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Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#711

Post by Triv888 »

josephg wrote: post #71
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…

Moxie Marlinspike (the guy behind Signal) talked about his rationale for making signal centralized here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj3YFprqAr8 Its been a year and I'm still not sure if I agree with him - which is the sign of a very juicy talk!

You have to include an update mechanism in the core of distributed software?

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#712

Post by agumonkey »

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.

And what about stop smartphone messenging ?

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#713

Post by boogies »

upofadown wrote: post #694
boogies wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can only message people that are using the SAME messaging app as you. No, Matrix supports bridging with about two dozen protocols,¹ many of which support multiple clients (at least 7: IRC, RSS, Email, SMS, Mastodon, libpurple —actually a library supporting multiple protocols including IRC and XMPP— and Twitter) — some of which have dozens if not hundreds of clients. ¹IRC, Slack, RSS, Gitter, Discord, RocketChat…

The linked to page does not mention XMPP...

Right, it mentions libpurple (represented by the purple square https://matrix.org/bridges/#libpurple), which is a library (probably best known for use in the Pidgin frontend) that can use 10 protocols without plugins, including XMPP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_(software)#Supported_pr...

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#714

Post by aloukissas »

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.

It's more like canceling your contract with your ISP, but you don't live in the US and you have options wrt to ISP and you have plenty others to choose from :)

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#715

Post by Leherenn »

Smaug123 wrote: post #618
jokethrowaway wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if as a user I'm happy to get a free service and be tracked?

Governments exist in large part to solve problems of the form "all individuals are incentivised to take actions which, when universally taken, are detrimental to the commons".

I am not sure it is a problem for most people though, if anything I believe most people would not like the alternative.

If the choice is between being tracked, which results in many things being free (as in beer) with otherwise almost no practical visible consequences for most people (different ads?), or having to pay for each and every service but no tracking, I think you would face a huge backlash if you forced the latter.

A solution could be to have free access if you accept tracking and pay otherwise, but I believe this is illegal under GDPR.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#716

Post by ffpip »

ignoramous wrote: post #678
ffpip wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is essentially the Google model. What? Google uses all your info for creepy personalized ads. Telegram is showing the same ads to everyone in a channel. And it isn't in 1:1 chats cuz they're supposed to be non-intrusive and gives a feeling of privacy. Who is the 'maintainer'? Telegram is the only entity here.

The data is still on Telegram's servers, unencrypted. They may be doing ads in a channel/group, but I don't think for one second that's where they're going to stop now that they've entered that rabbit hole. By the time you'd realise, it'd be too late, since they've got your data on their servers, unencrypted. This is strictly worse than WhatsApp. https://gizmodo.com/the-dangers-of-techs-privacy-promises-18...

> This is strictly worse than WhatsApp.

How? Google has all the whatsapp chats via the drive backups which 98% of users enable. fake E2EE

Telegram has an open API, alternative clients and free cloud storage.

They explain very well why they didn't want to give misleading e2ee claims like whatsapp https://telegra.ph/Why-Isnt-Telegram-End-to-End-Encrypted-by...

It is open source.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#717

Post by adverbly »

I'm curious to get people's take on how they are approaching this migration.

One thing that I am considering is keeping WhatsApp around without leaving any of my groups, but making very strong efforts to only send new messages through my new service.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#718

Post by Leherenn »

411111111111111 wrote: post #525
jimbokun wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Eh, it's not like "the nerds" can build a better product in terms of UX anyway, and definitely can't market it better. Um, the original WhatsApp company was pretty much run by nerds, I thought, who made a product with UX so good they organically built a user base so large that FaceBook paid $16 billion for the company?

The service even cost money. A chat service for which you paid money to use. That was actually the argument why a lot of people used it, because "if you're paying for it, you know that they don't have shady business practices" The only thing that surprises me is how long this change took. I expected them to do this when they removed the subscription.

Wasn't it only after the first year? That meant you could try it for free which is huge for adoption.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#719

Post by gcblkjaidfj »

FiloSottile wrote: post #232
Lazare wrote: post #56

Telegram 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.

Whatsapp group messages are also not encrypted. I mean, it is, but with the server keys.
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