these days as well. I'm mostly of the same perspective where I use whatever I can for the specific tasks I need to accomplish and the specific people I need to contact. I'll prefer apps with better security/other features if I can, but often I simply don't have enough choice for it to matter.
ftr, WhatsApp would also not be secure for 2FA and I've never seen it offered as such either. The alternative to using SMS for it is to use a dedicated 2FA app like Google Authenticator.
Got it, I use a Microsoft authenticator app for work
I assume messages is using RCS as well. But yeah The upside of using multiple messaging modalities is that I can curate myself depending on the app. But it's kind of a fringe benefit.
I’m wondering if this might be a misunderstanding. When I lived in the US around 2012, most people had an iPhone if they had a smartphone. Everybody used iMessage. That isn’t SMS, that is entirely the same as WhatsApp or Signal messages. It’s all TCP/IP, it’s not carrier texts.
In countries where iPhone isn’t the main smartphone, WhatsApp is popular because it’s cross platform, rich messaging. SMS exists everywhere.
As an Android user who has been bullied for not having iMessage: For me, it's about reliability and interoperability. I don't want a messaging service that relies on Apple. I want one that relies on my carrier, who (should) be regulated by my government as a service provider for an infrastructure service. While I'm happy that RCS has been deployed and is interoperable between Android and iOS devices, I'm less happy that the rollout was dependent on Google to provide RCS functionality, rather than my carrier.
In my opinion, I find value in knowing the things I rely on as a service (Communications) are being held to some standard under regulation. After all, if I need to call 911 and my call fails because of my carrier, it becomes a matter of public safety negligence and critical infrastructure failure, not just an inconvenience caused by a server going down in California. Tie in to this the roll out of 911 over SMS (and now RCS), and I feel my argument becomes even stronger.
Ideal world I'd say we want messaging that doesn't rely on a tech company or carrier! I'd be a lot more confident in getting an IP connection of some form than getting cell service specifically - in emergencies, definitely, but also just day to day with WiFi in places that otherwise have poor coverage - but like you say, we need to stop running our messages on that incredible, distributed, nuke proof mesh network through company servers acting as single points of failure.
I don’t think the things we expect from modern communication, like group chats, voice calls, group voice calls, voice messages, stickers, pictures, etc. are offered by the carriers. They all require data connections, they all require apps, they all require services. Sure, 911 has different requirements, but that isn’t what WhatsApp/Signal/Discord/Telegram are used for in most cases.
That isn't quite right. Those features are carrier services now.
RCS handles the "modern" messaging features (high-res photos, groups, stickers). It uses data, but it is an interoperable standard, not a proprietary app like Discord.
Calls are also data now. Almost all modern calls use VoLTE or VoNR (Voice over New Radio).
The distinction is that carrier services (RCS/VoLTE) run on dedicated, high-priority data bands with guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS), whereas apps like WhatsApp run on "best effort" public internet traffic.
Plenty of people in the US use SMS (myself included). Android devices still have ~40% of the market share here, but I don’t know anybody that uses WhatsApp for messaging.
I could be wrong, but I'd guess you're using a third party app for group chats, though? I know that people don't really use WhatsApp in the US, but I've found a lot more expectation to have either Discord or FB Messenger over there.
Nope, I just use my default messaging app, nothing else on top (which does use MMS for group chats). I do use Discord, but only on my PC
My high school friend group made a Discord server solely because, for some reason, one person wouldn't get texts from me. I don't know if it was due to iPhone vs Android, or some weird issue with having different carriers, but it was just too annoying to try to schedule stuff with multiple people. I think the two of us would DM over Discord for a while before we suggested everyone get on to streamline planning. I'm pretty sure a couple people have Discord solely for that server.
That makes me wonder now how many people ditched texting due to similarly inconsistent reliability...
Wild. How are you doing group chats? How are you sending pictures?
I'm not the OP but personally I've never participated in a 'group chat' ever.
This is more of a culture shock to me than anything over in the culture shocks thread!
In the US here and group chat use has been quite rare, and when it does happen tends to be short lived and centered around an event or something. Nearly all messaging is 1-to-1.
I think group chats may be bigger with older generations, funnily enough. My dad had a fairly active looking group chat with his friends, and my mom has many group chats. Sometimes she'd ask me to check her texts while she was driving and there'd be full ongoing conversations between other people.
This might be true in your social circle but it absolutely is not the case throughout the US. Even my parents are in a handful of group chats, and almost everyone my age or younger is in a ton of them.
Sure, but no pictures also?
Oh, I'm am RCS user. I send pictures to people ect. I was just saying I'm not sure that not being in group chats is all that rare!
I use a mix of RCS and SMS mostly. I find RCS a bit unreliable as it needs data. I have to frequently fall back on SMS. It's okay though. I sent a pic of me in my new footy shirt to my eldest just now on RCS , he got it fine. Good quality. I also don't have group chats. No more than one person at a time would be interested in my inane witterings anyway.
