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Your points are even more valid when you start to move to different counties. You quickly realise that people in other countries often don’t use the apps you ar

by mjgs 5y ago

Your points are even more valid when you start to move to different counties. You quickly realise that people in other countries often don’t use the apps you are using, in fact you most likely won’t have heard of the apps they are using. But “everyone is using X” they will tell you, but you’ll have no way to know for sure. Are you really going to install every piece of software people say to install? At least with email, it just works and there are minimal security issues, and it’s an open protocol etc etc, even if it’s a bit old fashioned.

netheril96 5y ago
> At least with email, it just works and there are minimal security issues, and it’s an open protocol etc etc, even if it’s a bit old fashioned. Here in China, most people only use email at work.
- mjgs 5y ago
  In the countries I’ve been, people use all sorts of apps and each person is very shocked when you don’t have “the app” that everyone is using. And of course the fashions change over time, so app X is popular for a few years, then it’s app Y. It’s impossible to keep up with all these trends. Mostly people are able to email, even if it’s a bit unusual, and perhaps, like you say, mostly a work thing.
benhurmarcel 5y ago
When you move to a new country that has a dominant messaging app, you can't avoid installing it without making your life a lot more difficult. And moving already makes your life difficult enough.
- mjgs 5y ago
  The real question though is how you determine the “dominant app”, that’s really not that obvious, especially when you don’t speak the local language. Long term you might be right, installing an app would be beneficial, but in the short term it’s a lot safer to just use email.
  - benhurmarcel 5y ago
    I think in most cases it's fairly obvious. I moved to a country that mainly use Whatsapp, and you can't miss it. People will tell you that they "Whatsapp" you, they ask for your "Whatsapp", your bank advertises customer support on Whatsapp, your local barber has the Whatsapp logo on his door, your colleagues want to add you to their Whatsapp group, your landlord sends the bills on Whatsapp, ads in the metro have the Whatsapp logo…
    - mjgs 5y ago
      That sounds awesome. In many of the places I’ve been I couldn’t read any of the signage, it’s often not even obvious where the word boundaries are, it just looks like squiggles to me. And the apps people tell you by word of mouth, I often had never heard of. I just decided to stick with email. Boring, perhaps old fashioned, but safe.
- chriswarbo 5y ago
  That's a heck of a claim. Could you give an example of such a "messaging app"? I don't have any "messaging apps"; although I do have a 'phone which supports SMS (I assume it supports email too, although I don't know how comfortable email would be without a physical keyboard). Do you have examples in mind about how my life might be "a lot more difficult" than if I installed the sorts of software you allude to?
  - eythian 5y ago
    It's not a heck of a claim at all, it's a pretty reasonable one. I moved from a country that tended to use Facebook messenger and sometimes SMS (though that was fading), to one that primarily uses WhatsApp. While I already had WhatsApp installed from travelling there in the past, I almost never used it outside of travel purposes. When I moved, everything ended up in WhatsApp. If I met someone and wanted to meet up with them another day, it was WhatsApp. I'd get added to a group because it was someone's birthday, it was WhatsApp. Many apartment buildings have a WhatsApp group to discuss building related things. It was how I told my landlord that something needed fixing. So on, so forth. Lately there are some people I talk to on Telegram, and a couple on Signal, but most of my social (and other things) organisation goes via WhatsApp. I could uninstall it, but then I'd lose a chunk of social contact. For me, email has become mostly an avenue for notifications from companies or newsletters. The most back-and-forth I've done with it in a long time was when I was buying an apartment, a lot of documentation and organising was done through email. As for SMS, no one uses that except perhaps one automated reminder about something every few months.
  - Zak 5y ago
    I can't speak to your life, but not having Whatsapp would result in my being left out of some conversations and activities I want to be a part of. Email or SMS could theoretically substitute with reduced functionality in most situations; Matrix could substitute with no loss of functionality. Most of the time the other people in the conversations prioritize their activity/task/goal/socializing over technical or ideological concerns about their communication tools, so getting them to change tools would be an uphill battle. In short, unless I'm really important to a group, I have to use what they use or get left out. If I'm the most important person in every group I'm in, I'm probably in the wrong groups.

