Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

941–950 of 972 posts

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#941

Post by dunefox »

abstract_put wrote: post #914
ColinWright wrote: post #863

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect that they have some reliability issues. I've heard that they are sufficiently unreliable as to be unusable, that was was some time ago, and things may have changed.

Anecdote: I've been running my own Matrix bridges for WhatsApp and Signal (for my personal accounts) and they've been nothing but rock solid. Caveat being that with the pandemic I've exclusively used them at home, they're hosted on private infrastructure. It was a bit of a thing to set up, not being familiar with Matrix at all before, but now it's a docker-compose file. To be clear, I send messages from my Matrix cli…

Do you have an article or the code somewhere for all this? I'd like to try setting it up as well.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#942

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

jbotz wrote: post #283
apexalpha wrote: post #155

Where is the "Don't switch" option? Because as much as I hate that Facebook bought them, they're part of what I would call "critical social infrastructure." Asking to leave WhatsApp is like cancelling your contract with your ISP and going offline just because you don't like the company.

Well, I don't know where parent is located, but here in Brazil they are pretty much right. Everybody has WhatsApp... it's assumed that if you have a phone you have WhatsApp. A lot of financial transactions are conducted by doing a bank transfer and then sending the receipt via WhatsApp. The schools send essential messages to parents via WhatsApp. During lockdowns, stores were taking delivery orders via WhatsApp. What…

> Well, I don't know where parent is located, but here in Brazil they are pretty much right. Everybody has WhatsApp... it's assumed that if you have a phone you have WhatsApp. A

Pretty much correct in some countries.

My family (not in Brazil, but also not in the same country as me) all have Whatsapp. So I have it to keep in contact with them. They have it because everyone there has it. It's circular, it's the "network effect" but it's true. I can't entirely switch unless they switch too, and they can't switch unless their friends and co-workers switch. etc.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#943

Post by BlueTemplar »

ColinWright wrote: post #939
BlueTemplar wrote: post #937

Why isn't XMPP on the list ?!? In fact I've dumped WhatsApp in favor of Conversations several years ago, when Facebook bought WhatsApp. (I'm pretty sure that Facebook already helped themselves with all of WhatsApp's data back then, and this recent development is only ass-covering...)

XMPP isn't a chat app, it's a protocol. If you want a chat app then you need to list clients. Which client would you use? And xxxx/XMPP isn't on the list because when I last looked (which was some time ago) everything was unusable for muggles, same with Matrix. Responses to this poll have convinced me that the landscape has changed, although most of the suggestions are still inappropriate for someone who just want to…

Well, for Android at least, the one I mentioned, Conversations ?

BTW, I use it with my mom. And even though I was the one that set up her XMPP account at https://jabber.lqdn.fr/my/create.php , as you can see it's quite straightforward to do ! (And other servers might have an even easier, more mobile friendly version by now, IIRC Conversations itself is suggesting one ?)

As for Matrix, see this other comment of mine :

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25683697

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#944

Post by upofadown »

boogies wrote: post #713
upofadown wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The linked to page does not mention XMPP...

Right, it mentions libpurple (represented by the purple square https://matrix.org/bridges/#libpurple ), which is a library (probably best known for use in the Pidgin frontend) that can use 10 protocols without plugins, including XMPP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin_(software)#Supported_pr...

OK. Perhaps a better way to approach the issue:

What XMPP address format can I use to talk to a Matrix user ID? ... and vice versa...

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#946

Post by ColinWright »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #943
ColinWright wrote: post #939

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XMPP isn't a chat app, it's a protocol. If you want a chat app then you need to list clients. Which client would you use? And xxxx/XMPP isn't on the list because when I last looked (which was some time ago) everything was unusable for muggles, same with Matrix. Responses to this poll have convinced me that the landscape has changed, although most of the suggestions are still inappropriate for someone who just want to…

Well, for Android at least, the one I mentioned, Conversations ? BTW, I use it with my mom. And even though I was the one that set up her XMPP account at https://jabber.lqdn.fr/my/create.php , as you can see it's quite straightforward to do ! (And other servers might have an even easier, more mobile friendly version by now, IIRC Conversations itself is suggesting one ?) As for Matrix, see this other comment of mine :…

Useful reply ... thank you.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#947

Post by whimsicalism »

zzzbra wrote: post #905
selestify wrote: post #901

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think the differences between modern boycotts and Rosa Parks bus boycott are? Why are modern ones so ineffective in comparison?

Rosa Parks was a militant activist and part of a large activist network that was consistently staging public acts in defiance of Jim Crow segregation. This is misleadingly left out of most folks’ intro to her most successful action.

My school system was always big on emphasizing that there were pre-cursors to Rosa Parks (like Claudette Colvin), but they didn't have the connections that she did to make it happen.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#948

Post by abstract_put »

dunefox wrote: post #941
abstract_put wrote: post #914

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote: I've been running my own Matrix bridges for WhatsApp and Signal (for my personal accounts) and they've been nothing but rock solid. Caveat being that with the pandemic I've exclusively used them at home, they're hosted on private infrastructure. It was a bit of a thing to set up, not being familiar with Matrix at all before, but now it's a docker-compose file. To be clear, I send messages from my Matrix cli…

Do you have an article or the code somewhere for all this? I'd like to try setting it up as well.

I haven't written anything up anywhere, but I have a rough outline of it - I can pull it together today and see if it's consumable by others. If you're at all familiar with the tools, they're deployed in their most vanilla capacities. The grief for me was the tiny amount of configuration each piece needed to fit with everything else. Components: postgres, Synapse (Matrix server), Signald (Signal client daemon), mautrix-signal (Signal-Matrix bridge), mautrix-whatsapp (WhatsApp-Matrix bridge), Element (Matrix client)

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#949

Post by dunefox »

abstract_put wrote: post #948
dunefox wrote: post #941

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an article or the code somewhere for all this? I'd like to try setting it up as well.

I haven't written anything up anywhere, but I have a rough outline of it - I can pull it together today and see if it's consumable by others. If you're at all familiar with the tools, they're deployed in their most vanilla capacities. The grief for me was the tiny amount of configuration each piece needed to fit with everything else. Components: postgres, Synapse (Matrix server), Signald (Signal client daemon), mautr…

> I can pull it together today and see if it's consumable by others.

That would be great since I have no idea at all.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#950

Post by ryanlol »

bjoli wrote: post #923
ffpip wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Link.

They didn't backdoor it. It was back in 2013 when they were new. Everyone was going "whoa, your encryption is weird" and they were defending themselves by saying "we have 6 world champion programmers". Anyways, something like 6 months after launch a Russian guy found that they were seeding their secret chat keys with entropy from the server, meaning the server could trivially MITM any secret chat. Pretty embarrassing…

If you look at their implementation the balance of probabilities definitely leans heavily towards “backdoor” rather than “not a backdoor”.

You aren’t going to find any cryptographers anywhere who’d be willing to repeat your “They didn’t backdoor it” lie.

If it looks like a backdoor, swims like a backdoor, quacks like a backdoor, then it probably is a backdoor.

Post reply on HN