491–500 of 972 posts
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.
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.
Well, I don't know where parent is located, but here in Brazil they are pretty much right. Everybody has WhatsApp... it's assumed that if you have a phone you have WhatsApp. A lot of financial transactions are conducted by doing a bank transfer and then sending the receipt via WhatsApp. The schools send essential messages to parents via WhatsApp. During lockdowns, stores were taking delivery orders via WhatsApp. What…
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) messagi…
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WhatsApp allows Group Conversations and Sharing Media (Pictures, Videos, Files, Audio Files, GPS Location, Video Calls). SMS and MMS can not cope with that in large quantity like 100mbs of video files and hundred of pictures, because data is cheaper than MMS costs. This Privacy policy change whill allow Facebook, who bought WhatsApp, to extract all these data for their own purpose, before it was not the case.
Can't all this be done on facebook?
Is this a typo for Zoom?
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I find it interesting to that people don't use WhatsApp at all. Many posts here are claiming not using WhatsApp is impossible. Grandparent's experience demonstrate that it is.
It's not that surprising. If you live in the US and don't need to text people in other countries, you probably can avoid WhatsApp pretty easily, but it's pretty much the defacto option for texting non-US family and friends, and in many countries it's the predominant form of mass communication.
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I think it’s simpler. Boycotts don’t work at an individual level. I have been boycotting nestle for decades. Can’t say they’ve become less evil. That’s because the marginal effect is negligible for them and strongly negative for the individual (assuming you’re a fan of Kit Kat’s). Network effects amplify the marginal impact on the individual, because they lead to a monopoly with no true competition. Sure, you can lea…
I wish the EU would force messaging systems to also support interactions with XMPP or other similar open standards. There's nothing in their way to expect such a thing, except the lobbyists.
Sounds like a recipe for disaster and the perfect way to stifle innovation
From the listed alternatives, only Matrix is the one that actually solves the issue of not having to trust our communications to any single monopolistic entity. You could add XMPP there as well, but it really doesn't matter. What does matter is for us to start pushing for openness and start evangelizing/helping others to adopt anything that puts us back in control of our communication. This is the one thing to fix, a…
> It's work to run/manage a server: find a hosting provider I'm thinking it might be time to accept that 'we', hackers/nerds/technically inclined individuals/early adopters, start 'selling' and providing these services for our families and friends. Assuming you are involved with communick: I like the idea of, but I am not sold on moving my communications etc to some random llc. Especially with as little information a…
Regarding trust. You don't have to trust me. That is one of the best things regarding end-to-end encryption. To be completely honest, the main issues now is (1) bus factor (I am mostly working alone on it, but I do have people that can take over this in case something happens to me) and (2) I am bootstrapped and not working full-time yet. Alas, both of these issues are the type that resolve themselves by having paying customers.
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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…
> 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. It is: https://mobile.twitter.com/moxie/status/1281353119369097217 > Our goal with PINs is to enable non-phone # based addressing. Since that will mean your Signal contacts can't live in your address book anymore, they're Signal's res…
It's been a few months since I worked with their codebase but at the time it relied on Intel SGX for the contact storage Enclave, which is now considered compromised[0]. Additionally, if you wanted to run your own, the requirements to get licensed to use the Enclave are non-trivial.
Opinions are my own, I represent no one, etc, etc.
[0]https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/03/hacke...
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Well, I don't know where parent is located, but here in Brazil they are pretty much right. Everybody has WhatsApp... it's assumed that if you have a phone you have WhatsApp. A lot of financial transactions are conducted by doing a bank transfer and then sending the receipt via WhatsApp. The schools send essential messages to parents via WhatsApp. During lockdowns, stores were taking delivery orders via WhatsApp. What…
I'm in Brazil as well. Everybody uses Whatsapp. It is now so entrenched into society that it turned to be part of its popular culture. When people say "I'm part of a group of old car enthusiasts", they meant they are part of a Whatsapp group in which they discuss old cars. Countless online services and apps were replaced by Whatsapp over the years, from the top of my head: all IMs, customer service apps, e-commerce (…