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It's very difficult to do business in Western Europe without Whatsapp. I have probably asked more than 60 people to switch to Signal and the social burden it in
by dabedee 4mo ago
It's very difficult to do business in Western Europe without Whatsapp. I have probably asked more than 60 people to switch to Signal and the social burden it introduces (i.e. asking a new acquaintance to install a new app) can have negative signalling effects (e.g. you don't adapt, create more work, why do you care so much about privacy, etc.)
I personally abhore Facebook (and IG,Whatsapp) and don't want to use any of them; I have uninstalled/reinstalled Whatsapp many times. Out of practical concern, I now only use Whatsapp in business settings where it would create tension and create social awkwardness not to. But I dislike the fact that I do.
- dgellow 4mo agoTelegram is fairly common in Western Europe
- thejackgoode 4mo ago.. which is a worse option for different reasons than WhatsApp
- yurishimo 4mo agoIt does have a nice Bot API though. For building personal stuff or just sharing between friends, the risks can be mitigated (imo).
- dgellow 4mo agoIt also has the best cross-platform chat UX since pretty much forever, and just a generally really well polished interface.
- k4rli 4mo agoOkay, what are the reasons? It's difficult to see how Meta is in any way more trustworthy than the country which Telegram is from. I trust TG secret chats much more than Whatsapp's supposed e2e.
- Traubenfuchs 4mo ago[flagged]
- panja 4mo agoLike you said "in my experience." You could use it for other things lol. My entire boring friend group uses it for none of those.
- scott01 4mo agoSame. Also the “russophile” part sounds kinda racist.
- dgellow 4mo agoIt's a standard chat application, people are also using Facebook, WhatsApp, etc for illegal/immoral discussions. I've been using it as my main chat client for more than 10y and have never used or felt the need to use the community channels, it's just a great messenger. Doing illegal stuff in public Telegram channels is extremely stupid, they aren't encrypted, you're pretty much giving your information to law enforcement (I know Telegram is often blocking sharing info on their users to law enforcement, but you can be sure agencies are monitoring your telegram channel discussions). The Russophile comment is pretty frustrating given Telegram is the most commonly used messenger in Ukraine and lots of Eastern Europe...
- venzaspa 4mo agoWhy not settle on a chat which actually uses e2e encryption by default though? There's truth to the Russophile comment though, Telegram is regularly used by GRU and the FSB to recruit people to commit acts of vandalism and terror and is pretty well documented. It's also commonly used to spread disinformation and conspiracy theories. My mum has fallen for several of these via Telegram.
- dgellow 4mo agoSorry for your mum. FWIW you have the same content on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit. Telegram has a larger Russian speaking audience because of the founder, who created VK in Russia. But that doesn’t make it Russophile. Ukraine is organizing pretty much all their resistance on Telegram… The public channels are where the trash content is, I’ve never used them myself, you have to explicitly look for that feature, it’s not like they are shown in the chat interface directly. > Why not settle on a chat which actually uses e2e encryption by default though? Because I care more about the quality of user experience, and Telegram has been awesome to use since I first tried it
- TrackerFF 4mo agoI think it is interesting to see how fractured things are even in western Europe. I'm in Scandinavia, and at least here, Messenger is by far the most dominant messaging app. Meta in general has a really tight grip here.
- bondarchuk 4mo agoWhatsapp is also from Meta.
- jraby3 4mo agoSame in Israel. Doctors, schools, etc all use WhatsApp. You can't live without it here.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 4mo agoAll my close family now use Signal after me and a sibling pushed for this. That's 30+ persons. The network is growing too, since all children and new partners join in 1:1 and groups.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 4mo agoAll my close family now use Signal after me and a sibling pushed for this. That's 30+ persons. The network is growing too, since all children and new partners join in 1:1 and groups. We like having two apps: WA for friends, Signal for family. There are only few reasons to mix the two.
- timbaboon 4mo agoYep, same in South Africa. I still haven't accepted those T's & C's from a few years ago so can't chat with most businesses. In some cases there is no other option, so I just... don't use that company. On the other hand, I've convinced a lot of my friends to get Signal. I'm the only person that they speak to on Signal, but that's fine ;)
- pbiggar 4mo agoWe work on helping people move to Signal from WhatsApp. It'll be easier once they have a Communities feature, as WhatsApp is very far ahead there. The main advice we got is that although you need to migrate individuals, the main focus should be on migrating channels. If you have a family group chat, that's the target. Tell people about how Meta spies on them, etc, and then support everyone in the channel to individually set up Signal if necessary.
- jwr 4mo agoIn Central Europe (Poland), too. Nobody, and I do mean nobody, realizes that using Whatsapp by default (which everyone accepts) synchronizes their entire contacts list to Meta. It's a golden trove of valuable data for an ad targeting company. People don't realize that there is so much that can be inferred about you from your contacts. Whether you have kids, which schools they go to, and similar personal information. All of this is not even on the radar and people reduce privacy to "whether someone listens in on my calls or conversations" and tend to brush it off, because they honestly don't care about that part. Signal doesn't make it easier by refusing to allow encrypted iCloud backups for so many years (which means people lose data when they lose their phones!) and recently introducing a subscription backup service instead of allowing me to do an encrypted iCloud backup. It's hard to explain to people that they should use an inferior product just because of "privacy".
- pndy 4mo agoI've seen more interest in Telegram among my contacts in recent years and less of it in Signal. I managed to grab my partner, sister and my friend to use Signal but they all three still use facebook along with whatsapp and doesn't seem they want to leave it. The recent yet another revival of Gadu Gadu pass by without much fanfare. For those unfamiliar: GG was created by single guy upon ICQ idea of UIN's and quickly become the default messenger in Poland some 20 years ago - even gov't used it at some point. But it lost its position to Skype, Whatsapp and Viber. I admire somewhat the dedication this new company has in restoring our "homemade" network. But it's way too late: new generation of people who's mainly familiar with big corporations services have grown up and GG has nothing that'd made it replace these.
- olyjohn 4mo agoWhat's the problem with SMS? Why are people hesitant to just use that? It works on every phone...