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I didn’t have WhatsApp in a country where it’s synonymous to instant message. It did very much impacted my life, missed parties, etc. I caved in during the pan

I didn’t have WhatsApp in a country where it’s synonymous to instant message. It did very much impacted my life, missed parties, etc. I caved in during the pandemic. Lots of dear friends and family members, especially elderlies who couldn’t be bothered with anything else, and volunteer work to help the medical emergencies. It felt ridiculous to ask people to use other means of communications under such circumstances. My noble ideologies felt very small and I said fuck it. I’m glad I did. It’s the only Meta service I use, but I’m a heavy user. There’s no turning back.

kome 3y ago
I don't have WhatsApp in a country where it’s synonymous to instant message, and it's pure joy. the joy of missing out.
- tambourine_man 3y ago
  I get that, but it wears out.
- oblio 3y ago
  Until you want to chat with grandma or that girl you really like.
  - Koshkin 3y ago
    You could use the damn phone as such and call. They even might appreciate it more. (Unless you have to be “chatting” continuously, of course.) And no, nobody really wants to see your face, believe me.
    - dopidopHN 3y ago
      I don’t think those people use the video function of whatapps really often. In many places the default app to text is whatapps. But fair; if in the same country you can call. ( and if not, you can go thought a service allowing you to call abroad. Like the now senile Skype )
      - OrangeMusic 3y ago
        Are there really phones that exist that don't have the SMS app?
    - oblio 3y ago
      > And no, nobody really wants to see your face, believe me. This is such a sad perspective.
  - throwaway290 3y ago
    That girl will have IG. And from there if she likes you you can take it to any other platform
    - oblio 3y ago
      So your argument against Meta app WhatsApp is "nah, she'll have Meta app Instagram, so we're cool"? :-)))
      - throwaway290 3y ago
        IG is not a messaging app though. So exchange IG then move to whatever messaging app you like and start convincing her to get off that hated Meta
- kalleboo 3y ago
  How much of that joy comes from telling people on a message board run by a venture capitalism firm about how virtuous you are?
  - hoosieree 3y ago
    [comment flagged for overt self-awareness]
  - kome 3y ago
    virtuous?
- flagrant_taco 3y ago
  I was am expat in a country that used WhatsApp everywhere. Not using it myself was a huge pain on quite a few occasions, I was nearly forced into making a WhatsApp account when I had to take a Covid test before travel.
ahf8Aithaex7Nai 3y ago
It's similar for me, but I have WhatsApp on a separate device that's at home and I only use it for WhatsApp. This keeps it strictly isolated from my primary smartphone and the list of contacts on it. Meta still has part of the social graph that surrounds me, but not all of it. How effective that is in the end is of no concern to me. I enjoy not just giving up completely, but resisting within my means. It reminds me a bit of the people who didn't pull their masks up over their noses during the pandemic. That's exactly how we should relate to tech giants if we can't avoid them completely.
- strogonoff 3y ago
  By continuing to use a problematic messaging app you are feeding its network effect. You give it the blood that keeps it alive, and propagate the privacy issues that it brings. You know that 99% of your contacts will not take any of the measures you take and just deliver entire graphs, with yourself included, to the evil Meta or whomever on a golden plate. How many have a spare smartphone solely for this app? How many will deny it full access to contacts? Coincidentally, just like not covering the nose with a mask in protest, this half-measure only makes the problem worse. The only way to affect this is to pull up the mask. Stop the spread. Quit using such an app with explanations, offer alternatives to people seeking to contact you, support legislation that breaks shady business models like that, etc. Sadly, few people have courage to look weird, boring or slightly crazy in this way. (Not unlike people who are afraid to be thought of as ugly if they wear the mask.) (I have no such problems with WhatsApp, but I’m guilty of the same with regards to Telegram. It’s built intentionally insecure by default: I have literally no contacts who use E2EE chats now, because those are opt-in and so half-assedly implemented—I used to have a couple of “secret chats” but one vanished and another broke so nothing is delivered anymore; we switched to plaintext and I keep postponing quitting the app.)
  - CoastalCoder 3y ago
    I see it as a consensus problem, like boycotts or voting. If enough people join you, it's a win. If not, you've wasted your effort / money / vote / time. Sometimes it's hard to discern if that critical mass exists.
ricardobayes 3y ago
Sad truth is most Spanish-speaking countries are effectively run on whatsapp and twitter. Whatsapp is where your mailman will contact you to clarify an address, and twitter is where you will receive customer support for your internet. Emails are not getting responded to or very very late. Regular phone calls are also disappearing due to staff shortage - no one to take your call.
- wincy 3y ago
  Hah I sent an email to a Spanish website about a shipping issue. I received a response. Three months later. They said “please send more money and we’ll ship your item”. Very helpful. I’d guess they check that email inbox once every few months based on this.
adql 3y ago
I remember there was that one beautiful little moment where both Facebook and Google chats were available via XMPP. I could use any existing XMPP server, or even start one, and be able to contact directly with any of my both Google and Facebook contacts It was wonderful glimpse of what it could be if greed and drive to herd consumers into their own walled gardens wasn't the main driving factors.
- kmeisthax 3y ago
  The flipside of this is that the only people who actually bothered establishing an XMPP server at scale were those who wanted to spam Google or Facebook users. Think of it this way: why doesn't Gmail just close their SMTP gateways and defederate from e-mail? Because there's shittons of systems that expect to be able to send mail this way. They'd have to spend loads of time and energy corralling people out of open standards and into a proprietary Gmail API for no externally-visible benefit. That doesn't apply to XMPP. It was an entirely new protocol with only two very large adopters federating with one another. Legitimate automated systems that needed to send messages didn't really exist yet, so there was no legacy cruft holding people to the open standard. But there were plenty of spammers who realized that they could get into literally every Gmail and Facebook screen with it. In e-mail, we have a complicated setup of blocklists, heuristics, and domain authentication to handle spam. This inherently costs more time and money to set up than just having a closed messaging system with sign-ups that are controlled by one entity. But the big e-mail providers deal with it because open[0] federation is an iron rule of the e-mail system. [0] Ok it's more like "open if you spend enough time getting an originating IP that isn't on every blocklist, setting up SPF/DKIM, getting your recipients to add you to contacts and check the spam filter, and so on"

