I'm amazed people still use WhatsApp. We mostly abandoned it in the United States back in the mid 2010's. I mostly use it with friends over in european countries, just like I do with people in China with WeChat.
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WhatsApp goes down for users globally
181–190 of 234 posts
Re: WhatsApp goes down for users globally
#182I'm amazed people still use WhatsApp. We mostly abandoned it in the United States back in the mid 2010's. I mostly use it with friends over in european countries, just like I do with people in China with WeChat.
In Brazil, not using WhatsApp can be considered an anti-social stance at this point. My business partners would think that I'm a weird person.
Re: WhatsApp goes down for users globally
#183I'm amazed people still use WhatsApp. We mostly abandoned it in the United States back in the mid 2010's. I mostly use it with friends over in european countries, just like I do with people in China with WeChat.
Latin America runs on WhatsApp
Re: WhatsApp goes down for users globally
#184I'm amazed people still use WhatsApp. We mostly abandoned it in the United States back in the mid 2010's. I mostly use it with friends over in european countries, just like I do with people in China with WeChat.
Latin America runs on WhatsApp
As do many other countries. You really cannot live without it in much of the world.
Re: WhatsApp goes down for users globally
#185I'm amazed people still use WhatsApp. We mostly abandoned it in the United States back in the mid 2010's. I mostly use it with friends over in european countries, just like I do with people in China with WeChat.
India runs on Whatsapp!
Re: WhatsApp goes down for users globally
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point is that “it’s open source” is a really bad selling point when you’re talking about a messaging tool meant to be used by everyone. Good luck trying to convince the general population that “the UX is bad but theoretically anyone can improve it” is better than what you get out of the box with other messengers.
You don't need to convince "the general population" to switch. You don't even need to convince anyone to "switch". Just do the change yourself. Help those people close to you to install Element alongside whatever they are using now. Even if just because they are using to talk with you, it's better than nothing. You don't get to migrate things that are on huge network effects in one go. But we can help the growth of o…
But other people don't install element alongside whatever (except maybe your parents), but they continue using what works for them... Are you really so "special", you can convince all of your friends with "I know all your friends are using app X, but if you want to chat with me, you need app Y, which noone else is using right now, but maybe, some day..."?
Re: WhatsApp goes down for users globally
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Telegram is more secure than mass market messengers like WhatsApp and Line." https://telegram.org/faq#q-how-secure-is-telegram
The opposite is true - of all the major messengers, Telegram is the least secure. It uses a homebrew encryption scheme and does not have E2E encryption (yes, you can enable E2E for individual chats, but nobody uses it because it breaks most features). Not to mention the weird corporate structure, lack of transparency, failed crypto token launch, dishonest marketing...
> It uses a homebrew encryption scheme
Please stop with that. At some point every encryption scheme was "homebrew" (or rather, new). MTProto 1.0 had flaws, which were addressed in 2.0. The latter has been independently formally verified to be secure[0].
> Telegram is the least secure.
Against who? What is your threat model? Such absolutist blanket statements are useless by design.
> of all the major messengers
Which are Messenger, Whatsapp, and SMS/RCS around here. Signal shows up from time to time, and Matrix doesn't even register above statistical noise so I won't count them as "major" (Signal, being, in a stroke of optimism, at best a challenger)
Of these, SMS/RCS is a total clusterfuck, and the remainder is owned by Meta. Yes, Meta is high on my list of adversaries, and given their track record should probably be for anyone out there caring about their privacy. No, WhatsApp's E2E is not to be trusted[1][2].
So is Telegram the least secure of major messengers? definitely not.
Is Telegram perfect security, certainly not either, because that doesn't exist[6], but their E2E is solid, even without E2E, extra steps are taken to thwart certain adversaries[3][4], they have reproducible builds for their client binary builds[5], and as can be observed so far their actions are veering on the complete opposite side of Meta's.
Is Telegram an opportunity to convince non-{privacy,security}-minded random joes and janes to jump out of a bunch of terrible chat platform for a better (or less worse if you want) chat platform? I'd say probably. I mean, it really really looks like they're trying hard to get the job done.
[0]: https://github.com/miculan/telegram-mtproto2-verification
[1]: https://twitter.com/Shiftreduce/status/1347546599384346624
[2]: Meta controls the Es in this "E2E", and I won't trust that, ever.
[3]: https://telegram.org/faq#q-do-you-process-data-requests
[4]: https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/238562/how-does...
Re: WhatsApp goes down for users globally
#188Time to talk about matrix.org and Element not Signal and definitely not Telegram...
Do we have an opinion on Threema ?
Re: WhatsApp goes down for users globally
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't need to convince "the general population" to switch. You don't even need to convince anyone to "switch". Just do the change yourself. Help those people close to you to install Element alongside whatever they are using now. Even if just because they are using to talk with you, it's better than nothing. You don't get to migrate things that are on huge network effects in one go. But we can help the growth of o…
But other people don't install element alongside whatever (except maybe your parents), but they continue using what works for them... Are you really so "special", you can convince all of your friends with "I know all your friends are using app X, but if you want to chat with me, you need app Y, which noone else is using right now, but maybe, some day..."?
Not all, but the ones that mattered and bothered, yes.
I am not asking them to delete the other app, I am not asking them to join a religion. I am just asking them (and helping if necessary) to install an app and set up an account on my server.
Re: WhatsApp goes down for users globally
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honest question, is there are Matrix client that has a decent amount of UX work gone into it? I recently started to use Fluffy, that looks pretty good with a nice clean design, but does not have the same level of polish as Telegram, at least not yet. It's open source and one should try to contribute and not complain, that I figure, but not everyone can contribute in the first place.
https://element.io/blog/an-unrecognisable-improvement-elemen...
Please let me hide the 'Home' and Spaces sidebar in web Element. I have no interest for it and it's an egregious waste of space.