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

WhatsApp goes down for users globally

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 234 posts

Re: WhatsApp goes down for users globally

#121

Post by rglullis »

smallerfish wrote: post #113
rglullis wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Not OP, but that's not a fair statement. Checking the box of ideals doesn't mean that open source software is off the hook in having to compete on features. Regular users do not give a rat's ass about source code being open; it's an extremely abstract concept if you're not in the field. All they care about is free as in beer. Matrix can either target the niche demographic of the highly technical, or it needs to level…

> Checking the box of ideals doesn't mean that open source software is off the hook in having to compete on features.

No one said that.

> Regular users do not give a rat's ass about source code being open

Open source or not, they should care about reliability, avoiding lock-in, abusive practices from monopolistic players, privacy...

> If these software applications were businesses, their exec teams would have been fired many times over for the atrocious churn.

If these applications were business, you'd also have to look at Cost of Customer Acquisition, at how much is being spent on marketing, you'd also have to see how much your developer team is being compensated, how much they are getting in shares, etc.

If the investment is zero, the ROI from FOSS will be by definition infinitely superior to closed solutions.

What I am trying to say is: TANSTAAFL. OP's seems to not care about his freedoms, so he is willing (like many others) to trade it away for the convenience brought by closed solutions. So it is no surprise that a FOSS project (which has no way to monetize the user to finance its development) will lag behind. This will only change when people start covering some of this difference and start supporting FOSS projects directly.

Re: WhatsApp goes down for users globally

#122

Post by capableweb »

sneak wrote: post #76
dustedcodes wrote: post #44

Even though I do have WhatsApp I wouldn't have noticed without this HN headline. Everyone I message with is via iMessage or Signal nowadays and I only have WhatsApp because I am part of a few sports clubs which have a WhatsApp group but we don't chat enough for me to notice a downtime like today. Makes me happy to see how I've actually managed to rid myself of WhatsApp for the most part.

WhatsApp is end to end encrypted and AFAIK now has encrypted backups. iMessage intentionally preserves a backdoor in its crypto so that the FBI can read approximately every iMessage sent/received without a warrant, should they so desire.

Both whatsapp and imessage are run by american companies, you can sure both of them are compromised and I wouldn't pass US state secrets via either of them.

For the normal person this matters less of course, intelligence services are not interested in your nudes.

Re: WhatsApp goes down for users globally

#124

Post by jraph »

rakoo wrote: post #111
jraph wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which XEPs are you talking about? No, this is not a question, this is an answer. At this point, XMPP is not a solution, but a basis for an actual coherent solution to be built on, but it does not exist yet (or anymore). Matrix is also only a partial answer, because in practice you will direct users to matrix.org, and that makes matrix.org not a single point of failure, but still a huge point of failure and matrix wil…

Core XMPP is decentralized today . Room chats standardization in XMPP started 20 years ago. Any server existing today has solved the issue whatsapp is facing right now.

It has decentralization today, but also no users today.

I would be happy with it but my contact list quite empty.

I'm not outright rejecting XMPP. I would like it very much to just use XMPP, but something needs to happen. It needs to be easy to use, friction-less, have all the fancy features and probably more to sell than Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Matrix at the same time, which is no small feat.

Core XMPP does not cut it. People expect more from a chat solution and won't adopt it as-is.

XMPP has had decentralization for a very long time, but almost no users (if speaking about actual, decentralized, chat; it's used in many other things). It had both decentralization and users for a short time with Google chat, and user with no decentralization with Google chat and Facebook chat for a longer time, but both things are dead now.

The network effect is the biggest issue to overcome for a chat system, not the actual tech, and XMPP has not solved it. Unfortunately, if you ask me.

Element/Matrix, in contrast, have the features and a beginning of adoption. it now needs polish, smoothing the rough edges, and adoption. And also adoption. And even more adoption. Including from people/entities providing homeservers. I tried to make people adopt it. I failed. Signal, however, has been a success so far. Element/Matrix is great and a success in my company, however.

