81–90 of 112 posts
> 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.
“WhatsApp’s existing users were held captive by the fact that leaving WhatsApp meant losing the ability to communicate with WhatsApp users.” I'm confused. I thought everyone was identified by their phone number, which can be used to receive texts from anyone.
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…
Absolutely! Also prior to WhatsApp messaging was even more of a walled garden. The ‘best’ was BBM - I lived in Canada for a year and you pretty much needed a blackberry to message friends because that’s what everyone had. I had moved back to the U.K. when the iPhone came out, and I originally didn’t want it because a lack of BBM meant it would be more difficult to keep in touch with my Canadian friends. When WhatsApp…
All apps and internet services will lock you in to some degree. Every app or service is game for targeted ads and selling data for bucks at some point in their revenue lifecycle. It won't make a dent in the model to have FOSS as a substitute. When behind FOSS there's a business, there's money to be made, salaries to pay and shares to be exchanged for growth and profit.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much money can you expect to make from users that can't afford $1/year? I can't imagine that you get a lot from ads in that target population.
It isn't about "not being able to afford". Why pay $1 when a free alternative is available?
So even people with good incomes are super stingy when it comes to paying even a couple of bucks for things that they are used to being free and don't care much for online privacy as long as their basic needs are being met.
IMHO, until a massive hack/leak hits one of these free services, people can't be bothered to care.
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…
[Am author] I chose WhatsApp because it was a good example for a case study and because recent events made it a hot topic. I also described two non-WhatsApp examples exhibiting user domestication (one of which wasn't even an instant messenger). It wasn't my intention to imply that WhatsApp was the first instant messenger to exhibit these behaviors; I even linked to a Wikipedia article comparing instant messenger prot…
A minor comment on the second rule for WhatsApp users:
> Everyone’s mobile device must run an operating system supported by said client.
This also implies that everyone must own a (not too old) smartphone running either of those two OSes, with the user having accepted a EULA for the respective app-stores. I feel strongly that the requirement of using a smartphone even when a (not too old) desktop or laptop computer is available and technically capable of performing the same client-side tasks is a significant curbing of a user's software freedom. It may warrant mentioning explicitly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it was also a timing issue. Paying per SMS was a thing in the US when texting was novel ($0.10/SMS or so, IIRC?) but the US seemed to move to unlimited texting sooner than most places. However, today in the European country I live in it's almost impossible to find plans that don't include unlimited SMS, but it perhaps happened "too late" to take over messaging now that online platforms offer effectively free…
As a European teenager I always laughed at America for having to pay for SMS receipt. Ours were free and sending was free up to some ridiculously huge amount. Then I started dating a girl from another town and got a $500 sms bill. Oops This was before data, WAP was barely a thing. Circa 2004. We texted our days away at school. Got very good at touch typing under the desk.
It also depended on your plan, the cheaper the plan, the less freebies you had and parents never got their kids the top spec plan. My parents only got me a cell-phone with a pre-paid SIM for "emergencies" and didn't have enough credit on it to text too many people so IM over yahoo! messenger on the PC was used by teens for chatting at the time.
Growing up in Eastern Europe with a basic cell-phone plan, before the days of all you can talk/text, it was common to "beep"[1] people when you were on a prepaid SIM and had little or no credit on it.
[1]Calling someone and quickly hanging up after hearing the phone "ring" or "beep", and hope the person on the other end heard it and cares enough about you to spend their dime calling you back. It was also a sign of stinginess/poverty if you did this but it was very popular due to the high cost and low wages at the time.
The example with Signal is great: I tried to explain to people that yes, it is way better to use it instead of whatsapp, but still suboptimal compared to other solutions despite it to maybe be the safest.
For example, I put a lot of value to not depend on a device like a specific phone and be able to easily do backup everything in a processable format!
Email is an open protocol and we are still locked into Gmail and others for a whopping 50% of the market. The fact that you can switch away easily (exporting your inbox) is not enough. Few people actually have their own servers + clients as to be able to claim they are fully independent. It's more of a perceived freedom of choice than reality. For most services just having a 3rd party server, free or paid, is enough…
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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…
Absolutely! Also prior to WhatsApp messaging was even more of a walled garden. The ‘best’ was BBM - I lived in Canada for a year and you pretty much needed a blackberry to message friends because that’s what everyone had. I had moved back to the U.K. when the iPhone came out, and I originally didn’t want it because a lack of BBM meant it would be more difficult to keep in touch with my Canadian friends. When WhatsApp…