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How WhatsApp for business changed the world
- philipwhiuk 2y ago> Newton-Rex said privacy is “in the DNA” of WhatsApp and that the company is trying to clearly communicate with users about what privacy protections WhatsApp offers and where. This is bunk. If someone is added to a Group Chat they get everyone's phone number. There's near zero privacy for Groups and Communities. This sort of article is a puff-piece for WhatsApp.
- thunderbong 2y agoMy understanding is groups and communities are for people who already know each other directly or indirectly, like a mutual friend or parents of students of the same class. WhatsApp for Business is something separate from this.
- Angostura 2y agoYou want all the parents in your kid’s class to know your phone number? No thanks
- ForHackernews 2y agoYes? Phone numbers are not top secret information. My schools always had a student directory that listed every student's home phone number and their parents' mobiles. We used to have phone books that listed everyone in town's phone number.
- M95D 2y agoBack then, phone calls were expensive and my time/attention was cheap. Now phone calls are cheap and there's so many things I'd rather do than answer robocalls and anxious parents.
- epolanski 2y agoYou know phone numbers used to be public, all of them, and printed in books?
- worthless-trash 2y agoExpectations about privacy has changed since this time.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- NBJack 2y agoThat and the random "group invite" I get that pedals crypto. Spam and my number being disclosed to a bunch of random victims!
- Angostura 2y agoAlso, it won’t work properly unless you give it full access to your Contacts
- Zak 2y agoI noticed last year it stopped allowing me to use location sharing if I have the permission set to ask every time. It wants the permission permanently enabled. It seems like they're trying to get people to enable extra permissions beyond what it really needs.
- gruez 2y agoAt least on iOS it works fine without contacts. You'll have to enter all numbers manually, but messaging works as expected. On android it's more annoying, because there's no way to explicitly enter phone numbers, but you can use the wa.me/[insert phone phone number here] to work around it.
- joseda-hg 2y agoThis has been recently added, but Whatsapp if famous for being inconsistent and slow with feature rollouts I know they stagger quite a bit, I can't even fathom pulling off their scale on so many variations of devices, keeping an indeterminate amount of versions all working in unison, so can't blame them either
- thisislife2 2y agoIt did. Till it didn't - one day, after an update, it just refused to work without full access to contacts. (On ios).
- M95D 2y agoDon't set a prefered app for calls and messages. Open contacts, open the contact you want and press call/message button. Android will ask which app to use. Select Whatsapp (or whatever you want).
- gruez 2y ago
- ponector 2y agoprivacy is “in the DNA” of WhatsApp so you cannot delete a message there. Same privacy as Facebook offers. Telegram is much better than any other popular messenger. Pity it is owned by Russians.
- max_ 2y agoWhatsApp after that Facebook acquisition has simply become worse. More buggy, more clunky, lists of useless features like "communities", Facebook like pages. I will soon be leaving it and being exclusively on signal.
- the_gipsy 2y agoSignal also adds random unwanted features, such as statuses.
- doublerabbit 2y agoAnd signal still won't stop bugging me to enable notifications. I cannot understand why they have such a notification when I don't want notifications. Am I costing them money for not having notifications on?
- Angostura 2y agoI guess is someone messages you on Signal and you do not reply, or notice, it significantly damages Signal’s reputation with the person trying to reach you. They will give up using Signal and try to reach you in another way.
- Zak 2y agoFor the vast majority of people, not enabling notifications in a messaging app is a mistake in the sense of something they do want to do but failed to because they're bad at technology or just distracted, not in the sense of an ill-advised decision they made intentionally.
- gherkinnn 2y agoSignal added Stories two years ago and they can be deactivated completely. I don't use them but fail to see the problem here. A reason for people to switch to Signal and a non-issue for everybody else. https://signal.org/blog/introducing-stories/ https://signal.org/blog/introducing-stories/
- kburman 2y agoDue to WhatsApp for Business, my inbox is constantly flooded with spam and scams. Companies register hundreds of numbers, and no matter how many I block, they always find new ones to message me. The worst part is that reporting and blocking seem completely ineffective on WhatsApp.