kome 3y ago

I don't have WhatsApp in a country where it’s synonymous to instant message, and it's pure joy. the joy of missing out.

tambourine_man 3y ago
I get that, but it wears out.
oblio 3y ago
Until you want to chat with grandma or that girl you really like.
- Koshkin 3y ago
  You could use the damn phone as such and call. They even might appreciate it more. (Unless you have to be “chatting” continuously, of course.) And no, nobody really wants to see your face, believe me.
  - dopidopHN 3y ago
    I don’t think those people use the video function of whatapps really often. In many places the default app to text is whatapps. But fair; if in the same country you can call. ( and if not, you can go thought a service allowing you to call abroad. Like the now senile Skype )
    - OrangeMusic 3y ago
      Are there really phones that exist that don't have the SMS app?
  - oblio 3y ago
    > And no, nobody really wants to see your face, believe me. This is such a sad perspective.
- throwaway290 3y ago
  That girl will have IG. And from there if she likes you you can take it to any other platform
  - oblio 3y ago
    So your argument against Meta app WhatsApp is "nah, she'll have Meta app Instagram, so we're cool"? :-)))
    - throwaway290 3y ago
      IG is not a messaging app though. So exchange IG then move to whatever messaging app you like and start convincing her to get off that hated Meta
kalleboo 3y ago
How much of that joy comes from telling people on a message board run by a venture capitalism firm about how virtuous you are?
- hoosieree 3y ago
  [comment flagged for overt self-awareness]
- kome 3y ago
  virtuous?
flagrant_taco 3y ago
I was am expat in a country that used WhatsApp everywhere. Not using it myself was a huge pain on quite a few occasions, I was nearly forced into making a WhatsApp account when I had to take a Covid test before travel.

