Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is becoming painfully apparent that the cycle of enshittification is truly inevitable, right up there next to the second law of thermodynamics.
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WhatsApp introduces ads in its app
491–500 of 1001 posts
Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app
#492Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember when Whatsapp became a paid app, I can’t remember the details as I believe they varied by platform (iOS vs Android) but it was either €0.79 or €0.99, I’m not sure if one off or yearly payment, but it doesn’t matter. I, as the “computer guy”, had friends and family asking how to pirate it. This is coming from SMS costing €0.25 per message (text only!) and also coming from people who would gladly pay €3 for…
A lot of normal consumers pay $20 a month for ChatGPT. I think most software gets bid down in price bc the marginal costs are zero. Where it’s not (llm token generation) prices don’t plummet and consumers build a different expectation.
Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app
#493How long until "Updates" gets a red badge despite no updates only to show you an ad? Also, I find the language used in their announcement deeply offensive.
> Helping you Find More Channels and Businesses on WhatsApp
> support your favorite channel
> help you discover
> find a new business and easily start a conversation with them
> help admins, organizations, and businesses grow
Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app
#494Earlier quoted context omitted.
Signal seems to be booming right now in the Netherlands. I've been using it for years and never managed to grow my contact list beyond single digits, being a few friends in tech and a few who were very privacy conscious. All of those people were also available on WhatsApp and we'd often forget and message one another there. But since January the trust in Meta has not only plummeted but it's become a mainstream enough…
In the Netherlands, was trying to promote Signal. I switched phones and lost all my history. Now I’m fairly careful with these things, and make backups, but even I wasn’t able to get it back. Couldn’t recommend it to anyone since. There’s a line between being secure and being useful, and they’re slightly unbalanced in Signal.
Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app
#495I remember switching to WhatsApp many years ago, mainly because it had no ads and encrypted chats, while other apps were constantly crammed with ads and features I didn't need. Now I feel like I'm slowly going back to that old path. Sometimes it really feels like no app can really stay clean for long.
I think this is two sided topic: - on one side there is the increasing number of features in WhatsApp that nobody asked for and that make the experience worse and worse, I agree. Yet, on the other side of the world a 1B people in China use WeChat for so many things beside communicating, so I understand Meta's appetite to become the West WeChat. Still I hate it. - on the other side there is the business model of Whats…
What about Signal? It seems like they run on donations, don't they?
Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app
#496Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app
#497I remember switching to WhatsApp many years ago, mainly because it had no ads and encrypted chats, while other apps were constantly crammed with ads and features I didn't need. Now I feel like I'm slowly going back to that old path. Sometimes it really feels like no app can really stay clean for long.
I think this is two sided topic: - on one side there is the increasing number of features in WhatsApp that nobody asked for and that make the experience worse and worse, I agree. Yet, on the other side of the world a 1B people in China use WeChat for so many things beside communicating, so I understand Meta's appetite to become the West WeChat. Still I hate it. - on the other side there is the business model of Whats…
Revolut will probably get there first
>It's 100% unrealistic that a global, always on, high availability, high security service is free. These things are expensive and they need to be monetized.
Do you have any information how much whatsapp costs per user per month? Threema seems to be doing fine with just one 5$ forever.
Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app
#498Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about https://flathub.org/apps/de.schmidhuberj.Flare ?
Sure, they exist, but Signal is against them. Look into what they did against LibreSignal. Now part of the problem with LibreSignal was the trademark violation of using the name Signal. But Moxie is clearly against any third party using their servers, as we can see in this comment: https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco... IMO that's an unforgivable stance towards third party clients. I have rea…
I think my perception has changed in the last ≈ 10 years, to be more leaning in moxie's direction. It's hard enough to design something secure and usable, having to try and support all different implementations under the sun makes most federated approaches never reach any mass adoption.
Even though it's not a one-to-one analog I also think e.g the lack of crypto agility in Wireshark was a very good decision, the same with QUIC having explicit anti-ossification (e.g encrypted headers). Giving enterprise middle boxes the chance to meddle in things is just setting things to hurt for everyone else.
Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app
#499Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I book with hotels directly almost all the time and never receive marketing spam just regular mail about my upcoming start. What's your secret? Even the hotel in privacy-conscious Austria I stayed with once four years ago spams me. > booking with the hotel lets me select options not available on booking sites like king vs 2 queen bed options, ADA compliant rooms and even floor options If their booking system works.…
Not much of a secret, but clicking the unsubscribe links in emails helps. Anything new I sign up to I'm pretty religious about it. Some new email I didn't ask for -> instant unsubscribe. Works way better than one might expect. Very noticeable when using custom domain and emails where I might sign up to the same service several times.
I usually do that and it works for a lot of things, but small hotels are one of the things that seems to slip through. And even when it works, I still resent having to do it at all, and would rather book via a big aggregator where I've already done the unsubscribe years ago.
Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app
#500I really hope it helps them build a decent app, but I doubt it. In Ukraine, there's a huge problem of Telegram being so feature-rich compared to WhatsApp that it's impossible to convince people to do the switch, even under the national security threat.
What are the telegram features that whatsapp or signal users are missing? I've tried it in the past and all that could be done was due to the platform not having e2e encryption on standard chats.
Onlyfans girls channels.