- paxys 2y agoYou can choose to not let unknown numbers message you. I have no idea why that isn't the default.
- bittwiddle 2y agoWhile great for a personal Whatsapp, this kind of defeats the point of using it for a business.
- thisissomething 2y agoI believe he meant that you (personal account) can use this feature to protect yourself from scam companies using Whatsapp Business to "cold call" you
- HeyLaughingBoy 2y agoNot really. Many businesses have a fixed set of customers that changes very infrequently. e.g., many wholesalers may only have a small handful of customers that they sell to.
- kburman 2y ago"Only if they exceed a certain volume." Who knows what's that certain volume? And why can't I block all?
- paxys 2y agoWhat are you talking about?
- TechRemarker 2y agoIn the US, while many I know use iMessage or Android send via SMS/RCS, most all my friends and family also have Facebook Messenger and most all seem to end up sending there since one doesn't have to worry about if Apple/Android, or which features are supported etc. The only big downside is Facebook Messenger strips all meta data, so unlike say Apple Messages, not good for sending photos to friends family since won't have the correct date, location, etc (which you can turn on/off on Apple Messages), and with messages can send as large or as many as I want in one message so they can easily add to their Photo library with a click. With Facebook Messenger, even with the new HD feature (you annoying have to click each time), you still have limitations on how many and size you can send. Hoping Messenger or or WhatsApp eventually seamlessly support that. Some apps say they do but you have to add photo as a "file" which ends up with lots of down sides from a user experience. Also if WhatsApp is so popular hopefully eventually they let you merge your Messenger data into What's App since can't imagine starting in a new app and losing a lifetime of messages history. Was excited for RCS, but so far, has been problematic where sometimes RCS is enabled for a contact other times for same contact its not. Or slow to send, though is preserving meta data it seem now. But no support for replies, which is a deal breaker and of course not encrypted at all.
- jonwinstanley 2y agoPhotos sent on WhatsApp get so heavily reduced in size they are pretty useless for anything other than a glance at within a conversation
- Zak 2y agoSignal offers the option to scale images or not, which seems like the best option from a user perspective (maybe not from a service provider's cost perspective).
- bobsyourbuncle 2y agoWhere is this option? I often get errors about the video being too big and then need to crop my video length to send it. Super annoying
- m3kw9 2y agoNever used WhatsApp business once, it’s always from fb messenger or iMessages where business talks
- gotorazor 2y agoRestoftheworld typically deal with stories outside of the United States.
- ivanmontillam 2y agoI sense a conflict of interests or at the very least sponsored posts. Latest 3 stories from Rest of World are about WhatsApp[0][1][2]. What's up with that? As a person who dislikes WhatsApp[3], I find this extremely concerning. In my opinion, this is a PR move. -- [0]: https://restofworld.org/2024/whatsapp-lifeline-conflict-zone-natural-disaster/ https://restofworld.org/2024/whatsapp-lifeline-conflict-zone... [1]: https://restofworld.org/2024/how-whatsapp-became-a-global-cultural-force/ https://restofworld.org/2024/how-whatsapp-became-a-global-cu... [2]: https://restofworld.org/2024/how-whatsapp-for-business-changed-the-world/ https://restofworld.org/2024/how-whatsapp-for-business-chang... [3]: https://www.ivanmontilla.com/blog/goodbye-whatsapp https://www.ivanmontilla.com/blog/goodbye-whatsapp
- meiraleal 2y agoIt is definitely a PR move
- srameshc 2y agoI was thinking about the same yesterday, if there is something that can be done to tell people why it is so bad to do business on whatsapp. I don't know why so many love it other than convenience. The replies get lost and they are lazy to scroll and ask for the same information again. Many professionals like accountants want to share all confidential information on whatsapp and don't even care for sending an email. That mixed with a new style of writing short hand, 'S' for a yes and one word reply instead of an answer that requires a sentence at the least. All manners have died, just the damn text and pictures instead of a proper communication.
