5 ms·

The same kind of posts happened when zuck changed the private policy of whatsaap a few months ago, everyone was migrating to Signal. Who uses signal now?

by polote 4y ago

TulliusCicero 4y ago
This seems a bit different, given that Musk's leadership has a high potential to very radically change Twitter; he did just lay off half the company, for example.
- buf 4y ago
  People keep talking about laying off half the company like it's a bad thing. Don't get me wrong, there are lots of negative factors to laying off staff and I'm not denying those. But anyone who has worked in a large org, especially a public one, knows that there is excessive bloat. Many people at large orgs do nothing. They go to great lengths to ensure it looks like they're doing something, which I guess is something itself. PS - I'm neither for nor against the layoffs at Twitter.
  - Doddler 4y ago
    I think even if he was correct that Twitter has a lot bloat that needs to be cut, I really struggle to believe you could accurately judge who or what needs to be cut when slashing your 7000 employee business in half within 5-6 days of walking in the door. The chance of making big mistakes and cutting critical staff and teams is very high.
    - watwut 4y ago
      I think that even worst is that it does not look fair or transparent at all. Which means, remaining employees are going to be demotivated and resentful. It is going to be chaos organizational, competences will be unclear etc. Which will make organization as a whole more dysfunctional then it needs to be.
    - low_tech_love 4y ago
      Exactly. It smells very strongly of the same kind of overgeneralized superficial thinking that leads people to believe that less moderation is always good. You can’t possibly expect that everyone in your company will be 150% invested work-any-time business evangelists. Maybe the 50% who are left now have to work double? Are they so incredibly enthusiastic about the job to take the hit silently?
    - andsoitis 4y ago
      > The chance of making big mistakes and cutting critical staff and teams is very high. It turns out that in the big picture, there are fewer people who are truly critical than most people think. Especially individual contributors. There are rare exceptions but those, who truly make a difference, stand out.
zimpenfish 4y ago
Technically I use it (although I haven't had a legitimate message on there since ... 2016?) but I'll tell you what I don't use any more - WhatsApp. It's either iMessage, Telegram, or for a (dwindling) handful of annoying people, FB Messenger.
esrh 4y ago
Quite a lot of people, i think. The google play app alone has been downloaded over a 100 million times. All my family and some friends use it as our primary platform for communication.
zaik 4y ago
This was the event that pushed me to go XMPP only for messaging. Pulled in my family and some friends. Internet standards without vendor lock-in is now a requirement for me.
- drdebug 4y ago
  Can you recommend a good free open source android client that compares to signal or whatsapp in terms of functionality and ease of use?
  - zaik 4y ago
    I would recommend Conversations on F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/eu.siacs.conversations/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/eu.siacs.conversations/
inductive_magic 4y ago
My only active chat in WhatsApp is the one with my father. Are HN-type folks seriously still using chat clients by meta? What?
- blowski 4y ago
  Same problem. I have multiple groups on WhatsApp that I don’t want to leave, but don’t believe they’ll migrate. Three family groups, close friends, school parents, son’s football club. A lot of these people were the last to migrate to WhatsApp from email and SMS, and will now be the last to migrate away from it. And they’re a huge majority compared to the early adopter crowd we see on HN.
- radu_floricica 4y ago
  > HN-tyke Not sure if on purpose or just serendipitous misspell. I use whatsapp because my clients use whatsapp. Which means the team uses whatsapp. Friends are spread on several apps.
  - inductive_magic 4y ago
    My bad, fixed. Have you tried a WhatsApp-bridge with element/matrix? You could use matrix internally while being available to clients via WA. I would strongly discourage any company to use meta-clients internally.
    - radu_floricica 4y ago
