171–180 of 517 posts
I'm pretty resentful that people in the US are stuck using worse/less featureful versions of products from US companies, while the government in Europe can get these kinds of concessions for their people. If a company is legally obligated to offer a feature to people in other parts of the world, they should be forced to offer it at back home in the US as well, since we can't be bothered otherwise to pass any of these…
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But iMessage is already open? You can send an SMS to any number and it shows in iMessage, completely interoperable through that standard protocol. Whatsapp on the other hand does not show SMS messages (Which is a design choice that makes sense from a security perspective I guess, not saying it's wrong.)
> You can send an SMS to any number Can you send a photo?
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> what about three sentences above that one? My bad. I searched for “Meta” instead of “Facebook.” Quite a few other red flags in that press release. > Haiket is launching the Beta trial from today, with a pipeline of future innovation for early adopters, including a pioneering silencing technology that will allow users to speak privately in public, with voice communication that only your device can hear.
> voice communication that only your device can hear. This is fairly straightforward - you have the device spew out noise with similar characteristics to human speech (ie. random overlapping syllables in the speaker's voice). Take a recording then subtract the random syllables. Only your device can do the subtraction, because only your device knows the waveform it transmitted. Obviously in a room with lots of reverb…
Surely this only works if you're using the phone as a speakerphone (and are therefore almost certainly being an arsehole in public[0])?
[0] Because if it was an actual speakerphone situation, hiding your voice would be stupid.
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It's better than nothing. If you have a different app and want to talk to your friend who uses whatsapp it's much easier to convince him to toggle a setting than to download a different app.
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It's difficult when it comes to messengers, but reasonably easy when it comes to Google and Android, for which good alternatives exist (e.g., DuckDuck on GrapheneOS.)
How does this work with end to end encryption? Just out of curiosity
Sorry to be "that guy", because I don't know the details of how WhatsApp does E2EE, but in any proper (as in secure and private) implementation the only thing that should matter is whether the client follows the spec? You might as well ask, how does $browser work with HTTPS?
(This is not the case, apparently.)
> With the new WhatsApp interface mandated by the DMA, any BirdyChat user in the EEA will be able to start a chat with any WhatsApp user in the region simply by knowing their phone number. Unfortunately, as it's been implemented as opt-in on WhatsApp's side, this isn't really true. Honestly that decision alone means it's kinda dead in the water.
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What's wrong with the name? "WhatsApp" sounds pretty dumb to me, too, but it's entrenched in the social consciousness, so we don't really think about it. (The name even has nothing to do with chat; originally WhatsApp was a way to share your "current status"; "WhatsApp" sounds like "what's up?".)
Complaining about names seems like a surefire way to induce endless bikeshedding conversations that go nowhere. It's also often cited as a too-convenient excuse for why a service fails that doesn't really account for the market realities or whatever systemic failures were at play. The truth is that 15 years ago, "tweet" was seen as a joke by those who weren't extremely online. It didn't stop Twitter from becoming a d…
Forgejo is even worse in that regard. I live in Europe, speak 5 languages, and still have to think to remember the proper pronunciation every time.
It's much harder to get people on board with yet another messenger app when they forget the name 5 minutes later.
> With the new WhatsApp interface mandated by the DMA, any BirdyChat user in the EEA will be able to start a chat with any WhatsApp user in the region simply by knowing their phone number. Unfortunately, as it's been implemented as opt-in on WhatsApp's side, this isn't really true. Honestly that decision alone means it's kinda dead in the water.
I am not even sure how this is GDPR-compliant (that app is European and thus must care about GDPR). They do not have my permission to have/handle my private data, and GDPR does not allow WhatAspp to hand it over without my permission either... My name (which whatsapp exposes simply with my phone number) is considered PII under GDPR and
> With the new WhatsApp interface mandated by the DMA, any BirdyChat user in the EEA will be able to start a chat with any WhatsApp user in the region simply by knowing their phone number. Unfortunately, as it's been implemented as opt-in on WhatsApp's side, this isn't really true. Honestly that decision alone means it's kinda dead in the water.
The regional limit makes it pretty much useless. The only reason I keep a whatsapp account is to stay in touch with my family in law and a few relatives who live in another continent.