Re: WhatsApp goes down for users globally

#125

Post by shrikant »

light_hearted wrote: post #117

[flagged]

I downvoted and flagged this comment, because it's a brand new account shilling a shady-looking binary from a shady-looking website.

Would strongly recommend that people not bother with this spammy nonsense, and indeed downvote and flag away as well.

Re: WhatsApp goes down for users globally

#126

Post by throwamon »

rglullis wrote: post #121
smallerfish wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but that's not a fair statement. Checking the box of ideals doesn't mean that open source software is off the hook in having to compete on features. Regular users do not give a rat's ass about source code being open; it's an extremely abstract concept if you're not in the field. All they care about is free as in beer. Matrix can either target the niche demographic of the highly technical, or it needs to level…

> Checking the box of ideals doesn't mean that open source software is off the hook in having to compete on features. No one said that. > Regular users do not give a rat's ass about source code being open Open source or not, they should care about reliability, avoiding lock-in, abusive practices from monopolistic players, privacy... > If these software applications were businesses, their exec teams would have been fi…

> they should care about [...]

And there's your problem. Regular users do not give a rat's ass about your shoulds. In addition, for example, I've never seen any serious UX bugs in Telegram, and I've seen many in Element. Regular users care waaay more about that than some vague notion of "reliability".

Re: WhatsApp goes down for users globally

#127

Post by cyphar »

rakoo wrote: post #64
zeitlupe wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not Signal?

Signal is as centralized as Whatsapp, so you could one day read the exact same headline for it

In fact, this did happen last year[1]. Moxie has infamously made the argument that decentralisation reduces reliability because if any one server goes down reliability is affected (ignoring that partial outages are better than total outages).

[1]: https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/26/signal-the-encrypted-messa...

Re: WhatsApp goes down for users globally

#128

Post by rglullis »

throwamon wrote: post #126
rglullis wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Checking the box of ideals doesn't mean that open source software is off the hook in having to compete on features. No one said that. > Regular users do not give a rat's ass about source code being open Open source or not, they should care about reliability, avoiding lock-in, abusive practices from monopolistic players, privacy... > If these software applications were businesses, their exec teams would have been fi…

> they should care about [...] And there's your problem. Regular users do not give a rat's ass about your should s. In addition, for example, I've never seen any serious UX bugs in Telegram, and I've seen many in Element. Regular users care waaay more about that than some vague notion of "reliability".

> your shoulds

They are not mine.

It's not my data that is being mined and it's not my business that can disappear if WhatsApp goes offline.

Yeah, I'm fully aware that people generally don't care about any of that. Lots of people also don't care about their eating habits, the effects of their economic actions, etc, etc. But if they don't want to face the bad consequences of their choices, they should.

Re: WhatsApp goes down for users globally

#129

Post by cyphar »

capableweb wrote: post #122
sneak wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WhatsApp is end to end encrypted and AFAIK now has encrypted backups. iMessage intentionally preserves a backdoor in its crypto so that the FBI can read approximately every iMessage sent/received without a warrant, should they so desire.

Both whatsapp and imessage are run by american companies, you can sure both of them are compromised and I wouldn't pass US state secrets via either of them. For the normal person this matters less of course, intelligence services are not interested in your nudes.

Signal is also run by an American entity.

> intelligence services are not interested in your nudes

There is actually plenty of evidence they are[1].

[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2014/7/17/5912287/edward-snowden-sa...

Re: WhatsApp goes down for users globally

#130

Post by ycombinete »

capableweb wrote: post #122
sneak wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WhatsApp is end to end encrypted and AFAIK now has encrypted backups. iMessage intentionally preserves a backdoor in its crypto so that the FBI can read approximately every iMessage sent/received without a warrant, should they so desire.

Both whatsapp and imessage are run by american companies, you can sure both of them are compromised and I wouldn't pass US state secrets via either of them. For the normal person this matters less of course, intelligence services are not interested in your nudes.

> intelligence services are not interested in your nudes

If I recall correctly Snowden said the opposite. The guys he was around regularly shared nudes etc of people they were spying ins

Post reply on HN