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Social life is impossible without the mainstream technology. Sure you can find alternatives but if no one uses it other than you, you end up being sidelined. Th

Social life is impossible without the mainstream technology. Sure you can find alternatives but if no one uses it other than you, you end up being sidelined. The technology gets enforced and leaves one with no choice but to accept it or be a red flag. Shouldn't it be possible to delete your whatsapp chat and contacts data regularly from the cloud? Eg. one could delete the whatsapp account, clear data on cloud and make a new account again. Having more control over your data stored by Facebook would give more power to the users of enforced by the government.

backWardz00 6y ago
Your mistake is believing those apps are for socializing. They’re for aggregate metrics and attention collecting on the part of the company. I do not have a Facebook empire, Twitter, TikTok or other social media presence. I email academics I can’t visit. I group text friends and family to make plans, and use the calendar built into my phone to remind myself of those events.
- kace91 6y ago
  In many countries, WhatsApp equals texting, period. No one will use sms, among other things because they're not free (~20 cents per message, character limited, no multimedia). The reality is that WhatsApp is a requirement for social life. Any solution that doesn't start from that point lacks any practicality.
  - backWardz00 6y ago
    HTTPs works with email, email works over data networks. I get social inertia is a thing. Somehow I’ve blown it off and life still works. Summarizing it as “life begins and ends with WhatsApp” seems just as ridiculous to me. Acquiesce and nothing changes. Turn and face the strange.
    - julienb_sea 6y ago
      Or realize the overwhelming majority have no interest in limiting their communication and social network due to "privacy concerns", and already have both a Facebook and Whatsapp account that are connected and sharing data. You can do this if you want, but don't preach it as if most people should care.
    - lwhi 6y ago
      Most people in the UK use WhatsApp .. the fact that we have WhatsApp groups means Facebook can make this ultimatum with fairly good confidence we'll stomach it.
    - seesawtron 6y ago
      It strongly depends on what state of life you are currently at. If you are a 20 something individual and have to build a new life in a new city, being out of the "social apps" gives you next to no opportunities to build social connections. If you are already well connected with your peers and friends and your social life doesn't depend on finding and exploring via the "social apps" sure you have the freedom to disconnect virtually and still remain connected socially.
    - mlboss 6y ago
      Everybody has different scenarios. How many of your friend/family members can reach out to you using phone. All my family members live in a different country and there is no good medium for communication than whatsapp.
      - backWardz00 6y ago
        https://protonmail.com/ https://protonmail.com/ Spike on iOS is a client that wraps email in a chat like UI if the people are free to chat real time. Not sure if it’s on Android. There a numerous video chat sites not connected to Zoom, or FB properties whereby, etc I gave my family an ultimatum and being the tech savvy one they jumped to Signal Social inertia is a thing conceptually, but it’s not gravity. It can be bent any which way
        6y ago
  - sandworm101 6y ago
    Thats fine. You can just accept that facebook is essential to the social life of your country, that the facebook eula is defacto legislation that you just obey. On the other hand, Signal works. My friends and I use it every day. We have not surendered, nor shall we.
- lwhi 6y ago
  A lot of people do use social media as their main method of socialising, especially during this pandemic.
kleiba 6y ago
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.
- seesawtron 6y ago
  yeah depends on which stage of life you are living in. Sadly doesn't work for everybody but doesn't hurt to give it a try if someone wants to.
  - kleiba 6y ago
    It's not so much the stage of life, it's that these technologies have become the de facto standard way of interacting in today's younger part of the population. In other words: even though cell phones and social media were around when I was younger, they didn't play the central role they do today, so presumably it was much easier for me to do without them and still have a normal social life than it would be today. Here's a sad thought experiment though: if you can only remain an active part of your circle of friends if you use the same technology as they do, what does that say about the depth of that friendship?
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  Network effects are real. Financially independent adults can choose their friends among a large pool of candidates. Kids, broke college students, and those generally less well off may have fewer options.
  - Zelphyr 6y ago
    The flaw in that way of thinking is that kids, broke college students, and those generally less well off had no social life or network before social media.
    - MakersF 6y ago
      True, but that was because no one had social media. Now that a big majority of people have it and interact over it, if you don't have it the chances of being marginalized are higher. When everyone was using SMSes to chat, how did the kid that did not have a phone felt? And people were social before phones existes too. I think that being outside of the main mean of communication is going to have an impact on your social life, independently of what the medium is
remexre 6y ago
Signal's not like... "tech for tech people." It's very much usable for nontechnical family members, etc.
- fitblipper 6y ago
  While I agree with this 90% of the way, their backup, restore, and phone changing process is very much "tech for tech people". I've had the joy of trying to explain to my elderly dad why his text message history is lost because he chose Signal as the default sms system, didn't make a backup, didn't sync that backup to the cloud or manually copy it to the new phone, and didn't write down the very long decryption code.
  - thekyle 6y ago
    I really don't understand why Signal doesn't just keep a encrypted backup in Google Drive/iCloud. This seems like such a solved problem and yet they instead invented their own Bluetooth sync thing for iOS and manually copying files around for Android.
    - climb_stealth 6y ago
      I'm hoping it will get there eventually. The backup mechanism on Android has improved a fair bit from what it was at the start. It used to be that you had to have the backup file in the correct magic path before starting Signal for the first time. Now at least there is a dialog and you can pick the file whenever. The usability issues for non-tech people have been getting less and less in the past years which is keeping my hopes up.
    - taki 6y ago
      Agreed. I understand they are reticent to allow backups for security reasons - but they're treating their users like idiots by doing this. Some people will have threat models where the ability to retain/export messages is worth the risk this may introduce. Let people make their own decisions.
  - NolF 6y ago
mr_toad 6y ago
> Social life is impossible without the mainstream technology. If people won’t go to the trouble of using an alternate way of getting in touch with you then they’re not really your friends.
- foozocbar 6y ago
  If seesawtron won't go to the trouble of using WhatsApp (an alternate way than Signal) of getting in touch with his friends, is seesawtron really their friend?
- isatty 6y ago
  This is such a bullshit HN comment. I don’t like WhatsApp/FB either but critical mass is important.
- doc_gunthrop 6y ago
  It's more like: If people won’t go to the trouble of using your preferred method of getting in touch with you then you don't have enough social clout.
- danieldk 6y ago
  Whatsapp is used (at least here in the EU) for a lot more than staying in touch with your friends. E.g. having a young kid, it's used for: the class' group, arranging playdates, etc. Not using Whatsapp makes it much harder to arrange your social life and that of your kids. Then there are also many organizations/companies that use Whatsapp to set appointments, for chat support, etc. In many EU countries Whatsapp is pretty much replaced SMS. Only a small minority of folks have Signal or Telegram. iMessage is probably the only other thing that shows as a blip on the radar, but only a portion of the population has iDevices. I agree that this is a bad situation, but WhatsApp became popular when it was still independent and their profit model was charging 1 Euro per year (which was much cheaper than SMS). Now abandoning Whatsapp is difficult due to network effects.
jorangreef 6y ago
> Sure you can find alternatives but if no one uses it other than you, you end up being sidelined. Make it happen. Be the change you want to see.

