Poll: Switching from WhatsApp • Hacker News Board

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#501

Post by proactivesvcs » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 3:25 PM UTC

shiftingleft wrote: post #254

ValentineC wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you care about such things, I think Signal wins hands down. And the UX is fine, just not quite as good as Telegram in my view. Signal (by design, probably) has no chat sync or backup. That's a dealbreaker in my book. Edit: looks like chat history transfer has been a feature since June 2020: https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/9/21280664/signal-chat-trans...

It does have a backup functionality, which unlike WhatsApp's doesn't store your messages unencrypted. It also doesn't force you to use a specific storage provider. If you want to have it synced, you can point your favorite sync client at it. https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007059752-Ba... Additionally, they've introduced an optional PIN which you can use to recover profile, contacts and settings when…

No backup on iOS, only a live move of Signal data from one working iOS handset to another.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#502

Post by Markoff » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 3:25 PM UTC

Google Messages have E2E encryption and support SMS, if other party doesn't have Chat feature, only comparable app is Signal, I used it for years until I gave up after nagging PIN popup, during this period I experienced extensive problems with sending/receiving problems if you often switch between mobile network and WiFi Signal is very slow to recognize this and choose the best network, while Whatsapp does this almost instantly

Signal has also pretty horrible management, I remember one day outage for many house because admins in US just went sleep, so Signal is all nice if you dont care about reliability and can get through bad UX, for instance very well hidden option for force sending SMS to Signal contact through long tap Send button, there is now ay to find this during using the app

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#503

Post by infinite_beam » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 3:26 PM UTC

rodolphoarruda wrote: post #470

jbotz wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (…

WhatsApp reigns supreme in India as well; we now have characters in TV shows and movies saying lines like, "I will WhatsApp you the details." WhatsApp might be Zuck's most significant purchase for global domination (at least for now).

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#504

Post by jokethrowaway » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 3:26 PM UTC

What we really need is working and user friendly bridges for all of these.

I think something similar could be achieved client side only by reverse engineering each app's api and maintaining compatibility at every update.

Matrix is close but it's not very user friendly (and I think it requires you to host your own server).

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#505

Post by skrowl » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 3:27 PM UTC

ignoramous wrote: post #252

FiloSottile wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not just see messages, but show you ads as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25520200 Telegram's a down-right bad IM experience compared to WhatsApp despite Facebook's forced integration: You see ads and the chats aren't encrypted.

This is false. No proposed ads in 1:1 or any size group chats, only large channels (which are like RSS feeds, you can join but not post).

In addition 100% of Telegram traffic is encrypted over the wire (like this website, your bank, etc). The only difference with secret chats is that they're end to end encrypted.

Signal is a very bad user experience if you use several devices (phone, tablet, home computer, work computer). Continuing a chat on a different device doesn't work nearly as well as on Telegram where it's flawless.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#506

Post by edwardwatson » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 3:27 PM UTC

I tried to replace WhatsApp with Signal, by telling all my frequent WhatsApp contacts I'm moving to signal and they should download it if they want to talk to me.

About 10% of contacts moved to Signal. I lost touch with the rest and Signal was in many ways worse than WhatsApp for everyday communication.

I ended up using WhatsApp again. For me, it's too popular to leave.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#507

Post by Vinnl » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 3:29 PM UTC

alias_neo wrote: post #499

Vinnl wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Thanks for that. I had a quick look through their blog but couldn't find anything to reference. 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,…

Yeah I think that's still true. That said, as I understand it, the enclave is used as "proof" that they're running the server-side code they say they do (which should be protecting the data), not the data itself. I could definitely be wrong there though.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#508

Post by nebulous1 » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 3:29 PM UTC

gyosko wrote: post #88

The problem is not finding a nice alternative. The problem is that everybody's contacts are on Whatsapp. How do you make THEM switch?

(see edit below)

You won't get them to switch and I use both. I try to get people to switch to Signal for comms with me and the hope is that if more people install it then they'll use it to communicate with each other. The majority of my contacts have not installed it. I am not yet worried enough about the current state of whatsapp that I'm willing to forgo using it entirely.

Signal, at least, is a very easy install and will just locate your contacts by their phone numbers (like WhatsApp) so the technical barrier is very low.

Edit: Oh, I came in to this thread without seeing anything about this new privacy policy. My comment was about the state before that. I'm only looking at the change now.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#509

Post by dustinmoris » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 3:29 PM UTC

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.

> they're part of what I would call "critical social infrastructure."

Really? That seems a depressingly low bar for what you consider "critical". If WhatsApp would disappear tomorrow, I think my social infrastructure would not suffer at all. I still have a smartphone with hundreds of other apps, including iMessage, SMS, and so on..

Besides that, I only consider real human interaction as critical.

> Asking to leave WhatsApp is like cancelling your contract with your ISP and going offline just because you don't like the company.

Sounds kind of depressing again. Not sure where you live, but most countries in the world have more than one ISP. I have switched ISP often in my lifetime. Never was it an issue, nor a massive burden and it has not caused me to go offline at all.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#510

Post by lucideer » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 3:30 PM UTC

ipodopt wrote: post #484

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…

> 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 From a purely technical perspective. However, how organization is structured and who is in it matters: https://signalfoundation.org/ I am in the camp that there are a…

> I am in the camp that there are alot of things we try to solve (and sacrifice things like usability) at a technical level that we should be solving at a social level.

I agree in theory but unfortunately I think we need both. I have little confidence in either on it's own. And I've been burned too much by vendor lock-in in the past to ever advocate for ANY service that isn't federated (I use many non-federated services but out of necessity, I would never sell others on them).

I should add that successful & popular federated online messaging services are something we've had since the 1960s so I have yet to see any compelling reason to be perpetuating the walled-garden approach beyond a preference for a totalitarian approach to ecosystem control.