It's time to stop texting • Hacker News Board

Re: It's time to stop texting

#191

Post by daveslash » Thu, Jan 12, 2023, 3:36 PM UTC

nunez wrote: post #190

daveslash wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"My God people, stop using AM/FM Radio! It's an analog signal, and this is a digital world! The quality and bit rate is so low! Use your phone + Spotify + Bluetooth for music! Use your phone + podcasts + Bluetooth for news, talk, and opinion, or switch to satellite radio! " Problem: In breaking news moments like this, there should be a type of podcast you can listen to in real time, easily accessible for free. Soluti…

this is kind of like tesla removing am on model 3/y it's super old and sounds like shit but it works really really well and is great for relaying critical information that we now cannot get

They did? Aw, man....

I love tuning into AM 1610 when driving through National Parks to get park information. AM is great for low-power local broadcast for recorded tourist information on repeat.

Re: It's time to stop texting

#192

Post by valarauko » Thu, Jan 12, 2023, 4:29 PM UTC

josephcsible wrote: post #178

valarauko wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you use WhatsApp and Meta decides to ban you Genuine Q: is this something that ever happens?

Yes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9309038 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14415265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24776748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25475751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25881112 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25884019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31577325 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33015769

Skimming through the links I see only one or two instances of a WhatsApp account being banned. I ask because while I come across talk of FB accounts being suspended/banned, I couldn't recall any WA bans other than perhaps egregious warranted examples.

Re: It's time to stop texting

#193

Post by josephcsible » Thu, Jan 12, 2023, 4:46 PM UTC

valarauko wrote: post #192

josephcsible wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9309038 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14415265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24776748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25475751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25881112 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25884019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31577325 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33015769

Skimming through the links I see only one or two instances of a WhatsApp account being banned. I ask because while I come across talk of FB accounts being suspended/banned, I couldn't recall any WA bans other than perhaps egregious warranted examples.

Why isn't a single example of an unjust ban that they refuse to overturn when it trends publicly good enough?

Re: It's time to stop texting

#194

Post by graynk » Thu, Jan 12, 2023, 6:59 PM UTC

I haven’t sent an SMS in literal years, so the backlash in this thread is very interesting to me. I wonder if it’s a strictly US thing

Re: It's time to stop texting

#195

Post by valarauko » Thu, Jan 12, 2023, 7:45 PM UTC

josephcsible wrote: post #193

valarauko wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skimming through the links I see only one or two instances of a WhatsApp account being banned. I ask because while I come across talk of FB accounts being suspended/banned, I couldn't recall any WA bans other than perhaps egregious warranted examples.

Why isn't a single example of an unjust ban that they refuse to overturn when it trends publicly good enough?

Not saying anything of the sort. My initial question was centered on the idea of WA accounts being banned, something at least I did not recall encountering, while I did come across talk of FB accounts being banned, hence my query. I'm not making a judgement call on way or the other, whether they were just or not. Looks like WA accounts do get banned, just nowhere as frequently as FB accounts.

Re: It's time to stop texting

#196

Post by henrikschroder » Thu, Jan 12, 2023, 7:56 PM UTC

theonlybutlet wrote: post #188

henrikschroder wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example this map: https://www.similarweb.com/blog/research/market-research/wor... This map also only shows the most popular, but that doesn't mean it's the dominant messaging app in that country. It's very, very messy.

It's safe to say the median app is Whatsapp. Countries like Australia still use Whatsapp. This picture you provided excludes the rest of subsaharan Africa which uses Whatsapp. I'd rather not cite the below but where's smoke there's fire. This indicates Whatsapp has twice the active users of Messenger. https://www.statista.com/statistics/258749/most-popular-glob...

Yes, it is absolutely very popular, that's not what we're talking about here.

The problem is that given a random person off the street, how can you figure out which messenger apps you have in common? And assuming everyone outside the US uses WhatsApp like the grandparent poster I replied to did, doesn't work.

Re: It's time to stop texting

#197

Post by mnd999 » Thu, Jan 12, 2023, 11:43 PM UTC

aendruk wrote: post #185

mnd999 wrote: post #85

Mine always go as iMessages, which has none of these issues.

None of the issues mentioned under the section about iMessage? iMessage would be great if Apple allowed cross platform clients. Until then as far as I’m concerned it doesn’t exist. Sent from my iPhone.

Dick head

Re: It's time to stop texting

#198

Post by Gigachad » Fri, Jan 13, 2023, 2:00 AM UTC

josephcsible wrote: post #180

digitallyfree wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta, Google, etc. also sometimes randomly ban accounts for reasons unknown (AI detecting "suspicious" behavior, etc.), whereas I have never heard of phone companies doing this.

It's not nearly as common with phone companies as it is with the FAANGs, but it's definitely not unheard of either, e.g., https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/13j1p9/att_has...

The owner of Kiwi farms also had his personal phone number terminated despite presumably not engaging in any illegal behaviour on it. I don’t believe you can do a number transfer when you get banned either.

Re: It's time to stop texting

#199

Post by Gigachad » Fri, Jan 13, 2023, 2:01 AM UTC

valarauko wrote: post #142

josephcsible wrote: post #16

There's one gigantic advantage to SMS that no alternative app has come close to matching: your phone number is yours, so even if Verizon decides to drop you as a customer, you can move to one of their competitors and still be able to receive messages from everyone you could before. If you use WhatsApp and Meta decides to ban you, you're out of luck unless you gave a second means of communication to everyone you used…

> if you use WhatsApp and Meta decides to ban you Genuine Q: is this something that ever happens?

I was randomly banned from Telegram once for a month. My meta account also strangely got banned from advertising yesterday despite me hardly ever using the account and never having advertised before.

Re: It's time to stop texting

#200

Post by helf » Fri, Jan 13, 2023, 2:04 AM UTC

SMS needs to stay. It works without functional data unless some carrier really screws the pooch. I’ve had to revert to it numerous times at random especially in BFE to get in contact with a client or my wife etc. no data? But signal? SMS.

Otherwise anyone I wanna chat with I have on Telegram. Heh