The whole country (Albania) is in Whatsup. Unless you want to do social suicide you stay in it.
I thought that in Albania, telegrams are more common?
Poll: Switching from WhatsApp
231–240 of 972 posts
Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp
#232Telegram is a great IM experience . The client is good, feature set is good, the stickers are amusing (if you're into that kind of thing), the feature set is complete and everything is polished. Telegram is, I think, going to be one of the easier sells if you're trying to convince non-technical users to switch from WhatsApp or FB Messenger. The privacy, security, and governance story is not great though. If you care…
As a reminder, Telegram groups are not encrypted at all, and 1:1 chats are not encrypted by default, so while WhatsApp might see your contacts, Telegram can see most of your messages.
Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
The question is "To which app are you going to switch?", not "What are you using?" It may take a long time and huge effort to switch, but people are starting to do it.
> The question is "To which app are you going to switch?" And a reasonable answer is "your assumption is wrong, I don't plan to switch at all". I have no doubt that some people will switch, what I'd like to know if that movement is niche or mainstream.
Then this question is not for you. People who want to switch decided to find out which option is supported by the community more. No one is interested how many people stay on Whatsapp (I know that it's a lot).
Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp
#234Been using Telegram for a long time. I don't trust it any more than I do with WhatsApp (therefore, Facebook), however it is well done and thought out, has a real desktop client with a real desktop UI toolkit and enough of my contacts are on it already, therefore it's the best compromise to me. I greatly dislike Signal's UI when I tried it out and I've read about some weird decisions lately (that "using a PIN? uploadi…
Signal requires phone number in order not to store your contact list on their servers. Instead of id's/email addresses/nicknames they are using your phone contact list. IMHO that's better for privacy.
Signal appear to have been making efforts to switch unique identifier to an arbitrary ID, I believe this is a move towards removing the phone number requirement. I can't say for sure.
I know their infra codebase pretty well as I've worked on it for projects unrelated to Signal/Open Whisper Systems. Unfortunately their public Github is usually ~3 months behind their running infra and often released much later than the equivalent functionality in the clients hits the public.
Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp
#235The problem is not finding a nice alternative. The problem is that everybody's contacts are on Whatsapp. How do you make THEM switch?
You uninstall WhatsApp and tell your closest family and friends that they can only reach you on Signal. Because you are so important to them, they will install Signal as a backup/secondary app. Other people will do the same, and it will snowball into everyone having Signal installed and at some point people will realise that the network effect is gone.
> You uninstall WhatsApp and tell your closest family and friends that they can only reach you on Signal. Because you are so important to them, they will install Signal as a backup/secondary app.
I'll be the one friend that'll insist on SMS/email. I’ll even offer to use some other supposedly encrypted method like Keybase or Matrix. If that doesn't work as a fallback, then I guess we can agree to disagree, and someone else can play the middleperson for us. :)
I refuse to use Signal because it doesn't offer chat sync, or message preservation if I either lose or have to wipe my phone.
Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp
#236Question about WhatsApp and contact access: I’ve turned off contact access. I can’t see the names behind the numbers. Will fb still see the numbers of the new contacts I message?
If you enabled it previously, they have all your contacts. If you turned it off I assume they wont be able to see updates or new contacts you add.
Yes. But with the new contacts, when I message them, will fb see that number? (I’m guessing yes, since all the address book does it match names to numbers)
Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
That depends on what you want with privacy. If you'd want to chat anonymously, having to use your real phone number is a bummer. At least in my country, it's getting harder and harder to get a SIM-card that is not tied to your name. The alternative is getting a burner SIM-card. Though, that will become harder once more prepaid providers require your ID.
If you got a friend in Colombia they can hook you up with unlimited SIM cards for like $3 a pop.
Columbia? It's racked with rioting and civil unrest right now according to the world news. Hardly a stable place to get my telecoms supplies from.
Or if you did mean Colombia, why would the average HNer have friends there?
Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp
#238Line (https://line.me ) is pretty popular in several Asian countries, so I started to use it during my time there. Its desktop app is really good, so now I'm sticking with it whenever possible.
Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp
#239Where is the "Don't switch" option? Because as much as I hate that Facebook bought them, they're part of what I would call "critical social infrastructure." Asking to leave WhatsApp is like cancelling your contract with your ISP and going offline just because you don't like the company.
At this point the game has changed with social apps; I’m including messaging as “social.” It is easier than ever to rebuild the important parts of your social graph on Signal, Clubhouse, Snap, IG, whatever platform you need. I talk to the same friends via Twitter DM, WhatsApp, IG, signal, hangouts and iMessage. Open access to contact books and APIs have made this so easy. I can leave WhatsApp and my network will find…
I don't think this is true. Sure, you can maybe get your close friends or close family to switch. But I don't think my landlord or my distant relatives will install Signal just because I don't want to use WhatsApp anymore.
Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp
#240One of the killer features to me is being able to use a client on many varied systems (phone, tablet, computer), which my chat history shared between them. This allows me to very easily get messages anywhere, and pick up the conversation anywhere. Which of these support that?
Telegram and Wire for sure will work for this. Signal is also ok, with clients on different devices, but it’s still lacking in reliability and has some messaging issues.
For example, on Signal, I got a message from someone I hadn’t messaged for a long, long time asking me to re-send my message because they saw a “bad message” error. I have no idea what that was about.