6 ms·

This is exactly right. Author Nassim Taleb has written on this extensively. He calls it "The Dominance of the Stubborn Minority". A dedicated and stubborn mino

by tharne 6y ago

This is exactly right. Author Nassim Taleb has written on this extensively. He calls it "The Dominance of the Stubborn Minority". A dedicated and stubborn minority can gradually impose their preferences on a majority who does not have a strong opinion on something. This why you'll order a cheese pizza if you're hanging out with friends and a single person in the group is a vegetarian. In my own life there are many group chats that are now on signal because one stubborn 'ole grouch, namely me, insisted on it. Most people don't give too much thought to the chat app they use, so they kind of shrugged their shoulders and went along with it.

Barrin92 6y ago
for Nassim's example to work the minority has to be exclusionary. Everything is nut-free because you don't want to kill allergic people and you can't have both nuts and no nuts in your food, so the minority in the group can force to change the behaviour of the rest. With messaging apps you can use both Whatsapp and Signal, so even if you convince a few people to convert, Whatsapp is unlikely to decline. The important word in Taleb's thesis is 'stubborn', not minority. The change isn't gradual but 'fractal' with one person in the group being able to flip everyone else, and they going on an doing the same thing.
- IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
  I think you both can be correct I think the stubborn minority may indeed be small, but you havent given the intolerant minority the time ineeds to grow.
- Retric 6y ago
  On the surface it seems like people would just use two apps, but most people don’t care. So, if nobody is extremely pro WhatsApp because for example they have a non smartphone and it’s what works then WhatsApp dies. It’s just a question of how many people are extremely pro WhatsApp and will Facebook drive them away.
  - xwolfi 6y ago
    But you're stuck in a world where apps are segregated that way. But if I were Google, I'd change android to make their messaging app backend-agnostic and able to send information to any app with a unified frontend. I'd ban from the store if not. Done, nobody cares anymore, for real and features will come from Google :D We're so stuck on using 2 apps instead of 2 networks we forget mobile phone providers had to agree together to do SMS decades ago, and it went fine with dumbed down feature. And let's be honest, the only killer feature that made me finally adopt whatsapp like 6 years ago was that it used the data plan that works on WIFI rather than the phone plan. We were all fine with SMSes before.
    - kelnos 6y ago
      It's weird to hear you say that, because SMS is terrible. Unreliable delivery, delivery receipts that come back even if the recipient's phone is turned off, no media (MMS is also terrible, just try to send a video over it and watch the pixelated garbage that comes out the other side), no privacy or security to speak of, carrier interop issues (character encodings, message length, shortcode support), identity tied to your phone number, no ability to send/receive messages without being tethered to the phone (to be fair, Signal and WhatsApp also have this problem)... I could go on.
      - mlang23 6y ago
        Interesting. I guess the issues you see as a user depend on where you life / which carrier you are using? I had more issues with iMessage delivery then I ever had with SMS in my whole life. I dont even remember a single incident with SMS delivery. And I consider your "missing media" point an advantage. Sending stupid videos from phone to phone is a disease that I dont want to deal with.
      - eecc 6y ago
        SMS and MMS are telco standards whose progress and maintenance depends on the willingness of operators to patch and upgrade their infrastructure equipment (good luck with that) So yeah, while saddening I don’t expect SMS to make much progress as its lifecycle is tied to the worst one in the industry. XMPP had a better chance, but unfortunately chatting service is the bait for other purposes... so an interop standard has no chance to survive without regulation.
- mrslave 6y ago
  > With messaging apps you can use both Whatsapp and Signal You can have both Whatsapp and Signal installed, but everyone in a conversation needs to have the same app. So why not both doesn't apply as neatly as you assert.
  - xenocratus 6y ago
