6 ms·

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
I use WhatsApp. Everyone in Latin America uses it. I don't believe that Zuckerberg is reading my chats, and not concerned enough about E2E encryption to bother evangelizing another app to everyone I know.
- gonehome 4y ago
  WhatsApp is encrypted end to end for what it’s worth. They just retain chat metadata that signal does not.
  - Tepix 4y ago
    That data includes everyone's phonebook.
    - irusensei 4y ago
    - gonehome 4y ago
      For signal - phone numbers as IDs allow them to retain no other info on their servers. They don’t have your phone book (though if someone gets your device and forced you to unlock it that’s different, but then they’d have your contacts anyway). There’s a reasonable tradeoff here imo to retain as little as possible server side. Signal is also working on a non phone ID option iirc.
  - slaw 4y ago
    Is there a proof that there is no backdoor in WhatsApp? Client code is not released. By default it does unencrypted backup to cloud. You don't know if encryption keys are leaving device.
    - gonehome 4y ago
      I think you’re thinking of iMessage. WhatsApp backups are encrypted: https://faq.whatsapp.com/1192377921246090/?locale=en_US&refsrc=deprecated&_rdr https://faq.whatsapp.com/1192377921246090/?locale=en_US&refs... I don’t know if there’s proof, but I have a friend that works on the team that I trust. I’ve also seen the tools for analyzing the metadata for police warrants and they only deal with metadata (because content is encrypted).
paganel 4y ago
> Are HN-type folks seriously still using chat clients by meta? Yes, we do, because our friends and acquaintances are not HN users.
Kiro 4y ago
Yes, I only use Facebook Messenger.

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

I use WhatsApp. Everyone in Latin America uses it. I don't believe that Zuckerberg is reading my chats, and not concerned enough about E2E encryption to bother evangelizing another app to everyone I know.

gonehome 4y ago
WhatsApp is encrypted end to end for what it’s worth. They just retain chat metadata that signal does not.
- Tepix 4y ago
  That data includes everyone's phonebook.
  - irusensei 4y ago
  - gonehome 4y ago
    For signal - phone numbers as IDs allow them to retain no other info on their servers. They don’t have your phone book (though if someone gets your device and forced you to unlock it that’s different, but then they’d have your contacts anyway). There’s a reasonable tradeoff here imo to retain as little as possible server side. Signal is also working on a non phone ID option iirc.
- slaw 4y ago
  Is there a proof that there is no backdoor in WhatsApp? Client code is not released. By default it does unencrypted backup to cloud. You don't know if encryption keys are leaving device.
  - gonehome 4y ago
    I think you’re thinking of iMessage. WhatsApp backups are encrypted: https://faq.whatsapp.com/1192377921246090/?locale=en_US&refsrc=deprecated&_rdr https://faq.whatsapp.com/1192377921246090/?locale=en_US&refs... I don’t know if there’s proof, but I have a friend that works on the team that I trust. I’ve also seen the tools for analyzing the metadata for police warrants and they only deal with metadata (because content is encrypted).

paganel 4y ago

> Are HN-type folks seriously still using chat clients by meta? Yes, we do, because our friends and acquaintances are not HN users.

Kiro 4y ago

Yes, I only use Facebook Messenger.