by mjgs 5y ago

netheril96 5y ago

> At least with email, it just works and there are minimal security issues, and it’s an open protocol etc etc, even if it’s a bit old fashioned. Here in China, most people only use email at work.

mjgs 5y ago
In the countries I’ve been, people use all sorts of apps and each person is very shocked when you don’t have “the app” that everyone is using. And of course the fashions change over time, so app X is popular for a few years, then it’s app Y. It’s impossible to keep up with all these trends. Mostly people are able to email, even if it’s a bit unusual, and perhaps, like you say, mostly a work thing.

benhurmarcel 5y ago

When you move to a new country that has a dominant messaging app, you can't avoid installing it without making your life a lot more difficult. And moving already makes your life difficult enough.

mjgs 5y ago
The real question though is how you determine the “dominant app”, that’s really not that obvious, especially when you don’t speak the local language. Long term you might be right, installing an app would be beneficial, but in the short term it’s a lot safer to just use email.
- benhurmarcel 5y ago
  I think in most cases it's fairly obvious. I moved to a country that mainly use Whatsapp, and you can't miss it. People will tell you that they "Whatsapp" you, they ask for your "Whatsapp", your bank advertises customer support on Whatsapp, your local barber has the Whatsapp logo on his door, your colleagues want to add you to their Whatsapp group, your landlord sends the bills on Whatsapp, ads in the metro have the Whatsapp logo…
  - mjgs 5y ago
    That sounds awesome. In many of the places I’ve been I couldn’t read any of the signage, it’s often not even obvious where the word boundaries are, it just looks like squiggles to me. And the apps people tell you by word of mouth, I often had never heard of. I just decided to stick with email. Boring, perhaps old fashioned, but safe.
chriswarbo 5y ago
That's a heck of a claim. Could you give an example of such a "messaging app"? I don't have any "messaging apps"; although I do have a 'phone which supports SMS (I assume it supports email too, although I don't know how comfortable email would be without a physical keyboard). Do you have examples in mind about how my life might be "a lot more difficult" than if I installed the sorts of software you allude to?
- eythian 5y ago
  It's not a heck of a claim at all, it's a pretty reasonable one. I moved from a country that tended to use Facebook messenger and sometimes SMS (though that was fading), to one that primarily uses WhatsApp. While I already had WhatsApp installed from travelling there in the past, I almost never used it outside of travel purposes. When I moved, everything ended up in WhatsApp. If I met someone and wanted to meet up with them another day, it was WhatsApp. I'd get added to a group because it was someone's birthday, it was WhatsApp. Many apartment buildings have a WhatsApp group to discuss building related things. It was how I told my landlord that something needed fixing. So on, so forth. Lately there are some people I talk to on Telegram, and a couple on Signal, but most of my social (and other things) organisation goes via WhatsApp. I could uninstall it, but then I'd lose a chunk of social contact. For me, email has become mostly an avenue for notifications from companies or newsletters. The most back-and-forth I've done with it in a long time was when I was buying an apartment, a lot of documentation and organising was done through email. As for SMS, no one uses that except perhaps one automated reminder about something every few months.
- Zak 5y ago
  I can't speak to your life, but not having Whatsapp would result in my being left out of some conversations and activities I want to be a part of. Email or SMS could theoretically substitute with reduced functionality in most situations; Matrix could substitute with no loss of functionality. Most of the time the other people in the conversations prioritize their activity/task/goal/socializing over technical or ideological concerns about their communication tools, so getting them to change tools would be an uphill battle. In short, unless I'm really important to a group, I have to use what they use or get left out. If I'm the most important person in every group I'm in, I'm probably in the wrong groups.