backWardz00 6y ago

Your mistake is believing those apps are for socializing. They’re for aggregate metrics and attention collecting on the part of the company. I do not have a Facebook empire, Twitter, TikTok or other social media presence. I email academics I can’t visit. I group text friends and family to make plans, and use the calendar built into my phone to remind myself of those events.

kace91 6y ago
In many countries, WhatsApp equals texting, period. No one will use sms, among other things because they're not free (~20 cents per message, character limited, no multimedia). The reality is that WhatsApp is a requirement for social life. Any solution that doesn't start from that point lacks any practicality.
- backWardz00 6y ago
  HTTPs works with email, email works over data networks. I get social inertia is a thing. Somehow I’ve blown it off and life still works. Summarizing it as “life begins and ends with WhatsApp” seems just as ridiculous to me. Acquiesce and nothing changes. Turn and face the strange.
  - julienb_sea 6y ago
    Or realize the overwhelming majority have no interest in limiting their communication and social network due to "privacy concerns", and already have both a Facebook and Whatsapp account that are connected and sharing data. You can do this if you want, but don't preach it as if most people should care.
  - lwhi 6y ago
    Most people in the UK use WhatsApp .. the fact that we have WhatsApp groups means Facebook can make this ultimatum with fairly good confidence we'll stomach it.
  - seesawtron 6y ago
    It strongly depends on what state of life you are currently at. If you are a 20 something individual and have to build a new life in a new city, being out of the "social apps" gives you next to no opportunities to build social connections. If you are already well connected with your peers and friends and your social life doesn't depend on finding and exploring via the "social apps" sure you have the freedom to disconnect virtually and still remain connected socially.
  - mlboss 6y ago
    Everybody has different scenarios. How many of your friend/family members can reach out to you using phone. All my family members live in a different country and there is no good medium for communication than whatsapp.
    - backWardz00 6y ago
      https://protonmail.com/ https://protonmail.com/ Spike on iOS is a client that wraps email in a chat like UI if the people are free to chat real time. Not sure if it’s on Android. There a numerous video chat sites not connected to Zoom, or FB properties whereby, etc I gave my family an ultimatum and being the tech savvy one they jumped to Signal Social inertia is a thing conceptually, but it’s not gravity. It can be bent any which way
      - 6y ago
- sandworm101 6y ago
  Thats fine. You can just accept that facebook is essential to the social life of your country, that the facebook eula is defacto legislation that you just obey. On the other hand, Signal works. My friends and I use it every day. We have not surendered, nor shall we.
lwhi 6y ago
A lot of people do use social media as their main method of socialising, especially during this pandemic.

