HNers, please create a new messenger.
Then what happens? A messenger is only as good as the network of people on it. Signal already exists, and I have a few group chats on it, but most still happens on Whatsapp and FB-Messenger.
WhatsApp introduces ads in its app
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Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app
#632Earlier quoted context omitted.
I moved my family over to Signal years ago. Anyone new who wants to message me, I simply say "I'm on Signal" and if it's important enough, they go and install it; it's been fairly frictionless, after all how hard is it to download an app and go through the fairly minimal registration process; and for someone already using WhatsApp, "one more account" probably isn't a major concern. I tried various steps in the past t…
For me the "one more account" is really a problem. WhatsApp is the standard messenger in most of the EU. And I don't want to go to signal because it's only marginally better. It's still American and still a walled garden (no third party apps allowed, no federation). It's a slightly less smelly walled garden.
I disagree wholeheartedly that it's "only marginally better". It's not Meta, and that's a huge improvement.
A European alternative would be excellent (I'm in the UK), but no such thing exists, that said, Signal's server and clients are open-source and can be self-hosted, or even deployed at scale by a European government/entity if they so wish.
I work in the "secure comms" space, and I have reviewed every line of code in the open-source server (as of the revision I last worked on), and built products on it, and though I can't prove they run the same code they publish, I'm "happy enough" with what I see that I'd use it over anything owned by Meta any day.
In an ideal world, I'd host it myself for everyone I communicate with to use, but without federation that's not a possibility, so given a choice between Signal and WhatsApp, the decision is hands-down Signal.
Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app
#633Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app
#634Earlier quoted context omitted.
Signal have a few things that make it a hard sell. It's really hard to clean up media. You have to go into every single chat and from there go about deleting stuff. At least they finally added a "select all" option in there recently. So the size of it just grows and grows and grows until it's using all the space on your phone. Not a good fit for non-technical types. Secondly, no web view. There is the desktop app yes…
Signal does other things which annoy me to the point I can't consider it as a viable option for me, my family and close friends. For a start, it wants a full access to contacts and if doesn't get it it pops internal notification about it - but that one is easily dismissible. But then, I keep a strict notification settings on all my devices and Signal doesn't like that and wants me to turn these on. Perhaps because th…
> For a start, it wants a full access to contacts and if doesn't get it it pops internal notification about it - but that one is easily dismissible.
This is at least an improvement over WhatsApp, which removes core functionality (e.g. creating groups) when this access is refused
Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app
#635Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fun fact is that those people have 100+ apps on their phones, which run in the background, draining their batteries, tracking the sh*t out of them, never actually use them (get value out of them) and they think zero about their privacy (probably use gmail or the sorts). Someone asked me to install Viber and it had 30 pages of advertisers/data brokers. I won't share a bowl of poop with them (WhatsApp, Viber, etc.)…
I don't know about iOS but a modern Android will periodically delete permissions from apps you aren't using, the app stays installed but it's now just a harmless icon and wasted storage space as I understand it.
You also have the ability to easily setup a "Work profile" that's functionally like a second user with its own apps that don't talk to your normal profile apps, and you can shut the whole work profile off when you don't need it so the apps can't even run until you turn it back on. My preferred way of setting it up is with Shelter installed via FDroid.
Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app
#636install signal, donate €2.99, done. don't understand so many still stick to this messanger.
In a lot of developing countries WhatsApp doesn't count against your data plan. Signal data is billed like any other app. It's not easy asking all your friends to pay for something they already get "for free".
Ripe for antitrust litigation. Reminds me of Microsoft bundling Internet Explorer. Unfortunately, developing countries have bigger things on their plate than going against Meta, especially since I figure the “bribes” and promise to improve the nation’s internet infrastructure are very substantial.
Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app
#637Can we get a federated messenger already? Sure, we have email, but the MS/Google duopoloy has effectively unfederated that, with their inscrutable block lists and nonexistent appeals processes, allegedly in order to protect you from spam. Sure, XMPP is a thing, which has been mostly dead for well over a decade. Sure, Matrix is a thing, but every time I look at it, all I see is criticism of its specifications and poor…
We do not need federated messaging at the consumer app level, we need a replacement that's available at the cellular network level (just like SMS). RCS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services) is trying to do this, but it might be too little too late.
Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app
#638Alice Newton-Rex, head of product at WhatsApp: “Alongside of private messaging, people were saying they wanted to hear more about topics, teams and organizations across WhatsApp.” - I am pretty sure NO ONE asked to hear about more topics and organizations across whatsapp.
Translation: After going through a far too large number of focus groups that didn't want it we finally found one that phrased a reply in such a way, that after removing context and playing Chinese whispers up the management chain, can be interpreted as them wanting ads.
Nah, it's even simpler than that: after shoving enough surveys in users' faces (as they seem to semi-regularly do across all Meta products; I've had at least 2 in WhatsApp alone over the past few months), they've collected enough misclicks and drunk responses to be able to interpret them as lots of people wanting ads.
Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app
#639Does anybody have stats on how many people are O.K. paying for their core services, i.e. how many people pay for paid personal e-mail services? I just don't want to believe that our services have to be paid for through proxy by giving huge cut to 3rd parties. The quality goes down both as UX and as core content, our attention span is destroyed, our privacy is violated and our political power is being stolen as conten…
how many people are O.K. paying for their core services, i.e. how many people pay for paid personal e-mail services?
Why are you using that as an example, and not asking how many people pay for their cellular data plan?
Re: WhatsApp introduces ads in its app
#640HNers, please create a new messenger.
HNers will probably take VC money and sell to Meta eventually for a gazillion dollars. You should ask someone on the GNU mailing list (but they don’t have the time and money, especially marketing reach to compete with anything popular)