I suppose I should clarify that I use MMS as well. Group chats aren't an issue. MMS is usually good enough for sending media. If I really need to send something with higher quality, I'll just send a link
Carriers' greed, basically. Even nowadays they charge or limit free SMS messages in some plans. Also, in early 2010's SMS was unreliable and to this day it lacks many features (a gap being filled by RCS), like reading receipts and high-res photos. WhatsApp was simple, easy to use, and free. No wonder Zuck bought it after seeing its huge popularity through spying users' phones with Facebook owned Onavo VPN.
The US vs non-US split on this is pretty dramatic.
I tried not using WhatsApp for like a good three years and had to eventually give up. Like, everyone is on WhatsApp. iMessage works for iPhone users, but the truth is even iPhone users are accustomed to checking WhatsApp anyway and will likely miss your texts.
I don't think I've ever heard of an iPhone user here using iMessage. No one even uses facetime (Netherlands), they use WhatsApp video calling - because, of course, everyone has WhatsApp so why go to another app?
WhatsApp is how I talk to my pet groomer, every tradesmen in existence, it's even how I talk to my freaking pharmacy (obviously not about specific prescriptions, but if I need to ask them where my shipment I was expecting in x date is, I text them via WhatsApp.)
It is not possible to live in the Netherlands without it. You will at some point need it, no matter how off-the-grid you want to be. You'll need a painter at some point, or customer service for a niche thing, or anything small enough not to have their own chatbot on their website - and the only way to contact them is WhatsApp.
I originally was jealous that other countries used third party messengers for everything while the defacto standard in the US was still SMS. The more I think about it, the more I actually would rather just use SMS (or RCS, where supported) than be forced by social pressure to put a meta app on my phone.
To be fair, it's more of a "it's turned on by default" than them consciously using iMessage. But yeah, identical situation here.
Count Australia in as another country which doesn't have such a pervasive use of WhatsApp. My initial thought about the headline was that it couldn't be serious - saying this in Australia would be either playing for laughs or incredibly melodramatic. It made a lot more sense after reading that whatsapp has managed to become the standard messaging app elsewhere.
To the point governmental bodies use it. It's probably a bit hard to fathom if you haven't experienced it, but WhatsApp is genuinely the default messaging platform. My local municipality, friends, family, employers, everyone.
It's not just "largest market share" big, it's "so big other players might as well not exist" big.
This is ultimately why thoroughly legalized adversarial interoperabilty is the only possible solution to destroying the tech monopolists.
If you want to make it possible to eliminate Whatsapp, competitors must be able to write 100% compatible Whatsapp integrations without Whatsapp's approval.
There is no technical barrier to Signal integrating Whatsapp functionality, and upgrading chats to Signal when clients detect that the other is using Signal. Just like Apple does with iMessage, SMS, and OpenBubbles. There is merely a legal baton which lets the company sue a third party to oblivion.
Interoperability via reverse engineering is what turned the 90s chat programs into defacto open standards. Trillian users represent. Let's bring it back to its glory days, but with Discord, Slack, Teams, Matrix, Facebook, Whatsapp, Google Meet, Google's chat program of the month, and riot.im.
Well... not really. It's not enough to legalize interoperability (afiak, it's not currently illegal in most places, if you could figure out how, there's no real legal mechanism for WhatsApp to stop you from interacting with their API).
You'd have to mandate interoperability. There are technical barriers to interacting with an API that a company doesn't want you to interact with.
There are authentication mechanisms built into all of these apps that make it very difficult or impossible to use them outside of that app. Once a particular method is found, it's also not too difficult for the company to change the API and their clients simultaneously to stop it. So it's and endless game of wack a mole that becomes a horrible experience for the third party app users.
Using a third party app also violates their terms of service, so even if you do figure out how to reverse engineer it, you're risking your account being banned by doing so. That's not a legal mechanism, that's the company actively tamping down on uncontrolled usage.
The only way you prevent that is by forcing companies to interoperate, and punishing the ones that seek to make it difficult.
Easier said than done and there's a lot of political lobbying that you'd have to overcome from big tech companies to make it happen.
Anticircumvention laws are the primary barriers there, and they do exist in most jurisdictions. That's what prevents somebody decompiling the first-party app and extracting the auth process and API calls. It's what makes it illegal to make and distribute tools which make it easier to do that.
Terms of service are, almost by definition, entirely a legal construct. You legalize third-party acess by making that term unenforcable unless the first party can prove the third party is causing significan harm. So a third-party app that scrapes the whole of Facebook every login could be banned, but not one that interops with a user's chats.
I wouldn't say it's easy, especially if circumvention tools are legalized. Adblockers are still effective over 20 years later is because there are heavy diminishing returns on continually making your service harder to interop with. Especially when you have thousands of motivated users (or other companies) with a vested interest in breaking your new lock. Especially if there's a large number of low-user third-parties.
