Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

551–560 of 972 posts

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#551

Post by kroltan »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #497
qwertox wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why would you want your government to mandate how technology works? Sounds like a recipe for disaster and the perfect way to stifle innovation

Is it not reasonable to demand interoperability for one of the main methods of communication in the entire world?

Forcing a specific standard is problematic, but it would be reasonable to ask any communication service to provide a fully documented and public API with features and access equal to the features and access of the official application.

Random nerds make integrations to whatever application/protocol is in vogue, business still gets to have complete freedom in where their take their API and thus their product.

---

I would even go as far as to say that every web-service should be machine-consumable in that fashion, but that's beyond the point.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#552

Post by xenocratus »

metafunctor wrote: post #500
rodolphoarruda wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (…

I'm having a hard time understanding how WhatsApp could be convenient enough to replace most online services and apps. Do you send text messages with some magic keywords to order at Burger King, or is there a person on the other end reading it, or how does that work? How do you pay? How do you browse the menu? I don't understand.

Don't know if they have a video example or something, but:

https://www.ordering.co/whatsapp-ordering

EDIT: They do have an example that you can try out, around the middle of the page

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#553

Post by Quiark »

eitland wrote: post #512
nebulous1 wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although they're client/server encrypted, I think contextually it was obvious that the person was talking about end-to-end encryption. "Encrypted chat" means end-to-end encrypted, if it's used to mean client/server encrypted then that's misleading.

Encryped chat might mean E2E-encrypted yes, but even then why not add those four extra letters "E2E-" and make it obvious? Besides, here is what I replied to: > As a reminder, Telegram groups are not encrypted at all [...] (emphasis mine) This is very possible to misunderstand for someone who isn't aware and the result might easily be that they stay in their abusive relationship with WhatsApp because of such FUD. As…

I still fail to see how switching from fully E2E encrypted WhatsApp to most-of-the-time NOT E2E encrypted Telegram is an improvement.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#554

Post by pbhjpbhj »

agd wrote: post #530
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.

> Critical social infrastructure At least for the UK, this is not at all the case. It’s perfectly feasible to socialise and do business without going anywhere near WhatsApp.

[UK] All the school chat for my kids, both for secondary schoolers and for us as parents, is on WhatsApp. Amongst my family WhatsApp is the primary means of group communication.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#555

Post by speeder »

itsnot2020 wrote: post #492
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…

The reason I originally signed-up to WhatsApp was because of spending more and more time in Brazil and realising how ingrained in society it is. Even though a lot of my friends and family there have iPhones, none use iMessage.

iMessage is just too risky.

Reason is that it is also an interface for SMS, and SMS in Brazil is obscenely crazy expensive, some operators might charge 1 BRL per message or stuff like that (for context: 1 BRL is the price of a cup of coffee or of a bottle of water), using iMessage and having it to switch to SMS without you noticing can rack bills that are easily bigger than your wages.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#557

Post by dalu »

I use Telegram because in the Linux group on Google+ it was advertised as the better messenging alternative, and a while ago Russia wanted access to their data and when they refused some IPs were blocked by the Russian government.

Idk if that was just a market trick or if it was real.

In Telegram you don't get censored. But it lacks the essential blocking people feature.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#558

Post by atum47 »

jbotz wrote: post #283
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.

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…

Brazilian here confirming everything you've said. I have about 15 people that I chat in a daily basis, no way I can convince them to switch.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#559

Post by alias_neo »

Vinnl wrote: post #507
alias_neo wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, that's how I understand it to work; TEE (Trusted Execution Environment).

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#560

Post by up6w6 »

dunefox wrote: post #457
arnoooooo wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The governance until now might have been very different, but Telegram is to VK what Whatsapp is to Facebook. In a way, you could say that the enemy of your enemy is your friend, but I'd still recommend Matrix as a seemingly more future-proof alternative.

Matrix does not offer the same UX at all. I say this as someone who uses both. Telegram is just better as a frontend in every way.

Telegram apps are open source, I wonder if it would be simple to make it work with matrix's protocol.
Post reply on HN