    Sure, but that assumes you only have one group. I'm in only 2 really small groups, both on Signal, but I keep Whatsapp because there are a few people I can only talk to there. It's also a backup mechanism in case Signal fails (like it did when the exodus happened)
    - jamaicahest 6y ago
      > It's also a backup mechanism in case Signal fails (like it did when the exodus happened) I view SMS as a fallback solution. It has plenty of benefits, i.e. no app required, works on every mobile phone ever made.
      - xenocratus 6y ago
        That's true, but the people I talk to on Whatsapp are not (usually) in the same country as me, and cross-border SMS tends to not be included in a basic package. Especially now that UK has left the EU, that's definitely not going to be cheap. Add to this that cost increases with message length in SMS - over the internet it's basically flat if you have wifi or data (up to a point at least... :D )
  - josefx 6y ago
    You can have both of them installed at the same time, so anyone refusing to join a Signal conversation is just going out of their way to be a pain to deal with.
    - mathstuf 6y ago
      Eh, I already have enough messaging apps myself (4 right now), so adding more at this point is a hurdle I'd like to avoid. I can imagine others having similar feelings.
- sails 6y ago
  Stubborn minority in this case would be the stubborn Signal users refusing to use Whatapp? 3 groups: 1. Uses Signal only 2. Uses both 3. Uses Whatsapp only 1 is the stubborn minority, 2 is slowly increasing, and 3 probably doesn't care enough to be considered stubborn, and definitely not minority. At least that was my thought, this whole debacle reminded me immediately of the stubborn minority, so I'm very curious to see how it plays out.
  - emn13 6y ago
    I'd pick a different classification. It's more like these groups: 1. Uses whatsapp out of momentum. Doesn't want to use anything else, but might if people really push them; i.e. open to transition to group 2. 2. Will use whatever. Some people in this group want to stop using whatsapp, but won't break contacts to do so. Some people in this group would prefer to stick with whatsapp to avoid the burden of a switch, but won't break contacts to do so. This is the vast majority of switchers. 3. Die hard whatsapp users. Simply refuse to switch to another app, because it's a hassle, and/or because they begrudge other people making a mountain out of a molehill and asking them to do anything. Might oppose yet-another-app; or might actually want to stick to whatsapp because they actually like the simplicity of the network effect. 4. Die hard non-whatsapp (likely signal?) users. Refuse to use whatsapp, likely due to privacy concerns or distrust of facebook. I don't think most people trying to switch away from whatsapp are in 4. Anecdotally, I people I know asking to switch are clearly in 2, and are largely losing to those in 3. Only 1 person I know claims to be in 4, but I'm not really sure that'll stick if the exodus doesn't keep momentum. Because of the existance of the bulk of humanity which barely cares about this, and some of which will get annoyed at the suggestion - I suspect group 3 is much, much larger than 4, and that suggests this exodus will fall flat. The only real chance here is that since this is all about closed groups that network effects aren't so huge, so a considerable exodus without actual terminal velocity is possible.
    - sails 6y ago
      Interesting, I think your classification adds some nice colour to the situation. To me the biggest question, does 2 grow bigger than 3? When X% of people have Telegram, Whatsapp and Signal installed, then it becomes a non-issue to have Signal only sticklers. > The only real chance here is that since this is all about closed groups that network effects aren't so huge, so a considerable exodus without actual terminal velocity is possible. This is my experience so far. I think you're right that the network effect is very fragmented and micro. In my case the few active groups that I value have migrated, the rest don't care and could email me or sms me and I've seen sufficient migration to Signal, signalling that moving from 1 to 4 might be viable.
johnchristopher 6y ago
I'm in the delicate position where 6 yearsago I started using Telegram and told a friend and now he doesn't want to move because I "should have told him to use signal and I have moved all my friends to Telegram and they wouldn't understand and Signal desktop has memory leaks and I don't like it anyway". The guy nagging people with Linux ten years ago. Anyway.

