Facebook’s New Message to WhatsApp: Make Money • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook’s New Message to WhatsApp: Make Money

#11

Post by gglitch » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 6:14 PM UTC

bassman9000 wrote: post #6

Aside from Signal and Telegram, is there any worthy alternative?

https://keybase.io/

Re: Facebook’s New Message to WhatsApp: Make Money

#12

Post by Boulth » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 6:15 PM UTC

bassman9000 wrote: post #6

Aside from Signal and Telegram, is there any worthy alternative?

https://conversations.im the same security primitives as in Signal, but open and decentralized.

Re: Facebook’s New Message to WhatsApp: Make Money

#13

Post by walterbell » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 6:19 PM UTC

bassman9000 wrote: post #6

Aside from Signal and Telegram, is there any worthy alternative?

Matrix/Riot and Wire.com (from ex-Skype team), who are working with IETF to standardize an open protocol for E2E encrypted messaging. We need to get back to open protocols.

Re: Facebook’s New Message to WhatsApp: Make Money

#14

Post by danirod » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 6:19 PM UTC

Remember when WhatsApp required a subscription? One of the first changes made by Facebook after purchasing WhatsApp was to make it available for free. And now they're complaining they can't milk it enough? Oh dear.

I know that a percentage of WhatsApp users would stop using the app if they started requiring a payment again –because apparently paying $1 per year for using an application on your $999 phone is outrageous, but I wonder why can't they just make it an option again as an alternative to ads.

Re: Facebook’s New Message to WhatsApp: Make Money

#15

Post by noncoml » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 6:21 PM UTC

Almost everybody I know has at least 2 messaging apps installed on their phone.

What's to stop people start migrating to Signal/Telegram/Viber/Keybase/etc.. once WhatsApp starts displaying ads?

Re: Facebook’s New Message to WhatsApp: Make Money

#16

Post by Vinnl » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 6:26 PM UTC

bassman9000 wrote: post #6

Aside from Signal and Telegram, is there any worthy alternative?

That depends on what it is you don't like about those two. I presume phone number identification and non-standard encryption?

Re: Facebook’s New Message to WhatsApp: Make Money

#17

Post by tajen » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 6:26 PM UTC

jakebasile wrote: post #9

bassman9000 wrote: post #6

Aside from Signal and Telegram, is there any worthy alternative?

I've just defaulted back to iMessage for pretty much everything - not an ideal option if you don't mostly talk to people with Apple devices though.

What about groupchat?

Re: Facebook’s New Message to WhatsApp: Make Money

#18

Post by h1srf » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 6:26 PM UTC

danirod wrote: post #14

Remember when WhatsApp required a subscription? One of the first changes made by Facebook after purchasing WhatsApp was to make it available for free. And now they're complaining they can't milk it enough? Oh dear. I know that a percentage of WhatsApp users would stop using the app if they started requiring a payment again –because apparently paying $1 per year for using an application on your $999 phone is outrageou…

Was it a subscription? I thought it was $1 to purchase(iOS).

Re: Facebook’s New Message to WhatsApp: Make Money

#19

Post by eitally » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 6:28 PM UTC

danirod wrote: post #14

Remember when WhatsApp required a subscription? One of the first changes made by Facebook after purchasing WhatsApp was to make it available for free. And now they're complaining they can't milk it enough? Oh dear. I know that a percentage of WhatsApp users would stop using the app if they started requiring a payment again –because apparently paying $1 per year for using an application on your $999 phone is outrageou…

Yeah ... but a huge fraction of Whatsapp users (in India & Africa especially) use $100 (or less) phones....

Re: Facebook’s New Message to WhatsApp: Make Money

#20

Post by enitihas » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 6:30 PM UTC

h1srf wrote: post #18

danirod wrote: post #14

Remember when WhatsApp required a subscription? One of the first changes made by Facebook after purchasing WhatsApp was to make it available for free. And now they're complaining they can't milk it enough? Oh dear. I know that a percentage of WhatsApp users would stop using the app if they started requiring a payment again –because apparently paying $1 per year for using an application on your $999 phone is outrageou…

Was it a subscription? I thought it was $1 to purchase(iOS).

I think they had turned to subscription instead of one off purchase after some time.