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Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

news.ycombinator.com

71–80 of 132 posts

Re: Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

#71
post #27

Seems global outage: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/25/whatsapp-is-down-globally.ht... Each time this happens I try to recruit more people to use Signal.

How is Signal any better? US based, centralized, hostile towards alternate clients. Not much better IMO.

I'd say it's a lot better since it doesn't do unknown things with your address book. It actually doesn't do any unknown things and the fact that they're US based is irrelevant since they have nothing to give away thanks to E2EE.

Re: Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

#73

In Europe it's used a lot by small businesses etc. it's pretty bad if it's not reliable. The metaverse better be real good, else Meta will be in serious decline.

If it's not decentralized like the internet itself, it will never work. Over and over again we learn that centralization doesn't not work.

WhatsApp is used by billions of people with minimal downtime. The fact that the outage is such a big deal flies in the face of this statement.

Decentralization is not a panacea. You just have to pick your poison.

Re: Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

#77
post #27

Seems global outage: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/25/whatsapp-is-down-globally.ht... Each time this happens I try to recruit more people to use Signal.

How is Signal any better? US based, centralized, hostile towards alternate clients. Not much better IMO.

Much better in that it is open source (so you can audit the e2ee), and it does a lot about metadata. It is actually better at protecting metadata than many decentralized alternatives.

Nobody said it was perfect. It's just better.

Re: Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like people don't see the timeline. As much as I hate Zuck, his current 3D playground is probably comparable to a 70's video game, and his vision is that the Metaverse future is Skyrim or GTA5, I guess that'd be a Matrix-like virtual world. Imagine a headset with a 360 degree camera, so you can broadcast your surroundings, and someone else can wear their VR headset and be seeing what your camera is seeing. Or…

Sounds terribly stupid to me. This technology needs drastic minimization to become seriously popular.

So? Is that not possible? Maybe Zuck is just thinking of a 10+ year timeline, but people (you?) expect The Matrix, now!

Re: Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

#79
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Signal any better? US based, centralized, hostile towards alternate clients. Not much better IMO.

Much better in that it is open source (so you can audit the e2ee), and it does a lot about metadata. It is actually better at protecting metadata than many decentralized alternatives. Nobody said it was perfect. It's just better.

WhatsApp actually uses signal protocol for e2ee

Re: Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

#80
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every SMS I send nationally costs me 0.30€ my brother. I am not even going to bother looking what it costs me to text outside the country (even if inside the EU) or to send an MMS.

I haven't had to pay for SMS in the last decade. Even roaming is free in the EU too. Do we live in divergent Europe timelines or something?

>I haven't had to pay for SMS in the last decade. Even roaming is free in the EU too.

Whether you pay for SMS or not depends on your telco. Regarding roaming, let's say that you pay the same you'd pay if you were in your country if you leave the country, but you still pay different rates if you try to call or text someone from another country (whether you are roaming or not)

>Do we live in divergent Europe timelines or something?

Despite what the propaganda may have lead you to think, life in Europe is very different depending on your country.

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