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What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

bbc.com

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Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

#161

Post by rapnie »

warp wrote: post #115
rapnie wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to move to Signal and send anyone reaching out to me on Whatsapp an auto-reply with a Signal invite. Couldn't find how to achieve that. Anyone knowing if this is possible?

Facebook has an API for whatsapp, which I believe is a closed beta. In theory you could build an app to do this for you, twilio supports this and let's you use a development key even before you get into the beta. [I expect that's too many hoops for your use case though ;]

Thx! I found the Business API which is really for partners ( and for SMB's there is the Business app).

https://www.whatsapp.com/business/api

The Twilio API is in beta, and you can sign up. Don't know what pricing will be, but maybe for individual use a dev subscription may be sufficient

https://www.twilio.com/whatsapp

Here is the API reference:

https://www.twilio.com/docs/sms/whatsapp/api

Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

#162

Post by Jommi »

chipperyman573 wrote: post #157
noncoml wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We brought it to ourselves by not being willing to pay for WhatsApp. WhatsApp before getting bought by FB was begging for money and is my understanding that it was on the verge of bankruptcy. Public had a choice of free(as in beer) products vs privacy. We chose the former.

Whatsapp used to cost $1/year which covered operating costs (first year free).

Not true, WhatsApp did have a pricing test where certain users were pushed to pay 1€/$ per year. It was never unilaterally enforced.

Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

#163

Post by y-c-o-m-b »

bitL wrote: post #120
chx wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I need a 1m long C7-C8 extension cord. Not a 30cm, not a 50cm, not a 1.8m, I need 1m long. Let's search: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=c7+c8+extension+cord+%221m%22&t=h_... let's force the titles: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=intitle%3Ac7+intitle%3Ac8+extensio... That's completely broken, the titles contain none of the three things asked for. yeah, I am not hopeful with duckduckgo either. I mean, Google is just as bad bu…

DDG's quality actually decreased in the past year as now they seem to ignore explicitly required stuff in a query quite often. It used to be you just used quotes and got what you wanted, but these days that might get ignored. "-" for excluding similar popular words also seems to have stopped working.

I thought it was just me remembering incorrectly if DDG supported quotes and includes. Could have sworn this worked before. Thanks for confirming you're also having this problem.

Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

#164

Post by freeAgent »

Unfortunately, it's a lot more difficult to fully switch away from Google than this article gets into. If you use a smartphone, your only real options for OS are Apple and Google. Sure, one can install a custom ROM on an Android phone, but that is well beyond the scope of most people's interest or ability, not to mention that it would lead to warranty issues. If you're using a stock Android phone, Google will know where you all at all times with extreme precision.

Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

#165

Post by Jommi »

kodt wrote: post #129

When 90% of the people you email are on Gmail or GSuite does Proton mail really help? Yeah you get end to end encryption for other Proton mail users, but I don't know a single one. Google is going to have all of my emails anyway. As for Facebook it is best just to quit. I don't even use Facebook to keep in touch with friends anymore. The value in Facebook is some of the groups. Local neighborhood groups seem to be th…

You're living in a US bubble.

Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

#166

Post by dbingham »

We need a replacement for the universal public forum. In my community, Facebook has essentially become the public square. It's where most of the local public political dialog happens. It's where I get my local news, it's where I find out what my local representatives are doing, and it's where I can converse with them - and the rest of the community - about what local government should be doing.

This is all so valuable that I just can't walk away from it. I would be completely cut out of local events. The news media does an extremely poor job of reporting - and we have an unusually vibrant local news sector (I think in no small part because we have such an active political and governance community on Facebook).

So much of it is network effect, I just don't even know how we'd go about creating it in a new service, even if a new service were created that served the purpose better.

Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

#167

Post by monsieurgaufre »

djsumdog wrote: post #143
monsieurgaufre wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DDG is bad as soon as you're not in the US of A and/or speak any language that is not english.

What about Russian? I'm not sure if they still do, but at one point they licensed a large chunk of their index from Yandex.

As I don't speak russian, I can't answer you.

Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

#168

Post by lotsofpulp »

Jommi wrote: post #162
chipperyman573 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatsapp used to cost $1/year which covered operating costs (first year free).

Not true, WhatsApp did have a pricing test where certain users were pushed to pay 1€/$ per year. It was never unilaterally enforced.

Is that what that was? I remember getting the app and wondering why no one I knew ever had to pay for it.

Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

#169

Post by viklove »

kodt wrote: post #129

When 90% of the people you email are on Gmail or GSuite does Proton mail really help? Yeah you get end to end encryption for other Proton mail users, but I don't know a single one. Google is going to have all of my emails anyway. As for Facebook it is best just to quit. I don't even use Facebook to keep in touch with friends anymore. The value in Facebook is some of the groups. Local neighborhood groups seem to be th…

> When 90% of the people you email are on Gmail or GSuite does Proton mail really help?

This is such a common, but strange attitude to have in these circumstances. Think about how user migration works. It's not like it happens overnight and suddenly your 100% gmail contact list is 100% proton. No, it goes from 100% to 99%, then continues to 92%, then to 75%, and so on. Having this defeatist attitude guarantees that bad actors retain their users.

As an example -- I switched to use Signal for messaging a few years ago. I was the only one in my circle that made the jump. Slowly but surely, people have started to switch over. Today about 10% of my contacts use Signal, and our chats are encrypted e2e. Every few months a few more people make the jump. If all of these people had the same attitude as you, nothing would ever change.

Re: What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?

#170

Post by jkarneges »

enumjorge wrote: post #65
annadane wrote: post #36

It's not fair to the public that FB bought up Insta/Whatsapp. That is a true lack of choice. If it were just FB, fine, ignore it, don't use it, use Whatsapp. But no, they get to buy up competition whilst telling us how much our privacy and integrity is taken seriously

It’s interesting because capitalism is all about choice and competition. But what if a player is so successful that it can pay to absorb any competitor that poses a serious threat? I don’t know how capitalism self heals from that.

Indeed. And FB retaining Instagram/Whatsapp apps+branding effectively squashes future "unbundling" attempts.

The way I look at it, if not even Google can beat FB at personal social networking (Google+), then FB has a monopoly and this is not a free market. Sure, anyone is free to start a startup and try to do what FB does, but I mean...

I suspect the only reason the government hasn't gotten involved in this matter yet is because FB offers seemingly non-essential service. A different situation than Microsoft and browsers.

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