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Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#371

Post by zajio1am »

timvdalen wrote: post #185
emsy wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not a good comparison. There are many alternatives to WhatsApp and it’s not a „critical“ infrastructure. In contrast, you sometimes can’t choose your ISP and internet is much more critical.

It can be in area's (such as in The Netherlands) where literally _everyone_ is on WhatsApp and it is the default form of personal online communication. Not using WhatsApp means not being able to communicate with a lot of people.

Do not they have e-mail? That seems like safe default.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#372

Post by nindalf »

game_the0ry wrote: post #362
apexalpha wrote: post #155

Where 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.

Try not to get mad please, but ... > Where 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." No such thing as "critical social infrastructure." Could you live without whatsapp? Yes. Then by definition it is not critical. > Asking to leave WhatsApp is like cancelling your contract with your ISP and going offline just b…

> Could you live without whatsapp? Yes. Then by definition it is not critical.

Can I live without heating in London? Yes I wouldn't die without it. But without heating it's extremely uncomfortable. I'd say it is critical for me because "dying/not dying" is not the criteria for deciding.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#373

Post by qmmmur »

arsalanb wrote: post #353
pelasaco wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if with Telegram "the privacy, security, and governance story is not great though", why would you migrate from WhatsApp to Telegram in first place? I personally have all 3 (Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram) and use all three with different groups and scenarios. For example: - With my mom and grandmom: WhatsApp - Group of friends from jiu-jitsu: WhatsApp - Work Colleagues and friends working with Network Security: Signal…

/aside: does "how full my gym is right now" work with an API?

They send him messages via a channel I assume. Don't overthink it.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#374

Post by rijndadel »

bluGill wrote: post #164

Forget about them all and send a regular SMS message. If the above doesn't work for essentially no cost then your phone provider needs to get it's head out of it's rear and stop raping you... There is no excuse for the way phone companies charge... If you need anonymous, then none of the above really work either.

Honestly, this is my choice as of now. I don't really use IM all that much, so it's not a big deal for me from privacy standpoint, but I'm not going to switch to yet another centralized service. I'd probably be alone there anyway, I doubt most of my contacts will care about this.

I'll wait for a distributed E2E IM or death from old age, whichever comes first.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#375

Post by pelasaco »

arsalanb wrote: post #353
pelasaco wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if with Telegram "the privacy, security, and governance story is not great though", why would you migrate from WhatsApp to Telegram in first place? I personally have all 3 (Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram) and use all three with different groups and scenarios. For example: - With my mom and grandmom: WhatsApp - Group of friends from jiu-jitsu: WhatsApp - Work Colleagues and friends working with Network Security: Signal…

/aside: does "how full my gym is right now" work with an API?

well, now we are in full lockdown in Germany, and all gyms are closed. But until November, they were able to operate with a limited number of people training at the same time.

To make it visible to the members, My gym had a progress bar, being update as soon anybody entered or left the gym.

This information was available in their website. So I was scrapping this data and getting alerted (via telegram bot[1]) when the gym was operating under 50% the capacity and therefore avoiding wasting my time.

Reference:

[1]: https://core.telegram.org/bots

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#376

Post by Unklejoe »

enumjorge wrote: post #348
lucideer wrote: post #64

NOTE: I don't know what Zom is so ignoring it in the below. Viber, WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Threema and Discord are all built on the same paradigm: accounts tied to a single service and thus the inertia of network effect makes vendor lock-in a real problem when acquisitions happen or Terms of Service change. Signal is in theory the "best" of these 5 options in the short-term, but it being open source is utterly ir…

That may be true, but I can’t encourage my social circle to move to an alternative that isn’t polished and has a great user experience for non-technical users. It’s a non starter. Even if I did, the moment they start using it and a) it’s confusing b) most of their circle is using something else, they’ll a) drop it b) ignore my future suggestions :). Take Matrix for example. I had heard of it but hadn’t really looked…

> There’s no official client

For all intents and purposes, Element is the official client. It used to be called Riot, but was recently renamed.

Honestly, I think they should have just called it "Matrix". I'm guessing they didn't do that because they want to promote the concept of multiple clients without any single "official" client, but it would really simplify things.

As of now, I have to tell people "Use Matrix, but you need this app called Element to get on to it". It's confusing for a lot of people.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#377

Post by sprash »

webmobdev wrote: post #307
lbj wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I quit WhatsApp, Facebook et al and went with Signal. Initially it was hard converting people to a privacy oriented service, but today I have an endless list of open chats in Signal.

Consider Jami - https://jami.net/ - instead of Signal.

This!

We have to switch to decentralized open source solutions. I have tested Jami and the video conferencing functionality works great on Android.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#378

Post by slothtrop »

apexalpha wrote: post #155

Where 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.

As someone who's never used such a service, help me understand what's so critical about it. Can't people just send SMS? Aren't people on fb anyway, which can be accessed with a container on Firefox?

EDIT: got some answers re SMS. Fine, though that doesn't explain why there is so much overlap/redundancy with social media applications. At a glance, it appears I could do the very same things (groups, multimedia) messaging people on facebook without having to install an app, and if people are on whatsapp they're almost 100% on facebook.

Apparently the "critical" nature of this is the facility of sending high rates of pictures and videos to others. I suspect mere FOMO owing to group-chat being localized there is enough to keep some people from cutting the cord, not the ability to communicate to multiple people in itself. People really are addicted to each other.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#379

Post by fsdfgsfsdfsdfsd »

ValentineC wrote: post #235
dustinmoris wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How do you sync and preserve your SMS? Whenever I migrate phones, it is always the most painful part.
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