ahf8Aithaex7Nai 3y ago

It's similar for me, but I have WhatsApp on a separate device that's at home and I only use it for WhatsApp. This keeps it strictly isolated from my primary smartphone and the list of contacts on it. Meta still has part of the social graph that surrounds me, but not all of it. How effective that is in the end is of no concern to me. I enjoy not just giving up completely, but resisting within my means. It reminds me a bit of the people who didn't pull their masks up over their noses during the pandemic. That's exactly how we should relate to tech giants if we can't avoid them completely.

strogonoff 3y ago
By continuing to use a problematic messaging app you are feeding its network effect. You give it the blood that keeps it alive, and propagate the privacy issues that it brings. You know that 99% of your contacts will not take any of the measures you take and just deliver entire graphs, with yourself included, to the evil Meta or whomever on a golden plate. How many have a spare smartphone solely for this app? How many will deny it full access to contacts? Coincidentally, just like not covering the nose with a mask in protest, this half-measure only makes the problem worse. The only way to affect this is to pull up the mask. Stop the spread. Quit using such an app with explanations, offer alternatives to people seeking to contact you, support legislation that breaks shady business models like that, etc. Sadly, few people have courage to look weird, boring or slightly crazy in this way. (Not unlike people who are afraid to be thought of as ugly if they wear the mask.) (I have no such problems with WhatsApp, but I’m guilty of the same with regards to Telegram. It’s built intentionally insecure by default: I have literally no contacts who use E2EE chats now, because those are opt-in and so half-assedly implemented—I used to have a couple of “secret chats” but one vanished and another broke so nothing is delivered anymore; we switched to plaintext and I keep postponing quitting the app.)
- CoastalCoder 3y ago
  I see it as a consensus problem, like boycotts or voting. If enough people join you, it's a win. If not, you've wasted your effort / money / vote / time. Sometimes it's hard to discern if that critical mass exists.

ricardobayes 3y ago

Sad truth is most Spanish-speaking countries are effectively run on whatsapp and twitter. Whatsapp is where your mailman will contact you to clarify an address, and twitter is where you will receive customer support for your internet. Emails are not getting responded to or very very late. Regular phone calls are also disappearing due to staff shortage - no one to take your call.

wincy 3y ago
Hah I sent an email to a Spanish website about a shipping issue. I received a response. Three months later. They said “please send more money and we’ll ship your item”. Very helpful. I’d guess they check that email inbox once every few months based on this.

adql 3y ago

I remember there was that one beautiful little moment where both Facebook and Google chats were available via XMPP. I could use any existing XMPP server, or even start one, and be able to contact directly with any of my both Google and Facebook contacts It was wonderful glimpse of what it could be if greed and drive to herd consumers into their own walled gardens wasn't the main driving factors.

kmeisthax 3y ago
The flipside of this is that the only people who actually bothered establishing an XMPP server at scale were those who wanted to spam Google or Facebook users. Think of it this way: why doesn't Gmail just close their SMTP gateways and defederate from e-mail? Because there's shittons of systems that expect to be able to send mail this way. They'd have to spend loads of time and energy corralling people out of open standards and into a proprietary Gmail API for no externally-visible benefit. That doesn't apply to XMPP. It was an entirely new protocol with only two very large adopters federating with one another. Legitimate automated systems that needed to send messages didn't really exist yet, so there was no legacy cruft holding people to the open standard. But there were plenty of spammers who realized that they could get into literally every Gmail and Facebook screen with it. In e-mail, we have a complicated setup of blocklists, heuristics, and domain authentication to handle spam. This inherently costs more time and money to set up than just having a closed messaging system with sign-ups that are controlled by one entity. But the big e-mail providers deal with it because open[0] federation is an iron rule of the e-mail system. [0] Ok it's more like "open if you spend enough time getting an originating IP that isn't on every blocklist, setting up SPF/DKIM, getting your recipients to add you to contacts and check the spam filter, and so on"