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BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp

birdy.chat

461–470 of 517 posts

Re: BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp

#461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being implacably stubborn is underrated. People can trivially have two messaging apps on their phone, which means they can all still contact you while using WhatsApp with other people. Then they all slowly end up with Signal on their phone, at which point who needs WhatsApp at all? "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all pro…

Yes, you can have two messaging apps, but people will have a “main app” which is typically the one used by important people in their life (family, partner,…) and/or the one used by most people. Meanwhile, if you all use two apps, everytime you want to check up on a friend you have to check two apps. Imagine all your friends love pizza, as do you. Suddenly you decide sushi is better so, naturally, you tell your friend…

> Meanwhile, if you all use two apps, everytime you want to check up on a friend you have to check two apps.

You just have to check the one they use. Also, both of the apps would support notifications when something has happened in that app.

> But what if they don’t like it that much?

There is no real advantage of WhatsApp over Signal except that some people are already using it, and a significant privacy disadvantage. Once someone already has Signal then the advantage of WhatsApp is gone and only the disadvantage remains.

Re: BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp

#463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> any WhatsApp user in the region 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.

In countries where SMS isn't as widespread as it is in the US, the use of WhatsApp is much more common. I live in one of those countries, and I don't think I've ever had to use it to communicate with someone on another continent. I think most of its use is simply local, for your community or friend group. The downside for me is basically the lack of appeal for a non-tech user (like my parents) to voluntarily want to…

Yeah I hate SMS. I don't want my carrier to be involved in the content of my communications. Also I normally use the computer when at home, no point using a tiny mobile device obviously.

I don't use Google or Apple accounts either so RCS is out too. WhatsApp is meta now unfortunately but for historical reasons there's no avoiding it here.

I use WhatsApp and Telegram pretty much exclusively (telegram more for group chats)

Re: BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp

#464
post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal is so much worse than WhatsApp from a UX perspective. Backup sync forces you to allow background permissions (WhatsApp doesn't), you have to set and get nagged to enter a PIN every few weeks (WhatsApp doesn't), there's no transcription for audio messages (WhatsApp has that for some languages), the desktop app loses its connection if you don't open it ever few weeks (WhatsApp works fine), etc. If you want peopl…

My circle switched to Signal because we are concerned about tech bros and a fascist America. Boosting Russia is not the solution.

Telegram is not Russian. In fact Putin hates Pavel Durov.

Re: BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp

#465
post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Telegram can make it work because they do have it if you switch it on per chat You can't enable 1:1 secret chat from your desktop client. The secret chat doesn't appear on desktop when you enable it on your phone. So you're forced to drop end-to-end encryption if you want interoperability between phone and desktop clients. You can't enable secret chats for group chats on any client. The company isn't working to make…

There are many unfriendly apps on that light? insta chat, messenger, slack, discord, teams? and all of those are terrible software as well (slow, high mem etc); at least telegram is fast. anyway, the point was not to use or endorse telegram, or the garbage i mentioned, but strive for e2ee while fast and usable. I would sign up for anything e2ee but yeah ideally open source and hosting owned by an EU company.

> at least telegram is fast

Telegram is fast precisely because it's backdoored by design. Forward secret messaging app with proper key management has to encrypt the message to every peer in the group. Telegram can just use single packet to server that then pushes it to everyone else. This difference will die over time as 5G and 6G take over and phones get faster by generation. Telegram will not get more safe by generation. They're only playing to get as many users to their roach motel to make it as difficult as people for people to leave.

Re: BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp

#466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America has eroded and treated privacy not as a right, not as a privilege, but as nothing. It has been doing this more and more blatantly across the world for the past 2 years and has now become an authoritarian state, threatening war across the globe while simultaneously destabilising the global economy. America IS bad, for multiple reasons.

So why are you so angry at jordemort trying to push back?

Because their comment was self entitled and America bad.

Re: BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp

#467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My friends all younger than me prefer Discord. That's interesting; I have and use discord myself (owner of a 300+ member server for my WoW guild), but I've never really considered it a messaging app in the same way I do iMessage, WhatsApp, and so on. I think because everyone is pseudo anonymous, it's more like social media to me. Plus I've got the phone numbers and iMessage groups for close friends I've made over d…

Discord is popping up as shadow IT in some places. Because of all the server admin stuff (bot APIs, Github bots, pretty advanced RBAC etc), it's basically "Slack but for free, and without the annoying SSO."

That sounds like my personal hell lol. Slack for free without the SSO, sure, but also Slack with constant annoying Nitro upsells and flashy gamer bullshit.

(I just really don't like Discord and I'm bitter that it's what my guild de facto has to use because it's what gamers have standardized on.)

Re: BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp

#468

While not a commercial offering, which is what this is saying in reality - closed source, commercial alternative with (limited) interoperability, I've been running my own chat server for a while now with (limited) interoperability with both Whatsapp and Messenger. I suspect a good number of people here don't care for any of this - FOSS, chat, voice , and video is where it's at. Interoperability for those last two don…

Yes but element/matrix aren't going to work with WhatsApp on offering compatibility. They have reasons for that, most of them good ones but I doubt that video is coming.

Re: BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp

#469
post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My friends all younger than me prefer Discord. That's interesting; I have and use discord myself (owner of a 300+ member server for my WoW guild), but I've never really considered it a messaging app in the same way I do iMessage, WhatsApp, and so on. I think because everyone is pseudo anonymous, it's more like social media to me. Plus I've got the phone numbers and iMessage groups for close friends I've made over d…

Being pseudonymous doesn't prevent you from using it to contact people you actually know offline. I used Steam to talk with my group members about a project in college a couple times. Other times I used Google chat/talk/whatever it was called at the time (embedded in the browser inbox). I had a flip phone at the time, so pretty much anything I could use on desktop was easier.

I just mean I've never thought to put it in the same category as iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram, etc. Like if the EU is going to regulate messaging apps, I wouldn't have thought to lump Discord or Steam chat in there with those other ones. But, honestly, why shouldn't they?

Re: BirdyChat becomes first European chat app that is interoperable with WhatsApp

#470
post #387
post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the EU would never dare to regulate European companies, for example require banks to offer free and instant person-to-person money transfers or mobile phone operators to offer data roaming at domestic rates.

The only reason we have that is because fintech is eating the meal of traditional banks. They came up with ways to transfer with just a card (which benefits Visa and Mastercard, US companies) and do inter-account instant transfers for free. SEPA normalization took forever, and even now instant transfers are still very often paid past the limit in your card bundle (probably around 3 if you don't have an expensive card…

SEPA was a pain for us citizens anyway because now we have to use huge long account numbers even locally within the same country. I never understood why that had to be the case, just leave that for international transfers.
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