- carlosjobim 2y agoIt's in the name, WhatsApp for busy-ness. By forcing all your clients and potential clients to chat with you instead of just putting the information on a website for them to find, you will indeed stay busy all day with people asking the same questions over and over.
- create-username 2y agowebsite? do you mean a Facebook page?
- carlosjobim 2y agoThe layout of Facebook pages are controlled by Facebook and not very good for businesses or their potential clients, since it puts emphasis on social media updates. What I'm talking about is a real website that shows up on a Google search, where clients can purchase/order the product and easily find the information they are looking for. It costs business owners a pittance to hire somebody to make it. But some of them think it's better to not give any info and force potential customers to call or chat with them, believing that they are such great salesman that they have to get in there. In reality they are like the bazaar salesman who didn't have prices on their products and got completely crushed by super markets, which are organized and price transparent.
- joseda-hg 2y ago
- jgalt212 2y agoWhatsApp has certainly been a boon to those at the SEC who care about collecting scurrilous fines.
- eitally 2y agoEven without WhatsApp for business, it's changed the world. I'm an American in the US and have multiple messaging apps on my phone, but have recently taken recruiter calls via WhatsApp from overseas headhunters. It was surprising, and I'm still a bit befuddled when my phone rings and it's an app that isn't indicating a POTS call, especially if I haven't received a text message in advance to let me know it's coming.
- nikolay 2y agoNo, it didn't! WhatsApp spam is out of control! If you want a spam-free messenger, use Viber as it does not allow VoIP phones!
- SirMaster 2y agoHmm I have yet to ever use WhatsApp and not sure why I would.
- EduardoBautista 2y agoWell, this is a new way to spot an American in the wild. WhatsApp is basically cross platform iMessage. That’s why many parts of the world use it.
- SirMaster 2y agoWhile I do use iMessage a lot, I have typically used Facebook Messenger for cross-platform. But now I am using RCS more and more since it's on iPhone now.
- stackskipton 2y agoAlways has been. Many Americans, myself included, never used WhatsApp since SMS between people we have needed to contact was "free" since like 2007.
- Zak 2y agoGiven most messaging apps are pretty much interchangeable from a UX perspective, the main reason you would use it is that people you want to talk to are using it. If you live in the USA, that's probably not the case. If you live in Europe, it probably is. If you live in Europe and there's a group chat taking place, it's almost certain to be in WhatsApp, and that's a much better UX than if it was SMS.
- marginalia_nu 2y agoSMS is also unencrypted, fairly spoofable and offers no delivery guarantees.
- jdlyga 2y agoIt's odd how ubiquitous WhatsApp is in Europe. How and why did it catch on there so completely?
- EduardoBautista 2y agoI am sure it’s directly correlated to iPhone market share.
- Zak 2y agoIt's not. Whatsapp was popular in Europe before iMessage existed. The ubiquity of unlimited SMS on US phone plans in the early 2010s is probably the biggest factor.
- pfortuny 2y agoIn Spain I guess it is because SMS have never been free (or similar). It took off well before wifi was widespread in homes and offices, IIRC. Edit: it costs me around .10€ to send an SMS...
- mettamage 2y agoSame in the Netherlands.
- lormayna 2y agoIn Italy SMS are included in the monthly plan since many years, but everyone is using WhatsApp too.
- create-username 2y agoMy plan includes free SMS, but nobody is capable of reading or sending SMS anymore. Mobile phones can only have three apps: phone, WhatsApp and shop discount apps
- stackskipton 2y agoEasy. European Countries are so small, esp compared to America, and there is a ton of movement between them so need to communicate between countries was high. However, SMS between different country cell networks was extremely expensive for various reasons. However, data and data roaming was not. Since WhatApp is entirely data to cellular company, it caught on and network effect took over.
- jose-cl 2y agoIt is down now btw
- chmod775 2y ago"How WhatsApp changed the world by becoming more like WeChat" Enshittification claims another victim.
- amelius 2y agoSomewhat related, every time I open the web client of WhatsApp I see the side widget animating through my history. What is going on here? As a programmer, this looks like some very lazy work, but I wonder if there is more to it (?)