      I'm having a bit of a... culture shock? Not sure how to call it. We're a small company from an eastern european country, building one product and trying to make it into the big world. We don't have the luxury of caring about if a messenger app is meta or not. Is it doing its job? yes. Is it encrypted? Sortof, but truth be told we'd use it anyways. If we have extra time we spend it on checking backups, or improving performance, or researching new cool stuff we can add to our product. Which messenger app to use?! Yeah, definitely culture shock. Severe, too.
- missedthecue 4y ago
cpach 4y ago
I use it quite a lot, even with people who doesn’t work in tech. I still use Whatsapp though.
nbk_2000 4y ago
All of my family and tech-based co-workers/associates. It's half my chat traffic and growing.
outime 4y ago
It's the typical anti-<whatever> hate waves that happen in HN. Outside of this bubble, people don't really lose sleep over it. Signal is a very good example because WhatsApp is getting more popular as the days go by as opposed to what one could possibly infer from the waves of posts that appeared not long ago here about it. It's just so important to separate this otherwise insignificant group of minds vs the many other several millions that aren't here and don't share the views - or perhaps (some) do but then it comes down to the network effect once again which has always been a present issue in every alternative among other factors. This time won't be different I'm afraid.
watwut 4y ago
People I interact with did not claimed they will be moving to signal. The claims of leaving signal were comparatively quite rare actually.
dmak 4y ago
Many of my friends and family who moved over to Signal ended up using it permanently.
dnh44 4y ago
I just counted all of my signal chats that have had activity since the beginning of September and there’s 34 of them. On WhatsApp that number is 29 and on iMessages(not SMS) it’s 21. The best way I’ve found to actually get people to keep using signal after you’ve got them to download it is to respond to their WhatsApp messages on signal. It won’t take long until they stop initiating conversations on WhatsApp.
- gnuj3 4y ago
  Or do what I had done - delete whatsapp and text them saying it’s either text messages or download Signal from here [link]. Everyone I gave a shit about had done that.
  - dnh44 4y ago
    Deleting was my first choice but I’m on one group chat that I don’t want to leave.
tluyben2 4y ago
The sad thing is that I jumped to Matrix (with Element) and waited for the influx; 2 people moved. The rest either stayed on WhatsApp or moved to Telegram (to be fair, almost all my contacts, including my mother, actually did move to Telegram from WhatsApp). No signal, no matrix. Matrix is nice in theory but Element is not very nice and the messing around with keys is not something most people will understand. This needs to be automatic by default, not a complete pain as it is now. We have an example of a perfect chat client UI; Telegram. Why is no one just copying it verbatim for matrix? This is a question to, mostly, Element developers really. I don’t know why it is quite as unfriendly as it is, but of course we can all jump in and help out, that’s why I keep using it and sponsoring it. Even though I can only talk to 2 people.
- Kiro 4y ago
  What's so great about the Telegram UI?
  - NayamAmarshe 4y ago
    Quite possibly the most responsive native social media application for all platforms. It's got free storage (basically free Google Drive), behaves like Messenger, has public channels and groups like Discord and YouTube, mind-blowing cloud sync, can connect to people without sharing a phone number and tons of features that I can't really list here but you can check them out here: https://t.me/TelegramTips https://t.me/TelegramTips
    - tluyben2 4y ago
      Couldn't have said it better. If they would have e2e for all chats & groups I would live in this thing. It's much better than Slack etc for me, but I trust them even less than Slack. Matrix has, like Slack, sub conversations which I like, so they have, on the server, everything that Telegram has and more, is open source and I can host myself, but the clients :( Yes, I can write one myself or help with Element. I guess this is something to really think about as the commercial offerings are simply not very good outside Telegram but I don't really trust them with my data.
NayamAmarshe 4y ago
I don't use Signal, it was my first choice. Only 1 friend cared enough to move to it, most just didn't like it. I then switched to Telegram and haven't used WhatscrApp ever since.
pera 4y ago
All my family and about half of my friends are still using it. In, almost everyone who I know who joined during that time stayed, but most still use WhatsApp and Telegram as well.

