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WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem

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Re: WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem

#111

Post by joshuaissac »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #104
cosmodisk wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's got a point tbh. We are having family members who are just about manage to operate WhatsApp. To talk about them booking flights or shopping on Amazon is the equivalent of flying to Mars tomorrow. I reckon there are tens if not hundreds of millions of users who just about manage to answer a call or reply to a message. An average HN reader is probably 0.01% in terms of understanding how to use tech, but there's 99…

But how do they pay their taxes? Sign up for electricity or a mobile phone? Literally everything now requires an electronic account somewhere. I now have 200+ accounts in my Password manager. Sure, I know I'm part of the 0.01%. But I can't imagine that there's anyone who does own a smartphone but still has less than 10 online accounts somewhere :) You just need them for too many basic necessities of life these days.…

> But how do they pay their taxes?

Have the employer or pension provider deduct any applicable taxes, and the rest gets paid to the payee. If they do not live in a country where that happens automatically, they could still hire a local accountant.

> Sign up for electricity

Can be done by phone. But if they already have electricity in their home, then even that is not necessary.

> or a mobile phone?

This can still be done in store. In some countries, in-store is still the only way.

An online account may make some of these basic necessities cheaper and more convenient to access, but it is not the only option.

Re: WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem

#112

Post by the__alchemist »

CJefferson wrote: post #11

I really sympathise with this point of view, but when it comes to messaging with family and friends, I just don't really care. Matrix seems to want to be an IRC replacement rather than a one-to-one / small-group chat app. That's fine, but often not what I want. Teaching my mother in law to use Signal: Install. Accept permissions. Choose a PIN. I can send you messages. You can see your friends who already use Signal.…

I still can't figure out how to verify my log in, or make the popups asking me to verify go away.

Re: WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem

#113

Post by t3chguy »

hiq wrote: post #105
betterunix2 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It is _very_ frustrating that the internet has had messenger fragmentation since the beginning of time" If you ignore IRC... "Signal just works." It also contributes to the fragmentation you complained about, because it is closed -- no federation, no third party clients, not even a web client. If you are on a platform the Signal team does not have time to deal with then there is no option for you. If you have a spec…

Signal is still an improvement over other non-federated messengers in that it's open-source, so you actually can try to improve the situation, although it's notoriously difficult. As an example of more platform support: https://github.com/signalapp/ringrtc/pull/12 signal-cli is an example of a 3rd party client which is tolerated for now: https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli The main problem right now is that they don'…

Open Source but not actively accepting contributions is not a great place to be. Especially when you can't federate, so you are stuck using the central server which basically doesn't accept code contributions. Take a look at https://merge-chance.info/target?repo=https://github.com/sig...

Also it is somewhat interesting that this Open Source centralised Signal server, where centralisation means you can move quicker, hasn't seen a commit in 10 months.

Compare it to Matrix Synapse https://merge-chance.info/target?repo=https://github.com/mat...

The story with the flagship clients in both spaces is very similar.

Re: WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem

#114

Post by Retr0spectrum »

ppf wrote: post #42

They don't mention the other issue - Whatsapp and similar are, if anything, the worst form of social media. You have shallow conversations that dribble your attention away throughout your entire day, yet you have not gained any meaningful interaction.

I don't know how to phrase this without it sounding unnecessarily mean, but maybe you're just talking to shallow people?

Other than platforms with character count limits like Twitter, I don't see why the platform itself should have much affect on the depth or meaningfulness of conversations.

Re: WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem

#115

Post by CJefferson »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #104
cosmodisk wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's got a point tbh. We are having family members who are just about manage to operate WhatsApp. To talk about them booking flights or shopping on Amazon is the equivalent of flying to Mars tomorrow. I reckon there are tens if not hundreds of millions of users who just about manage to answer a call or reply to a message. An average HN reader is probably 0.01% in terms of understanding how to use tech, but there's 99…

But how do they pay their taxes? Sign up for electricity or a mobile phone? Literally everything now requires an electronic account somewhere. I now have 200+ accounts in my Password manager. Sure, I know I'm part of the 0.01%. But I can't imagine that there's anyone who does own a smartphone but still has less than 10 online accounts somewhere :) You just need them for too many basic necessities of life these days.…

In my experience they ask their children and grandchildren, which has become significantly harder during the pandemic.