by tharne 6y ago

Barrin92 6y ago

for Nassim's example to work the minority has to be exclusionary. Everything is nut-free because you don't want to kill allergic people and you can't have both nuts and no nuts in your food, so the minority in the group can force to change the behaviour of the rest. With messaging apps you can use both Whatsapp and Signal, so even if you convince a few people to convert, Whatsapp is unlikely to decline. The important word in Taleb's thesis is 'stubborn', not minority. The change isn't gradual but 'fractal' with one person in the group being able to flip everyone else, and they going on an doing the same thing.

IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
I think you both can be correct I think the stubborn minority may indeed be small, but you havent given the intolerant minority the time ineeds to grow.
Retric 6y ago
On the surface it seems like people would just use two apps, but most people don’t care. So, if nobody is extremely pro WhatsApp because for example they have a non smartphone and it’s what works then WhatsApp dies. It’s just a question of how many people are extremely pro WhatsApp and will Facebook drive them away.
- xwolfi 6y ago
  But you're stuck in a world where apps are segregated that way. But if I were Google, I'd change android to make their messaging app backend-agnostic and able to send information to any app with a unified frontend. I'd ban from the store if not. Done, nobody cares anymore, for real and features will come from Google :D We're so stuck on using 2 apps instead of 2 networks we forget mobile phone providers had to agree together to do SMS decades ago, and it went fine with dumbed down feature. And let's be honest, the only killer feature that made me finally adopt whatsapp like 6 years ago was that it used the data plan that works on WIFI rather than the phone plan. We were all fine with SMSes before.
  - kelnos 6y ago
    It's weird to hear you say that, because SMS is terrible. Unreliable delivery, delivery receipts that come back even if the recipient's phone is turned off, no media (MMS is also terrible, just try to send a video over it and watch the pixelated garbage that comes out the other side), no privacy or security to speak of, carrier interop issues (character encodings, message length, shortcode support), identity tied to your phone number, no ability to send/receive messages without being tethered to the phone (to be fair, Signal and WhatsApp also have this problem)... I could go on.
    - mlang23 6y ago
      Interesting. I guess the issues you see as a user depend on where you life / which carrier you are using? I had more issues with iMessage delivery then I ever had with SMS in my whole life. I dont even remember a single incident with SMS delivery. And I consider your "missing media" point an advantage. Sending stupid videos from phone to phone is a disease that I dont want to deal with.
    - eecc 6y ago
      SMS and MMS are telco standards whose progress and maintenance depends on the willingness of operators to patch and upgrade their infrastructure equipment (good luck with that) So yeah, while saddening I don’t expect SMS to make much progress as its lifecycle is tied to the worst one in the industry. XMPP had a better chance, but unfortunately chatting service is the bait for other purposes... so an interop standard has no chance to survive without regulation.
mrslave 6y ago
> With messaging apps you can use both Whatsapp and Signal You can have both Whatsapp and Signal installed, but everyone in a conversation needs to have the same app. So why not both doesn't apply as neatly as you assert.
- xenocratus 6y ago
  Sure, but that assumes you only have one group. I'm in only 2 really small groups, both on Signal, but I keep Whatsapp because there are a few people I can only talk to there. It's also a backup mechanism in case Signal fails (like it did when the exodus happened)
  - jamaicahest 6y ago
    > It's also a backup mechanism in case Signal fails (like it did when the exodus happened) I view SMS as a fallback solution. It has plenty of benefits, i.e. no app required, works on every mobile phone ever made.
    - xenocratus 6y ago
      That's true, but the people I talk to on Whatsapp are not (usually) in the same country as me, and cross-border SMS tends to not be included in a basic package. Especially now that UK has left the EU, that's definitely not going to be cheap. Add to this that cost increases with message length in SMS - over the internet it's basically flat if you have wifi or data (up to a point at least... :D )
- josefx 6y ago
  You can have both of them installed at the same time, so anyone refusing to join a Signal conversation is just going out of their way to be a pain to deal with.
  - mathstuf 6y ago
    Eh, I already have enough messaging apps myself (4 right now), so adding more at this point is a hurdle I'd like to avoid. I can imagine others having similar feelings.
sails 6y ago
Stubborn minority in this case would be the stubborn Signal users refusing to use Whatapp? 3 groups: 1. Uses Signal only 2. Uses both 3. Uses Whatsapp only 1 is the stubborn minority, 2 is slowly increasing, and 3 probably doesn't care enough to be considered stubborn, and definitely not minority. At least that was my thought, this whole debacle reminded me immediately of the stubborn minority, so I'm very curious to see how it plays out.
- emn13 6y ago
  I'd pick a different classification. It's more like these groups: 1. Uses whatsapp out of momentum. Doesn't want to use anything else, but might if people really push them; i.e. open to transition to group 2. 2. Will use whatever. Some people in this group want to stop using whatsapp, but won't break contacts to do so. Some people in this group would prefer to stick with whatsapp to avoid the burden of a switch, but won't break contacts to do so. This is the vast majority of switchers. 3. Die hard whatsapp users. Simply refuse to switch to another app, because it's a hassle, and/or because they begrudge other people making a mountain out of a molehill and asking them to do anything. Might oppose yet-another-app; or might actually want to stick to whatsapp because they actually like the simplicity of the network effect. 4. Die hard non-whatsapp (likely signal?) users. Refuse to use whatsapp, likely due to privacy concerns or distrust of facebook. I don't think most people trying to switch away from whatsapp are in 4. Anecdotally, I people I know asking to switch are clearly in 2, and are largely losing to those in 3. Only 1 person I know claims to be in 4, but I'm not really sure that'll stick if the exodus doesn't keep momentum. Because of the existance of the bulk of humanity which barely cares about this, and some of which will get annoyed at the suggestion - I suspect group 3 is much, much larger than 4, and that suggests this exodus will fall flat. The only real chance here is that since this is all about closed groups that network effects aren't so huge, so a considerable exodus without actual terminal velocity is possible.
  - sails 6y ago
    Interesting, I think your classification adds some nice colour to the situation. To me the biggest question, does 2 grow bigger than 3? When X% of people have Telegram, Whatsapp and Signal installed, then it becomes a non-issue to have Signal only sticklers. > The only real chance here is that since this is all about closed groups that network effects aren't so huge, so a considerable exodus without actual terminal velocity is possible. This is my experience so far. I think you're right that the network effect is very fragmented and micro. In my case the few active groups that I value have migrated, the rest don't care and could email me or sms me and I've seen sufficient migration to Signal, signalling that moving from 1 to 4 might be viable.

johnchristopher 6y ago

I'm in the delicate position where 6 yearsago I started using Telegram and told a friend and now he doesn't want to move because I "should have told him to use signal and I have moved all my friends to Telegram and they wouldn't understand and Signal desktop has memory leaks and I don't like it anyway". The guy nagging people with Linux ten years ago. Anyway.