The same kind of posts happened when zuck changed the private policy of whatsaap a few months ago, everyone was migrating to Signal. Who uses signal now?

by polote 4y ago

The same kind of posts happened when zuck changed the private policy of whatsaap a few months ago, everyone was migrating to Signal. Who uses signal now?

TulliusCicero 4y ago

This seems a bit different, given that Musk's leadership has a high potential to very radically change Twitter; he did just lay off half the company, for example.

buf 4y ago
People keep talking about laying off half the company like it's a bad thing. Don't get me wrong, there are lots of negative factors to laying off staff and I'm not denying those. But anyone who has worked in a large org, especially a public one, knows that there is excessive bloat. Many people at large orgs do nothing. They go to great lengths to ensure it looks like they're doing something, which I guess is something itself. PS - I'm neither for nor against the layoffs at Twitter.
- Doddler 4y ago
  I think even if he was correct that Twitter has a lot bloat that needs to be cut, I really struggle to believe you could accurately judge who or what needs to be cut when slashing your 7000 employee business in half within 5-6 days of walking in the door. The chance of making big mistakes and cutting critical staff and teams is very high.
  - watwut 4y ago
    I think that even worst is that it does not look fair or transparent at all. Which means, remaining employees are going to be demotivated and resentful. It is going to be chaos organizational, competences will be unclear etc. Which will make organization as a whole more dysfunctional then it needs to be.
  - low_tech_love 4y ago
    Exactly. It smells very strongly of the same kind of overgeneralized superficial thinking that leads people to believe that less moderation is always good. You can’t possibly expect that everyone in your company will be 150% invested work-any-time business evangelists. Maybe the 50% who are left now have to work double? Are they so incredibly enthusiastic about the job to take the hit silently?
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    > The chance of making big mistakes and cutting critical staff and teams is very high. It turns out that in the big picture, there are fewer people who are truly critical than most people think. Especially individual contributors. There are rare exceptions but those, who truly make a difference, stand out.

zimpenfish 4y ago

Technically I use it (although I haven't had a legitimate message on there since ... 2016?) but I'll tell you what I don't use any more - WhatsApp. It's either iMessage, Telegram, or for a (dwindling) handful of annoying people, FB Messenger.

esrh 4y ago

Quite a lot of people, i think. The google play app alone has been downloaded over a 100 million times. All my family and some friends use it as our primary platform for communication.

zaik 4y ago

This was the event that pushed me to go XMPP only for messaging. Pulled in my family and some friends. Internet standards without vendor lock-in is now a requirement for me.

drdebug 4y ago
Can you recommend a good free open source android client that compares to signal or whatsapp in terms of functionality and ease of use?
- zaik 4y ago
  I would recommend Conversations on F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/eu.siacs.conversations/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/eu.siacs.conversations/

inductive_magic 4y ago

My only active chat in WhatsApp is the one with my father. Are HN-type folks seriously still using chat clients by meta? What?

blowski 4y ago
Same problem. I have multiple groups on WhatsApp that I don’t want to leave, but don’t believe they’ll migrate. Three family groups, close friends, school parents, son’s football club. A lot of these people were the last to migrate to WhatsApp from email and SMS, and will now be the last to migrate away from it. And they’re a huge majority compared to the early adopter crowd we see on HN.
radu_floricica 4y ago
> HN-tyke Not sure if on purpose or just serendipitous misspell. I use whatsapp because my clients use whatsapp. Which means the team uses whatsapp. Friends are spread on several apps.
- inductive_magic 4y ago
  My bad, fixed. Have you tried a WhatsApp-bridge with element/matrix? You could use matrix internally while being available to clients via WA. I would strongly discourage any company to use meta-clients internally.
  - radu_floricica 4y ago
    I'm having a bit of a... culture shock? Not sure how to call it. We're a small company from an eastern european country, building one product and trying to make it into the big world. We don't have the luxury of caring about if a messenger app is meta or not. Is it doing its job? yes. Is it encrypted? Sortof, but truth be told we'd use it anyways. If we have extra time we spend it on checking backups, or improving performance, or researching new cool stuff we can add to our product. Which messenger app to use?! Yeah, definitely culture shock. Severe, too.
missedthecue 4y ago

cpach 4y ago

I use it quite a lot, even with people who doesn’t work in tech. I still use Whatsapp though.

