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WhatsApp gives users an ultimatum: Share data with Facebook or stop using app

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Re: WhatsApp gives users an ultimatum: Share data with Facebook or stop using app

#991

Post by Ygg2 »

Closi wrote: post #841
Ygg2 wrote: post #806

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Facebook, Twitter and Google are ephemeral utilities. They will probably be replaced by another company. Privatizing them will just let someone else come along and Embrace, extend, extinguish them.

> They will probably be replaced by another company Nobody has a chance, but different reasons in each company: * What we have seen with Google - For a search engine, the more traffic you get the better results you can give (you can A-B test different algorithms for different queries, and optimise results). For new entrants they need to be popular before they can be better, which is a catch-22. Additionally Google ha…

> For a search engine, the more traffic you get the better results you can give

Lately I have been noticing the opposite trend. Google search relevance is going downhil for me. I'm not sure when that started but I noticed it in 2019-ish last two years. Youtube search is so bad (note: I have history disabled), I rely on Google to search YouTube.

Playing cat and mouse with SEO seems to have taken its toll. I find myself going to DDG and Bing a few times a week. Before it was only Google.

> For a social network, Facebook buy out any potential competition when it's gaining traction to further solidify their monopoly.

Maybe, but each of those competitors is essentially a fad, and Facebook forcing WhatsApp users to login via Facebook, to me seems more like desperate move, than anything else.

I agree those acquisitions are IMO problematic, but I am not sure if they are strengthening Facebook, or killing it with a thousand cuts.

Re: WhatsApp gives users an ultimatum: Share data with Facebook or stop using app

#992

Post by feanaro »

krageon wrote: post #709
jcalve wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it would force people to use better alternatives such as Signal or Telegram.

Signal is run by someone who hates repeatable builds and open platforms. Telegram is to the russian government what whatsapp is to the US government. That is to say, both options are bad. Of course it is conceptually better to spread your information over many separate information silos so that your data is harder to correlate. That should not be the bar we aspire to though.

And that's why we have Matrix.

Re: WhatsApp gives users an ultimatum: Share data with Facebook or stop using app

#993

Post by fsflover »

Bit32 wrote: post #977
fsflover wrote: post #754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See elsewhere in this discussion why Signal is not much better: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25668547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25669657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25668659

Er, The third link doesn't even support your argument and the first two links are written by the same author . - Signal IS much better. It's a nonprofit, not a commerical company. There are arguments for and against centralized systems and forks of apps. The lead dev of Signal is concerned about interoperability; but still leaves users the option of doing things the way they would like with the open source code; it's…

In the third link, look at the replies. Matrix is much better than Signal, because it solves all the problems listed in my links.

Re: WhatsApp gives users an ultimatum: Share data with Facebook or stop using app

#994

Post by shureluck »

frereubu wrote: post #22

I'd love to give up WhatsApp, but network effects are key here. I tried moving my extended family off WhatsApp onto Signal a couple of years ago and it failed miserably because the app wasn't nearly as easy to use, and they had all their friends on Whatsapp. Has anyone here had any success moving a large group of people onto something like Signal or Telegram? If so, do you have any tips?

I moved my entire family onto it easily. But they are fairly conservative and so it simply was a matter of explaining the situation about big tech lying and they were sold.

Re: WhatsApp gives users an ultimatum: Share data with Facebook or stop using app

#995

Post by under3 »

godelski wrote: post #514
happymellon wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal, that's another one that requires your phone number? Yeah, thanks but no thanks.

Don't they all? But good news is that they have pushed code to allow for usernames (or not even that). It isn't open to the public (or beta) yet, but it looks like the feature is going to be released fairly soon.

https://briarproject.org/ https://getsession.org/

Re: WhatsApp gives users an ultimatum: Share data with Facebook or stop using app

#996

Post by kleiba »

est31 wrote: post #441
kleiba wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social life is impossible without the mainstream technology. I've never owned a cell phone nor ever had a social media account in my life. Sure, it gets me the occasional eye roll but trust me, my social life is just fine. Caveat: old person speaking.

> Caveat: old person speaking. There you have it. Class of 1950 uses letters to organize itself. Class of 2000 uses e-mail. Class of 2010 uses Facebook. Class of 2020 uses Tiktok or idk snapchat. And this issue isn't just about your class, it also includes any peer group of any kind. For me as a 20s something, the choice is quite binary. Nowadays you can't even participate in free software communities without using p…

Nowadays...

Hey, I might be old, but I still live nowadays too!

Re: WhatsApp gives users an ultimatum: Share data with Facebook or stop using app

#997

Post by krageon »

72deluxe wrote: post #855
krageon wrote: post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author is a toxic dictator who hates the idea of ceding power so that they can have a constructive and open protocol for everyone. That means the app should never be used, by anyone. If you're going to use software like this, you may as well stay with whatsapp - at least that has a lot of users.

I see mention of the toxic dictator stuff and non-reproducible builds mentioned through this thread - do you have info on that you can point me to? I am asking because a guy at work wanted me to install Signal as voice call quality on Duo was appallingly bad. Thanks in advance.

You can read about the stance in question on a lot of github issues, one of which is this one: https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37 (not actually the signal repo, but moxie talks about the need for iron control over the platform). You can extrapolate consequences pretty far from what is said there, consequences which are well understood by moxie (if nothing else, you can see that time was spent thinking about environmental factors). To me this attitude is baldly toxic because it makes the world worse (in that it reinforces the opinion that centralised is better, which is at the heart of so many problematic digital services).

Re: WhatsApp gives users an ultimatum: Share data with Facebook or stop using app

#998

Post by CRConrad »

vinay427 wrote: post #955
alex_duf wrote: post #866

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think similarly to how europe has forced Banks to interoperate by making them write a protocol that can interoperate, governments need to force social media companies to write down a protocol and use it. I like the analogy with utilities, but the issue is that we pay for electricity, but we don't pay for our usage of social media. As long as that's true we can difficulty do what I'm suggesting above

I think India's Unified Payments Interface is a better analogy here. From what I understand (as an outsider, so based only on what I've read) it provides a universal API for mobile applications to interface with banks, essentially standardizing the federation of bank transfers. Therefore, your account at bank X can be used to pay an account at bank Y for some service that uses app Z. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uni…

Why would that be a better analogy than the European system that allows you to do the exact same thing?

Re: WhatsApp gives users an ultimatum: Share data with Facebook or stop using app

#999

Post by 72deluxe »

eproxus wrote: post #973
72deluxe wrote: post #845

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have this problem. I use an Android phone, but have a Mac and iPad. My mum has no idea how to send an SMS to me so will send me messages on iMessage that I don't see for weeks because I haven't used the iPad or Mac (been working on Windows for a while writing code). Infuriating.

I'm in the opposite situation. A friend has iMessage on the computer but just SMS on the phone. There's no way to force send an SMS on iOS anymore. All the guides I've found just mention the "Resend failed message as SMS" but messages never fail, they're just queued on the computer.

Oh so no way to explicitly send a SMS from iMessage on an iPhone now?

That'll explain why my mum can never ever get in touch with me.

Re: WhatsApp gives users an ultimatum: Share data with Facebook or stop using app

#1000

Post by gerash »

Can someone ELI5 the ramifications of this change? The WhatsApp FAQ says only chats with businesses are affected.

Also what happened to the "if you're not the customer you're the product" mentality. Do people expect some entities to pay for servers and teams of Android and iOS developers to create a chat app without getting paid and out of pure goodwill?

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