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Fifty percent of Facebook Messenger’s total voice traffic comes from Cambodia

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Re: Fifty percent of Facebook Messenger’s total voice traffic comes from Cambodia

#31

Post by eliseumds »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #2

I understand why people use it but as a recipient I really hate voice messages. Here in Spain they are becoming more common too. The problem is as the article mentions. Difficulty searching back, not being able to use Google translate (I'm still learning Spanish), and the time it takes to listen to them. Sending a voice message is faster than typing for the sender but much slower than reading for the recipient which…

I use Telegram with Voicy with my friends, it's pretty decent at transcribing voice messages from multiple languages. You can even hook it into the Speech-to-Text service from Google Cloud (however the integration doesn't support custom parameters).

Re: Fifty percent of Facebook Messenger’s total voice traffic comes from Cambodia

#32

Post by throwawayay02 »

dash2 wrote: post #28

It says Cambodia has 74 characters, "the most of any language in the world". That sounds wrong. Hindi's Devanagari has 100+ characters, though some are certainly related to each other.

I also found that weird. Wouldn't the various Chinese languages, and Japanese scripts, have way more characters?

26 to 74 is just double, and most likely some are more common in written communication than others.

Re: Fifty percent of Facebook Messenger’s total voice traffic comes from Cambodia

#33

Post by ojosilva »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #2

I understand why people use it but as a recipient I really hate voice messages. Here in Spain they are becoming more common too. The problem is as the article mentions. Difficulty searching back, not being able to use Google translate (I'm still learning Spanish), and the time it takes to listen to them. Sending a voice message is faster than typing for the sender but much slower than reading for the recipient which…

I'm also not a big fan of voice messages in chats, but got used to it. Lately, speeding up playback (the "1.5x" or "2x" in Whatsapp) has been a true blessing for the receiver end.

Voice messages are also useful when writing is not physically viable (ie. while cooking). I even tend to prefer it when I want to develop an idea while delivering the message and have the message development process itself registered as part of what I'm sending.

Re: Fifty percent of Facebook Messenger’s total voice traffic comes from Cambodia

#34

Post by tyingq »

throwawayay02 wrote: post #32
dash2 wrote: post #28

It says Cambodia has 74 characters, "the most of any language in the world". That sounds wrong. Hindi's Devanagari has 100+ characters, though some are certainly related to each other.

I also found that weird. Wouldn't the various Chinese languages, and Japanese scripts, have way more characters? 26 to 74 is just double, and most likely some are more common in written communication than others.

>26 to 74 is just double

It's closer to triple, isn't it?

Re: Fifty percent of Facebook Messenger’s total voice traffic comes from Cambodia

#35

Post by aaron695 »

Cambodia also had internet.org

But no one used it, it was a wasteland, because internet.org doesn't do pictures or video on Facebook. And certainly no one gives a shit about free Wikipedia that's tacked on.

A good example of the poor don't want your garbage. They want funny videos, shopping (Commonly live streamed on Facebook) and talking to their friends. That's what improved their lives.

Re: Fifty percent of Facebook Messenger’s total voice traffic comes from Cambodia

#36

Post by BoxOfRain »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #2

I understand why people use it but as a recipient I really hate voice messages. Here in Spain they are becoming more common too. The problem is as the article mentions. Difficulty searching back, not being able to use Google translate (I'm still learning Spanish), and the time it takes to listen to them. Sending a voice message is faster than typing for the sender but much slower than reading for the recipient which…

I agree, I disabled my voicemail a decade ago for this exact reason (it's a lot slower and more of a faff if you're in public) but unfortunately some people in my life are adopting voice messaging and there's not a lot I can do beyond a polite "I'd rather you didn't do that".

It's definitely a much worse experience for the recipient, I think new social norms of asking first are probably the best solution. I wouldn't ring someone who wasn't expecting a call without asking them if they were free to call first for example, and I think the same should apply to voice messages.

