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

WhatsApp and the Domestication of Users

seirdy.one

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 112 posts

Re: WhatsApp and the Domestication of Users

#61

Post by Seirdy »

strogonoff wrote: post #37

Social media and instant messaging giants of the world are incentivised to prefer the captive user over the paying user. (I prefer the term “lock-in” over “domestication” to highlight the ethically questionable nature of it.) A piece of US legislation could address this. For example, if a business that connects people to people—such as a social network, an instant messenger, etc.—grows larger than X users, it could b…

[Am author] We kinda already have this:

> If big players are required to offer a fully featured API, and the user can switch freely, they would be incentivised to stop taking their money from the advertiser and charge the user directly, becoming a commodity like electricity.

> That way you could switch between messaging providers freely, while using your preferred client app. Messaging providers will be competing on which one is the most reliable, ethical, has the most complete API, and so on.

You've...uh...literally described the Fediverse.

In addition to having multiple hosting providers/instances, there are different implementations; Mastodon and Pleroma are twitter-likes, WriteFreely is for long-form blogging, PeerTube is for video (like YouTube), PixelFed is for photos (like Instagram)...the list goes on. All these implementations share an API; someone's PeerTube video can show up in my Pleroma stream, and a Mastodon user can comment under a WriteFreely blog entry.

Mastodon-to-Mastodon migrations are quite seamless; you can keep your followers and everything. Other implementations have a bit of work to do.

EDIT: I'm afraid I worded this very poorly. I don't want to take away from what the parent comment was trying to say (far from); I'm saying that we have a useful example of what that comment describes.

Re: WhatsApp and the Domestication of Users

#62

Post by Seirdy »

stirlo wrote: post #36

People forget that WhatsApp used to have a subscription that cost $1 per year. With 1 billion users that's plenty enough money to pay for their infrastructure. Imagine if they'd kept that business model rather than being bought out by FB and sucked into their data harvesting swamp.

I responded to a similar perspective: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25985086

TLDR: the best platforms don't need to scale (in the traditional sense), and only need a revenue stream to pay for software development. Simplicity of the software can reduce development effort and therefore the budget.

Re: WhatsApp and the Domestication of Users

#63

Post by Seirdy »

chrisdone wrote: post #13

Someone said the problem of WhatsApp is network effects. Network effects are fine. Email benefits from network effects. The difference is that email is designed to be decentralized and from the beginning had many clients with open protocols. IRC similar. And of course, the web browser itself. DNS. Back when these were invented, people had many different operating systems and architectures, so the protocol was more im…

[Am author] From the article:

> To prevent a network effect from turning into vendor lock-in, software that naturally encourages a network effect needs to be part of an open platform. In the case of communication/messaging software, it should be possible to make alternative clients and servers that are compatible with each other to prevent completion of user domestication’s first two steps.

You are absolutely correct about network effects; a network effect only leads to vendor lock-in when it's combined with a closed platform. Vendor lock-in then leaves users vulnerable to possible domestication.

I've been thinking about implementation diversity lately, and will likely write a follow-up addressing the possibility of an open platform becoming closed. Implementation diversity is one means to keeping open platforms from closing up.

Original inspiration for this idea came from another comment I responded to a few mins ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25985365

Re: WhatsApp and the Domestication of Users

#64

Post by peteretep »

smoovb wrote: post #12

WhatsApp grew to its size because of its first mover advantage. The completion, SMS, had the highest cost of data transmission on the planet, so not hard to see the reason for its growth. WhatsApp squandered their early lead with slow development and so competitors like Line, Viber, Wechat and Telegram all came later and added features and took market share. If you are an international business person, you have all t…

> WhatsApp grew to its size because of its first mover advantage

Whaaaat? There were plenty of chat apps before WhatsApp that were free.

> WhatsApp squandered their early lead with slow development

Mmm, the story that _I_ have been told is that WhatsApp was prevented from getting any better because the desire was to get people to move to Messenger.

