Ask HN: How would you convince your friends and family to switch from WhatsApp?

Post by rurban » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 12:12 AM UTC

rurban wrote: post #155

I'm manager of about 100 independent people in Germany, where almost nobody uses Facebook. Maybe 5 of them. We are currently organizing via 5-7 WhatsApp groups, and in a couple of months we need to switch, by my estimate. This is only India, but the rest will follow, and the change is not acceptable at all. So I'm preparing now a slow switch to Signal, which seems to be most acceptable here. So far nobody took the in…

Post by methusala8 » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 3:54 AM UTC

ketanmaheshwari wrote: post #139

tmpz22 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does your family's threat model actually include targeted surveillance by US intelligence agencies? There are many reasons to switch off whatsapp, but I don't believe it should be considered insecure unless you are a journalist, activist, or citizen of a country with severe oppressive regimes: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Russia, etc. If your threat model DOES include US intelligence agencies, you shouldn't use…

Add India to that list of regimes.

Post by wreath » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 6:51 AM UTC

xenonite wrote: post #153

wreath wrote: post #99

I went cold turkey. I live abroad, in one of my trips back home, I installed Telegram in my parent's phones and showed them how they can call me (mom started spamming me with stickers immediately), asked each friend that I met in person to do the same. They all did except one friend. I posted on facebook that i'm quitting it and left my contact info. Some got in touch, many didn't. Life went on.

I guess that many of those who didn't get in touch don't check FB anymore.

Post by fsflover » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 8:40 AM UTC

ska wrote: post #130

crazydoggers wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes... just like I would hope others would be supportive of my choice of communication. No matter what, it’s definitely not arrogant. And in fact if more people had the courage to buck the trends and potential be “isolated” then we wouldn’t be ceding so much of our privacy to these social media companies as we are now. A phone call always works, no matter where in the world you are. We don’t actually “need” these ser…

The "bar-like" scenario here is that they retain a whatsapp group chat that you are no longer in, and so you miss some stuff. If you act unilaterally in a group context you should accept that too. Supporting your choice of communication only really extends to "oh yeah, crazydoggers isn't here now where did I put that app they use?". So you might hear from them less, but nobody is at fault.

Post by mister_hn » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 9:29 AM UTC

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #13

Steps, I've taken in order. 0. Removing myself from all active WhatsApp groups. 1. Setting the WhatsApp status to 'Message me on Signal or Email me' and not responding to non-important messages till they message on Signal or Email me. 2. When someone asks if we can continue our conversation on WhatsApp, politely informing them that I don't use WhatsApp and asking them to message on Signal. 3. Setting a Tasker auto re…