Suppose GrapheneOS manages to create a perfect iOS sandbox to run iOS apps alongside Android apps. Would Apple be able to shift the entirety of their ecosystem quickly enough and frequently enough to keep ahead of it without fracturing their app store advantage? What if Microsoft and Samsung also threw their weight behind it?
Do you think Salesforce will continue having a lot of enterprise customers if those paying enterprise customers are required to rework their custom addons and integrations every few months to cope with these breaking changes?
Terms of service are rarely going to let a company sue a user for damages. They're usually more like just policy acknowledgement to shield the company from being sued for deleting someone's account.
I don't know of any current legal mechanism that would prevent a company from deleting your account on your platform though.
I think they would, yeah. They have the advantage of the fact that they control both the service and the endpoints. They can rapidly push changes to obfuscate the communication between both, and it becomes more or less seamless to the users. They just get an OS update pushed to them.
I think it's pretty telling that no third parties have been able to create a perfect ios sandbox as of yet, despite there being a strong financial incentive to do so.
The third parties are stuck reverse engineering the new protocol changes which takes a while, and in the mean time, all of the users of the third party apps are dead in the water.
It was a lot more feasible in the 90s and early 2000s when strong encryption and mature obfuscation techniques were less proliferated.
Making a third party app used to be as simple as sniffing the traffic from a client and then building a piece of software to emulate that traffic.
Big tech companies have a lot more tools in their toolbox to lock their services down now though.
Well, I guess if I gave up all my hobbies. WhatsApp is how my gyms coordinate classes and who is teaching/attending, when events are happening, tournament registration, holidays, etc.
I'm replying on the headline.
Short amswer: Yes.
Long answer: Yes.
I never installed it on my phone. Part of that is I had Pinephone at the time, which is basically Linux computer so I would have to get it running somehow in the first place, and I installed Element, which is Matrix.org client. And since then I'm installing Element to family members and talking my friends into using it. I now have Android phone yet I still use Element exclusively.
I'm seen as outcast by many of them though. But since I'm that IT weirdo anyway, I couldn't care less about my image.
Why don't I jump on the WA train then? There are more reasons and ways to look at that. Some of them are:
How I do without WA with friends who don't want to use Element ("I won't use it because you don't want to use WA")? If I want to tell them something I use what the phone is best for - call. When something less immediate is needed, I do the second best thing the phone does - SMS. And when I need to send them photo? I will let you make a guess... ... ... Yeah, you probably got it right - e-mail. And when I make some video at some place and they want it shared with them I teach them how to use Quick Share (Airdrop for Android for all the Apple people here) and share the video FAST and in really truly original quality (last time I sent 500MB video in 10 seconds using that).
There are ways to live without WhatsApp, all it takes is your own willpower (or stubborness, I guess).
EDIT: Finally read the article/blog post. Nice read, author gets to many great points - the best one being "Long conversations on WA (or whatever IM) can be done in one pretty short call".
I have quite literally never used it, so yes! I did read the article and realize this is mostly referring to countries where it is the overwhelming "winner", where I am (US).
While it is functionally impossible to drop WhatsApp where I am, I think I have a good personal policy for using the service. I've also made sure to properly broadcast that policy over the years. My profile pic is of my WhatsApp icon with the 999+ notification bubble and my bio/status says to call if something is urgent. Family and friends know I never look at group chats and that any activity under my name is most likely from my wife or kid. There's a handfull of pinned chats that take priority and send notifications. Everything else is noise I may or may not attend to.
Professionally on the other hand, is a complete disaster. I work for a pretty shallow company structure and the owners have a thing about making sure everyone is "on the same page".
So every little thing is a WhatsApp group that everyone is a part of. Every customer and supplier is a seperate group chat. There is a staff group and also a group just for managers and then a group for Admin/Office managers and one for Floor Managers and a group for drivers and dispatch and one just for dispatch.
But it makes no difference because a lot of people are in all of them. And while the owners have the time to go through the 88 office groups, no one else does.
I don't like WhatsApp and other IM apps because it comes with expectations that everyone has of each other but no one can agree on what they are. A lot of people expect it to flow back and forth like a conversation leaving part way is rude. Other people treat it like email and get to messages in their own time. A few special people flip flop based on if they are sending or receiving msgs.
Some people see it as a sort of information sharing hub but that becomes less and less useful the longer some chats drag on. For other people its a social space that can very often balloon into a meaningless mass. Its a business platform and sales channel. A hub for short form content. Project management software. An LLM interface for some reason. A marketing space...
Its used for everything, but isn't everything. Its a text and media sharing platform. A part of bigger solutions. But its so ingrained in culture, people are constantly reinventing bad utilities on top of it.
I'm in the US and never use any of the apps mentioned. I have SMS on my phone and the only person I use text with regularly is my brother. There are, perhaps, four others that I use text with occasionally. Other than that, I make calls. I have no need for group texts.
Most annoying is the fact that so many sites/companies insist on sending texts as confirmation that I am who I say I am.