Re: WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem

#116

Post by drcongo »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #58
CJefferson wrote: post #11

I really sympathise with this point of view, but when it comes to messaging with family and friends, I just don't really care. Matrix seems to want to be an IRC replacement rather than a one-to-one / small-group chat app. That's fine, but often not what I want. Teaching my mother in law to use Signal: Install. Accept permissions. Choose a PIN. I can send you messages. You can see your friends who already use Signal.…

If your mother in law can't even pick a username and password, how will she shop on Amazon, sign up with Google, book a flight? Most other mobile apps require you to sign up for an account too. And it bypasses the big problem of having to use your phone number (though you can already add it if you want for people to easily find you!) In regards to the UX of Elements, I think it's not great either but it's not the onl…

> And it bypasses the big problem of having to use your phone number

To the vast majority of people this is a feature, not a problem. You sign up to WhatsApp by installing the app, that's pretty much it. Once it's installed, you can message anyone else you have a phone number who happens to have the app.

You also don't need a username for Amazon, Google or booking a flight, and you certainly don't need to try to find out what someone else's username is before you can message them on WhatsApp.

Re: WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem

#117

Post by drcongo »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #104
cosmodisk wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's got a point tbh. We are having family members who are just about manage to operate WhatsApp. To talk about them booking flights or shopping on Amazon is the equivalent of flying to Mars tomorrow. I reckon there are tens if not hundreds of millions of users who just about manage to answer a call or reply to a message. An average HN reader is probably 0.01% in terms of understanding how to use tech, but there's 99…

But how do they pay their taxes? Sign up for electricity or a mobile phone? Literally everything now requires an electronic account somewhere. I now have 200+ accounts in my Password manager. Sure, I know I'm part of the 0.01%. But I can't imagine that there's anyone who does own a smartphone but still has less than 10 online accounts somewhere :) You just need them for too many basic necessities of life these days.…

You don't need to know someone else's username when paying your taxes, signing up for electricity or using a mobile phone.

Re: WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem

#118

Post by hiq »

t3chguy wrote: post #113
hiq wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal is still an improvement over other non-federated messengers in that it's open-source, so you actually can try to improve the situation, although it's notoriously difficult. As an example of more platform support: https://github.com/signalapp/ringrtc/pull/12 signal-cli is an example of a 3rd party client which is tolerated for now: https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli The main problem right now is that they don'…

Open Source but not actively accepting contributions is not a great place to be. Especially when you can't federate, so you are stuck using the central server which basically doesn't accept code contributions. Take a look at https://merge-chance.info/target?repo=https://github.com/sig... Also it is somewhat interesting that this Open Source centralised Signal server, where centralisation means you can move quicker, h…

Sure, I was mostly comparing Signal to proprietary centralized messengers here, not to FOSS decentralized messengers. Indeed they could do better.

Re: WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem

#119

Post by alvarlagerlof »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #104
cosmodisk wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's got a point tbh. We are having family members who are just about manage to operate WhatsApp. To talk about them booking flights or shopping on Amazon is the equivalent of flying to Mars tomorrow. I reckon there are tens if not hundreds of millions of users who just about manage to answer a call or reply to a message. An average HN reader is probably 0.01% in terms of understanding how to use tech, but there's 99…

But how do they pay their taxes? Sign up for electricity or a mobile phone? Literally everything now requires an electronic account somewhere. I now have 200+ accounts in my Password manager. Sure, I know I'm part of the 0.01%. But I can't imagine that there's anyone who does own a smartphone but still has less than 10 online accounts somewhere :) You just need them for too many basic necessities of life these days.…

They don't do it themselves

Re: WhatsApp and most alternatives share the same problem

#120

Post by betterunix2 »

hiq wrote: post #106
betterunix2 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember OTR messaging? The benefit of an open system like XMPP is that you can add end-to-end encryption if you want to do so. Really though, why is end-to-end encryption the one thing that should disqualify a system? What about a10y, i18n, etc.? For a vision-impaired user a10y matters a whole lot more than encryption. That is the real point of openness and federation -- allowing users' needs to be met by any develo…

> Really though, why is end-to-end encryption the one thing that should disqualify a system? Because security as an afterthought is known to fail.

Empathy, the Gnome messaging software, has yet to implement end-to-end encryption because of this mode of thinking. Rather than implement OTR they said they felt it was better to implement a protocol with E2E built in since it would be supported by native clients (what does that even mean for XMPP?). As a result, their users never had end-to-end encrypted messaging at all.

That is what being religious about these things gets you. Signal is completely closed and its users are at the mercy of the developers. XMPP+OTR was a kludge but it worked and the only reason the outstanding problems were not resolved is that the cryptographers behind OTR decided to focus on Signal. Matrix is basically irrelevant right now and whatever security benefits it might have are equally irrelevant because very few people are using it.

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