What’s Up With Whatsapp? Facebook Might Want To Buy It, That’s What • Hacker News Board

Re: What’s Up With Whatsapp? Facebook Might Want To Buy It, That’s What

#51

Post by purplelobster » Tue, Dec 04, 2012, 2:59 AM UTC

jsilence wrote: post #39

purplelobster wrote: post #2

Aaaand that's the day I stop using it.

Why? Because one walled garden suddenly turns into another walled garden? There are good reasons today not to use WhatsApp.

Personally, I don't really trust Facebook with my data. I still use Facebook, but as little as possible. I know WhatsApp may be data mining my conversations too, but Facebook is a known evil to me.

Re: What’s Up With Whatsapp? Facebook Might Want To Buy It, That’s What

#52

Post by incision » Tue, Dec 04, 2012, 6:36 PM UTC

shmerl wrote: post #50

incision wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of a sign-up is huge. Off the top head, for myself and my circle of contacts I'd say we're 4-5x less likely to try something recommended by each other if it necessitates signing up. Despite what seem to be a surprising number of detractors here, lets not forgot that it's a pretty good product - fast, stable, nice enough looking and very reliable. It's also worth noting that if Google Talk / Messenger weren't…

This puzzles me. Let's compare one time action of registration for secure XMPP service (where you have an option of choosing your own ID (JID) and password which you can change later), as well as an option of using a client with extra security like OTR for text messages and ZRTP for audio/video conferencing, with the client which lets you skipping one time step of registration, but gives it for the price of broken in…

>This puzzles me.

It really shouldn't.

Seems to me you're grossly over-thinking what's important and/or understood by any majority of the tens of millions using WhatsApp.

Re: What’s Up With Whatsapp? Facebook Might Want To Buy It, That’s What

#53

Post by shmerl » Tue, Dec 04, 2012, 6:43 PM UTC

incision wrote: post #52

shmerl wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This puzzles me. Let's compare one time action of registration for secure XMPP service (where you have an option of choosing your own ID (JID) and password which you can change later), as well as an option of using a client with extra security like OTR for text messages and ZRTP for audio/video conferencing, with the client which lets you skipping one time step of registration, but gives it for the price of broken in…

>This puzzles me. It really shouldn't. Seems to me you're grossly over-thinking what's important and/or understood by any majority of the tens of millions using WhatsApp.

I understand the psychology involved, so my remark was rhetoric. One time comfort of avoiding registration lures users who are unaware of resulting security risks. In essence such tradeoff doesn't worth it. It's just unfortunate that such tricks are used by developers of Whatsapp - it's really indecent in my opinion.

Also, instead of promoting federated XMPP (which idea is exactly one time registration and communication with all other federated services), Whatsapp promotes its own walled service. Double failure the way I see it.