kleiba 6y ago

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.

seesawtron 6y ago
yeah depends on which stage of life you are living in. Sadly doesn't work for everybody but doesn't hurt to give it a try if someone wants to.
- kleiba 6y ago
  It's not so much the stage of life, it's that these technologies have become the de facto standard way of interacting in today's younger part of the population. In other words: even though cell phones and social media were around when I was younger, they didn't play the central role they do today, so presumably it was much easier for me to do without them and still have a normal social life than it would be today. Here's a sad thought experiment though: if you can only remain an active part of your circle of friends if you use the same technology as they do, what does that say about the depth of that friendship?
paulryanrogers 6y ago
Network effects are real. Financially independent adults can choose their friends among a large pool of candidates. Kids, broke college students, and those generally less well off may have fewer options.
- Zelphyr 6y ago
  The flaw in that way of thinking is that kids, broke college students, and those generally less well off had no social life or network before social media.
  - MakersF 6y ago
    True, but that was because no one had social media. Now that a big majority of people have it and interact over it, if you don't have it the chances of being marginalized are higher. When everyone was using SMSes to chat, how did the kid that did not have a phone felt? And people were social before phones existes too. I think that being outside of the main mean of communication is going to have an impact on your social life, independently of what the medium is

remexre 6y ago

Signal's not like... "tech for tech people." It's very much usable for nontechnical family members, etc.

fitblipper 6y ago
While I agree with this 90% of the way, their backup, restore, and phone changing process is very much "tech for tech people". I've had the joy of trying to explain to my elderly dad why his text message history is lost because he chose Signal as the default sms system, didn't make a backup, didn't sync that backup to the cloud or manually copy it to the new phone, and didn't write down the very long decryption code.
- thekyle 6y ago
  I really don't understand why Signal doesn't just keep a encrypted backup in Google Drive/iCloud. This seems like such a solved problem and yet they instead invented their own Bluetooth sync thing for iOS and manually copying files around for Android.
  - climb_stealth 6y ago
    I'm hoping it will get there eventually. The backup mechanism on Android has improved a fair bit from what it was at the start. It used to be that you had to have the backup file in the correct magic path before starting Signal for the first time. Now at least there is a dialog and you can pick the file whenever. The usability issues for non-tech people have been getting less and less in the past years which is keeping my hopes up.
  - taki 6y ago
    Agreed. I understand they are reticent to allow backups for security reasons - but they're treating their users like idiots by doing this. Some people will have threat models where the ability to retain/export messages is worth the risk this may introduce. Let people make their own decisions.
- NolF 6y ago

mr_toad 6y ago

> Social life is impossible without the mainstream technology. If people won’t go to the trouble of using an alternate way of getting in touch with you then they’re not really your friends.

foozocbar 6y ago
If seesawtron won't go to the trouble of using WhatsApp (an alternate way than Signal) of getting in touch with his friends, is seesawtron really their friend?
isatty 6y ago
This is such a bullshit HN comment. I don’t like WhatsApp/FB either but critical mass is important.
doc_gunthrop 6y ago
It's more like: If people won’t go to the trouble of using your preferred method of getting in touch with you then you don't have enough social clout.
danieldk 6y ago
Whatsapp is used (at least here in the EU) for a lot more than staying in touch with your friends. E.g. having a young kid, it's used for: the class' group, arranging playdates, etc. Not using Whatsapp makes it much harder to arrange your social life and that of your kids. Then there are also many organizations/companies that use Whatsapp to set appointments, for chat support, etc. In many EU countries Whatsapp is pretty much replaced SMS. Only a small minority of folks have Signal or Telegram. iMessage is probably the only other thing that shows as a blip on the radar, but only a portion of the population has iDevices. I agree that this is a bad situation, but WhatsApp became popular when it was still independent and their profit model was charging 1 Euro per year (which was much cheaper than SMS). Now abandoning Whatsapp is difficult due to network effects.

jorangreef 6y ago

> Sure you can find alternatives but if no one uses it other than you, you end up being sidelined. Make it happen. Be the change you want to see.