nbk_2000 4y ago

All of my family and tech-based co-workers/associates. It's half my chat traffic and growing.

outime 4y ago

It's the typical anti-<whatever> hate waves that happen in HN. Outside of this bubble, people don't really lose sleep over it. Signal is a very good example because WhatsApp is getting more popular as the days go by as opposed to what one could possibly infer from the waves of posts that appeared not long ago here about it. It's just so important to separate this otherwise insignificant group of minds vs the many other several millions that aren't here and don't share the views - or perhaps (some) do but then it comes down to the network effect once again which has always been a present issue in every alternative among other factors. This time won't be different I'm afraid.

watwut 4y ago

People I interact with did not claimed they will be moving to signal. The claims of leaving signal were comparatively quite rare actually.

dmak 4y ago

Many of my friends and family who moved over to Signal ended up using it permanently.

dnh44 4y ago

I just counted all of my signal chats that have had activity since the beginning of September and there’s 34 of them. On WhatsApp that number is 29 and on iMessages(not SMS) it’s 21. The best way I’ve found to actually get people to keep using signal after you’ve got them to download it is to respond to their WhatsApp messages on signal. It won’t take long until they stop initiating conversations on WhatsApp.

gnuj3 4y ago
Or do what I had done - delete whatsapp and text them saying it’s either text messages or download Signal from here [link]. Everyone I gave a shit about had done that.
- dnh44 4y ago
  Deleting was my first choice but I’m on one group chat that I don’t want to leave.

tluyben2 4y ago

The sad thing is that I jumped to Matrix (with Element) and waited for the influx; 2 people moved. The rest either stayed on WhatsApp or moved to Telegram (to be fair, almost all my contacts, including my mother, actually did move to Telegram from WhatsApp). No signal, no matrix. Matrix is nice in theory but Element is not very nice and the messing around with keys is not something most people will understand. This needs to be automatic by default, not a complete pain as it is now. We have an example of a perfect chat client UI; Telegram. Why is no one just copying it verbatim for matrix? This is a question to, mostly, Element developers really. I don’t know why it is quite as unfriendly as it is, but of course we can all jump in and help out, that’s why I keep using it and sponsoring it. Even though I can only talk to 2 people.

Kiro 4y ago
What's so great about the Telegram UI?
- NayamAmarshe 4y ago
  Quite possibly the most responsive native social media application for all platforms. It's got free storage (basically free Google Drive), behaves like Messenger, has public channels and groups like Discord and YouTube, mind-blowing cloud sync, can connect to people without sharing a phone number and tons of features that I can't really list here but you can check them out here: https://t.me/TelegramTips https://t.me/TelegramTips
  - tluyben2 4y ago
    Couldn't have said it better. If they would have e2e for all chats & groups I would live in this thing. It's much better than Slack etc for me, but I trust them even less than Slack. Matrix has, like Slack, sub conversations which I like, so they have, on the server, everything that Telegram has and more, is open source and I can host myself, but the clients :( Yes, I can write one myself or help with Element. I guess this is something to really think about as the commercial offerings are simply not very good outside Telegram but I don't really trust them with my data.

NayamAmarshe 4y ago

I don't use Signal, it was my first choice. Only 1 friend cared enough to move to it, most just didn't like it. I then switched to Telegram and haven't used WhatscrApp ever since.

pera 4y ago

All my family and about half of my friends are still using it. In, almost everyone who I know who joined during that time stayed, but most still use WhatsApp and Telegram as well.