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European civil servants are being forced off WhatsApp

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Re: European civil servants are being forced off WhatsApp

#81

Post by Arathorn »

DarkUranium wrote: post #68
xethos wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clicking through and stumbling upon Croatia, which specifies only "Classified deployment", has left me absolutely cackeling. Seems hilarious that they're willing to say that they use it, but unwilling to state if it's for early testing, civilian-level beaurocracy, or Croatia's equivalent of specialized armed forces. That they publicly use it at all is great though, as it likely helps shift the Overton window of what'…

I hope they don't, considering Matrix's handling of security is on the level of a bumbling toddler.

If you're talking about https://matrix.org/blog/2026/02/analysis-of-reported-issues-..., I'm not entirely sure that characterisation is accurate :)

Re: European civil servants are being forced off WhatsApp

#82

Post by spwa4 »

wolvoleo wrote: post #49
spwa4 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the managers also demand their employees don't use it you mean? Because then it can be used against them in court? (cfr. email "retention policies" legal departments demand these days?)

In most European countries we don't have this extensive discovery thing that the US has. It's not really a problem.

Yes, you do. First of all, in UK, it's almost exactly the same. In Europe under Napoleon law (most of the continent), it's the judge who decides to assign someone who gets to do discovery.

Which means in practice the state (police, Tax service, ministries, ...) get to do any discovery they want, including things that would never fly in the US (e.g. have you ever known a judge to allow discovery on a bank account and blocking it for the duration of the case?) And in private cases, usually there is very limited discovery, and only by an independent lawyer, not on either side, assigned by the judge.

It's very different, with different pros and cons. Given that large companies keep leaving the EU, and I bet this is a (granted, minor) factor in that.

Re: European civil servants are being forced off WhatsApp

#83

Post by gonzalohm »

pesus wrote: post #55
jandrewrogers wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't setting up the servers, they already exist for the most part. It is getting anyone to use them. I've seen this play out a few times in Europe. People are extremely resistant to giving up WhatsApp. These rules are so widely flouted that no one takes them seriously, including the people making the rules. It is a bit of theater, meanwhile everyone continues to use WhatsApp. There is no will to actually…

Maybe I'm just too American to understand, but it still baffles me that WhatsApp is used for business purposes. It makes a lot more sense for regular personal messaging, but it seems incredibly unprofessional to me. I would think it bizarre and a bit invasive if my boss tried to text or iMessage me. Are they at least using different accounts for work messaging? Not to mention the app itself was pretty mediocre last t…

It was kind of a cultural shock that people companies) in the US still leave messages on my voicemail. Last time I remember using the voicemail in the EU was like 2005 or around that time

Re: European civil servants are being forced off WhatsApp

#84

Post by wink »

wolvoleo wrote: post #50
jandrewrogers wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't setting up the servers, they already exist for the most part. It is getting anyone to use them. I've seen this play out a few times in Europe. People are extremely resistant to giving up WhatsApp. These rules are so widely flouted that no one takes them seriously, including the people making the rules. It is a bit of theater, meanwhile everyone continues to use WhatsApp. There is no will to actually…

At my workplace we only use WhatsApp for personal comms. Like chatting about which restaurant we go for lunch, who's at the office tomorrow, when is everyone's birthday, what did we do this weekend, that kinda stuff. For work related stuff we use teams and that it's kinda needed too because we can only link to internal resources there, like SharePoint.

I mean at least you have teams as an alternative.

Where my wife works they simply have a WhatsApp group because there _is_ no messenger, and while they don't use it for work stuff, they couldn't even have anything but group emails for discussing lunch plans or reaching someone who is not present at the office without calling (and in the case of reaching someone, they don't have access to anything on personal devices and they 90% have no work phones).

Re: European civil servants are being forced off WhatsApp

#85

Post by wolvoleo »

Arathorn wrote: post #79
wolvoleo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question, with so many major orgs using it, are there no plans for manual status? The one thing I miss vis-a-vis teams is the ability to manually set myself away, appear offline, busy etc. Matrix shows me as active (green dot) when I have the client open but there's no way to override that. At least none that I found. I'm a bit surprised all these big governmental clients didn't ask for such a feature :)

There's a big gap between lots of orgs using it, and lots of orgs paying for development of it. That said, BWI in Germany is currently funding custom status so it should be coming soon :)

Ohh nice to hear it's coming.

But sorry that they are not contributing. That's pretty bad tbh.

Re: European civil servants are being forced off WhatsApp

#87

Post by backscratches »

esbranson wrote: post #61
posperson wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economically the EU might not keep pace, but the built infrastructure to live an enjoyable life is there. I certainly had a delightful time visiting the winter markets across Europe, and it seemed like there were a fair number of people living well. While the Eurozone might not be a great place to start a new business it is still a going concern, enough that those top 50 companies all have a European presence.

> infrastructure to live an enjoyable life is there Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but living in the US ain't exactly like Escape from New York or Escape from LA. For every Mississippi there is an analogous place in Europe, and for every Liechtenstein there is an analogous place in the US. I'm not sure if your comment is a counterargument or neutral commentary.

Name a single metropolitan area in the US with infrastructure on par with any single European one.

Re: European civil servants are being forced off WhatsApp

#88

Post by Henchman21 »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #58
pesus wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm just too American to understand, but it still baffles me that WhatsApp is used for business purposes. It makes a lot more sense for regular personal messaging, but it seems incredibly unprofessional to me. I would think it bizarre and a bit invasive if my boss tried to text or iMessage me. Are they at least using different accounts for work messaging? Not to mention the app itself was pretty mediocre last t…

most of the world is using WA for biz. US is an outlier Most biz dont have the kind of money to hand over to Goog workspace or M$. therefore, you get what its free, and thats WA biz

Isn't there a worry about the messages not being private and being read by Facebook? I have that same worry with Google and Apple both.

Re: European civil servants are being forced off WhatsApp

#89

Post by integralid »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #53
hackerbeat wrote: post #6

Good. The US is gone.

> Good. The US is gone. Yeah. But then the EU lost the plot a very long time ago. There is one EU company in the 50 of the world by companies market cap. One. Just freaking one. It's ASML. From 2008 to today, in USD and inflation adjusted, the eurozone saw no growth. While both the US and China skyrocketed. There's been this little thing lately that kinda took off: it's called AI. Where's the EU? How much of a leader…

>There is one EU company in the 50 of the world by companies market cap. One. Just freaking one.

And this is a good thing. All 50 of them should be broken up anyway.

>I'm in the EU and honestly it's more than frightening

I'm in the EU and I love it. It's not perfect, but I wouldn't want to live in any other place. And in the coming fight for digital freedom EU is almost always on the right side.

Re: European civil servants are being forced off WhatsApp

#90

Post by esbranson »

backscratches wrote: post #87
esbranson wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> infrastructure to live an enjoyable life is there Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but living in the US ain't exactly like Escape from New York or Escape from LA. For every Mississippi there is an analogous place in Europe, and for every Liechtenstein there is an analogous place in the US. I'm not sure if your comment is a counterargument or neutral commentary.

Name a single metropolitan area in the US with infrastructure on par with any single European one.

New York City. Compared to small cities like London, Paris, or Rome there are areas where it's not on par, but its multimodal transport, energy, heating, water, sanitation systems is larger and more comprehensive than most cities in Europe.
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