- nottorp 2y agoWhatsapp desktop/web is the epitome of laziness. When they switched to Electron or whatever it is they removed a ton of options, for example enlarging the font.
- ValentineC 2y agoTheir new macOS app is surprisingly pleasant to use, and much snappier in performance.
- nottorp 2y agoStill browser based and no enlarge font option. It obeys cmd +/- to adjust the font size but only for chat text, not for the chat list or the rest of the app.
- gorbypark 2y agoI’ve been using the beta version of WhatsApp on macOS for a year or so and it’s a native Catalyst app. I kinda assumed the main version had dropped electron and moved to the catalyst version too, has that not happened?
- skrebbel 2y agoWhatsApp uses your phone as the primary message store. Its architecture is more similar to SMS than to typical DB-driven client-server apps. Their servers are only designed to pass messages through, not persist them (they persist them only until they're delivered to all recipients, which usually is very short). This is an uncommon design these days, but it's also what's let them serve half the world with 5 backend engineers (!) back before Facebook/Meta bought them. It's also why, if you didn't make any backups, you lose your WhatsApp message history when you switch phones. So the web/desktop clients are thin clients over that store on your phone, which keep an eventually-consistent cache of the messages somewhere locally (indexeddb or something like that I bet). So if I'm not mistaken, when you open the web client, it connects to a WhatsApp relay server which wakes up the WhatsApp app on your phone, asks it for any new messages since last time it connected, and syncs them over. This is a fast but not instant process and what you're seeing is the UI realtime updating as the messages are being synced. The longer since you've had the web client open, the longer this takes. I'm not sure if it's deliberate but I can totally imagine it to be. It very clearly shows the syncing taking place. Personally, since I'm rather enamored by their design, I love seeing it play out in realtime. Note, I'm not 100% sure about any of the above, notably core aspects of the architecture might've changed since Meta took over.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- PokemonNoGo 2y agoInteresting article and I must say I am quite surprised having used Whatsapp religiously for now over a decade that I had never heard about _WhatsApp for Business_. Makes me wonder when I will get to interact with this part of the app too... Not that I want to though.
- isodev 2y agoI discovered the feature while on holiday once, we could IM orders for food and drinks while near the pool so they can just bring them. It’s was awesome. Since then I’ve had several customer care services using this instead of email or calling. I like the async/treat it like a normal chat aspect to it.
- ValentineC 2y agoWhatsApp's single main life-changing thing for me was not having to pay exorbitant roaming charges to receive calls from hotels (mainly to tell me that my room is ready) while on a trip. There's always been methods to contact customers using data instead of VoLTE, but WhatsApp is simple and ubiquitous enough for businesses to adopt, since a lot of people outside the US use it in a personal capacity as well. More hotels should get onto WhatsApp.
- manquer 2y agoAs non WhatsApp user or any other app for that matter. It annoys me that services expect me to install yet another app to get basic customer service. I haven’t used WhatsApp in 10 years , one time I tried to install it because of some stupid service provider who I really needed to get info made me do it , they said my number is suspended or blocked whatever . I have no interest to chase their non existent support or change my number! to resolve this issue. You don’t have this problem with telecom providers even if AT&T refuses to do business with you , there two other actual and dozen other MVNOs who will . Businesses should absolutely stick to open standards and protocols for essential communication and not ask customers to also have service with another specific company for basic communication . Delivery is the first consideration, not some value added functionality.
- solarkraft 2y agoIt‘s worth noting that they are doing all of this expansion on top of (or parallel to?) the Signal protocol. Does anyone have specifics on how they do it, what compromises they‘re making? Because they are doing it on a whole different scale than Signal and any other e2ee messenger I’m aware of (take note, Matrix folks)
- dzonga 2y agowhatsapp should be divested from fb(meta). and yeah the business api has a lot of potential. I don't know whether a fb account is required though to use the api.
- ornornor 2y ago> These users send more than 100 billion messages every day in 60 languages How do they know what language the messages are in? Isn’t WhatsApp “end to end encrypted, for real, trust your pals at Facebook”(tm)?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]