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> I'm also not the biggest fan of WhatsApp, but a lot of its quirks and oddities do come down to one big design decision, which is that all your chats are e2e e

by xkcd1963 4y ago

> I'm also not the biggest fan of WhatsApp, but a lot of its quirks and oddities do come down to one big design decision, which is that all your chats are e2e encrypted, with the key to the encryption living in your phone. This makes for (relatively) secure communication, but it has the side effect of making the UX in other areas suffer. For example, if your phone dies and you don't back up your chats, there's no way of getting the data back, because the encryption key necessary to unlock the data in the first place lives in your old, dead phone. Or the kind of irritating way that WhatsApp Web works: it needs to connect to your phone because your phone is the only place that your messages are stored. - But both me and Meta know that they have at least my contacts. Couldn't they at least keep those intact? Or optionally store them? What about stickers? - Why are you talking about UX if it is a technical limitation? And an artificial limitation I'd argue .. they could store my encrypted data on their servers, that would be useful.

MrJohz 4y ago
At least on my phone, WhatsApp essentially just uses my phone contacts, I wasn't aware that it had any system of contacts of its own. As to storing encrypted data on WhatsApp servers, I assume that's an expense that's not needed if they let Google and Apple handle that. It would be nice if there was more flexibility when it comes to choosing where to store data, but I imagine there's not a lot of commercial value in that. The reason why I'm talking about UX and technical limitations at the same time is because they're often linked, and particularly so in this case. The technical limitations of a tool will partially define how that tool can be used, and the desired usage of a tool should often help define the technical functionality of that tool. UX is not simply a layer you can slap on at the end.

MrJohz 4y ago

At least on my phone, WhatsApp essentially just uses my phone contacts, I wasn't aware that it had any system of contacts of its own. As to storing encrypted data on WhatsApp servers, I assume that's an expense that's not needed if they let Google and Apple handle that. It would be nice if there was more flexibility when it comes to choosing where to store data, but I imagine there's not a lot of commercial value in that. The reason why I'm talking about UX and technical limitations at the same time is because they're often linked, and particularly so in this case. The technical limitations of a tool will partially define how that tool can be used, and the desired usage of a tool should often help define the technical functionality of that tool. UX is not simply a layer you can slap on at the end.