This has been a reasonably effective strategy, although I note their are markets (like Thailand) where everybody just switched to Line instead

Re: WhatsApp and the Domestication of Users

#65

Post by [deleted] »

ksec wrote: post #47

I am not sure where to begin. WhatsApp didn't create any of these. Before that it was MSN, and before MSN it was ICQ / AIM. Instant messenger has been around for a very long time. Every Single criticism of WhatsApp could be said to any of the above. I felt the author made it as WhatsApp was specifically designed from Facebook for target advertising. For a long time, even after Facebook acquisition WhatsApp has little…

[deleted]

Re: WhatsApp and the Domestication of Users

#66

Post by closeparen »

strogonoff wrote: post #37

Social media and instant messaging giants of the world are incentivised to prefer the captive user over the paying user. (I prefer the term “lock-in” over “domestication” to highlight the ethically questionable nature of it.) A piece of US legislation could address this. For example, if a business that connects people to people—such as a social network, an instant messenger, etc.—grows larger than X users, it could b…

Some of those third party clients will abuse user data, and then the original platform will be held responsible for allowing it.

Re: WhatsApp and the Domestication of Users

#67

Post by jkaplowitz »

toast0 wrote: post #59
worker767424 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if a business that connects people to people—such as a social network, an instant messenger, etc.—grows larger than X users, it could be required to allow fully-featured third-party clients to exist I might get some of the details wrong, but AT&T was forced to let smaller ISPs or telcos into their exchanges so they could set up equipment and act as an independent ISP on AT&T's copper. This wasn't huge win for small…

Line shared DSL had a lot of problems in the US, but it worked well overseas. For one, AT&T got most of the orders because their retail prices were often lower (sometimes quite a bit lower) than the wholesale prices they charged to smaller ISPs. It's really hard to compete like that. Add in fun things like initially line shared services were often over dry pair (no dial tone) and telephone company lineman often used…

They never should have let the same company own the wire and provide retail service. The retail part of AT&T should have had to pay the same rates to the wire owner as everyone else. And penalties should have been applied to the lineman's employer if they caused a loss of service without properly checking the database of the wire owner company.

Alas, as you say, that's not how it happened.

Re: WhatsApp and the Domestication of Users

#68

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

> WhatsApp rose by trapping previously-free beings in their corral and changing their habits to create dependence on masters.

wtf? WhatsApp is one of a long line of chat systems that will come and go. It must be the 20th chat system I've used in the last 30 years. There will be another 20.

Get over yourself, author.

Re: WhatsApp and the Domestication of Users

#69

Post by goatinaboat »

strogonoff wrote: post #50
TacticalCoder wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... social media and instant messaging giants of the world are incentivised to prefer the captive user over the paying user. What's the incentive though? That approximately zero user would ever pay for a social media or messaging app? I think they simply have no other viable business model whatsoever.

I don’t think people are any less willing to pay for social media than they are for their phone and it’s time we recognized that. The largest player in social wants to normalize free service and lock-in: this way its users can come but can hardly leave, competition is impossible since no one can undercut it on price, and its leverage with the advertiser approaches infinity. Now, the moment big social is legally oblig…

FB understands that the earlier it revamps its business model, the more revenue it can generate from actually paying users

Facebook will exploit paying users even more, since a demonstrable willingness to pay makes you a more valuable set of eyeballs for advertising. That’s the fly in the ointment.

Re: WhatsApp and the Domestication of Users

#70

Post by strogonoff »

goatinaboat wrote: post #69
strogonoff wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think people are any less willing to pay for social media than they are for their phone and it’s time we recognized that. The largest player in social wants to normalize free service and lock-in: this way its users can come but can hardly leave, competition is impossible since no one can undercut it on price, and its leverage with the advertiser approaches infinity. Now, the moment big social is legally oblig…

FB understands that the earlier it revamps its business model, the more revenue it can generate from actually paying users Facebook will exploit paying users even more, since a demonstrable willingness to pay makes you a more valuable set of eyeballs for advertising. That’s the fly in the ointment.

They would either be legally liable, or must reflect this in ToS—benefitting the next provider with simpler ToS.

And remember, they would pretty much lose the ability to show ads (where mined data is used for targeting), since getting rid of them becomes as easy as switching to another client.

Post reply on HN