Re: Fifty percent of Facebook Messenger’s total voice traffic comes from Cambodia

#37

Post by genocidicbunny »

namibj wrote: post #11
genocidicbunny wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on how loud that speaker is, people around you would still be able to hear it, even if its up to your ear. Years ago when I used public transport more, it was almost daily that I'd be able to listen in on peoples phone conversations because of how loud their speaker was even when not using the speakerphone setting.

On my Android (not even particularly recent) the phone earpiece speaker responds to the volume buttons when I'm in a phone call or use it to join a discord (group) voice chat. The latter works very well with voice activation, unless I'm in a loud place, in which case the incompletely filtered background noise causes intelligibility problems when talking over another.

I'm sure it does, but I speak from experience where there wasn't much of a difference in volume between the earpiece speaker, and the speakerphone. Most people had their earpiece loud enough that if I was close enough I could hear it just as loud as when they used speakerphone mode.

With a lot of (cheaper) phones the speaker is also terrible enough that the different modes don't make much of a difference.

Re: Fifty percent of Facebook Messenger’s total voice traffic comes from Cambodia

#38

Post by dahfizz »

throwawayay02 wrote: post #32
dash2 wrote: post #28

It says Cambodia has 74 characters, "the most of any language in the world". That sounds wrong. Hindi's Devanagari has 100+ characters, though some are certainly related to each other.

I also found that weird. Wouldn't the various Chinese languages, and Japanese scripts, have way more characters? 26 to 74 is just double, and most likely some are more common in written communication than others.

> Wouldn't the various Chinese languages, and Japanese scripts, have way more characters?

It depends on how you define "character", I guess. The hirigana or katakana "alphabets" have 48 characters. These alphabets map best to the western use of characters.

Kanji is probably what you are thinking of, where each word in Japanese gets its own "character". There are ~50,000 different kanji symbols.

Re: Fifty percent of Facebook Messenger’s total voice traffic comes from Cambodia

#39

Post by _jal »

BoxOfRain wrote: post #36
GekkePrutser wrote: post #2

I understand why people use it but as a recipient I really hate voice messages. Here in Spain they are becoming more common too. The problem is as the article mentions. Difficulty searching back, not being able to use Google translate (I'm still learning Spanish), and the time it takes to listen to them. Sending a voice message is faster than typing for the sender but much slower than reading for the recipient which…

I agree, I disabled my voicemail a decade ago for this exact reason (it's a lot slower and more of a faff if you're in public) but unfortunately some people in my life are adopting voice messaging and there's not a lot I can do beyond a polite "I'd rather you didn't do that". It's definitely a much worse experience for the recipient, I think new social norms of asking first are probably the best solution. I wouldn't…

There are ways to regulate the burden.

If I can't privately listen right now, I don't, and if they get annoyed, I'll tell them why.

If something would require me to replay it multiple times to take notes, depending on the situation I'll tell the sender to type it up.

It isn't a matter of trying to punish, it is negotiating preferences. Send me something I have to interact with, and it may well take me some time to get to it. This is no different than emailing me a PDF.

Re: Fifty percent of Facebook Messenger’s total voice traffic comes from Cambodia

#40

Post by vesuvianvenus »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #2

I understand why people use it but as a recipient I really hate voice messages. Here in Spain they are becoming more common too. The problem is as the article mentions. Difficulty searching back, not being able to use Google translate (I'm still learning Spanish), and the time it takes to listen to them. Sending a voice message is faster than typing for the sender but much slower than reading for the recipient which…

I agree. I don't like receiving more than 1 voice message per week from a person. It's terrible when they start sending voice messages as 50% or more of their messages.

- Text messages require brevity.

- Depending on who you're talking to, Voice messages ramble on and on, without getting to the point. As a result, it can take minutes to understand a main point, rather than seconds as in the case of text message.

Just learned via another comment that playback can apparently be sped up to 1.5x or 2x. That's good, I'll have to look into that.

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