Pretty much all of our school and local community communication happens via WhatsApp. I'd change to Signal or Telegram in a heartbeat, but the inertia is so great it's not possible.
It pains me to say, but we're getting to the point where companies like Twitter, Facebook and Google need to be treated like utilities or something so that such moves as these can be scrutinised and controlled more effectively as Facebook could pretty much (within current law) introduce whatever policy they like and users would be faced with the option of accepting or being cut off from their local community.
Given the pandemic and the UK lockdown, this is not tolerable.
Our generation is reinventing the wheel here, our ancestors had exactly the same problems with the power, water, gas, telephone and rail networks (at some point in time, all those were unregulated and privately owned) and did exactly that. Critical infrastructure needs to be heavily, regulated if not outright publicly owned.
Or Blame MSN, the Instant Messenger, when Microsoft refuse to admit defeat to the Smartphone platform.
So WhatsApp took over in EU ( I believe iMessages or SMS is still popular in France ), UK, SEA, Brazil, Hong Kong. Line in Japan and Taiwan, KakaoTalk in South Korea. Unsure about Australia and Canada. ( They use WhatsApp but not to the extent of countries listed above. )
And it is iMessages in US. I have no idea why that thing even took off. I have tried it dozen times over the years and every few months it has problem with message delivery, people in group not receiving any messages. Poor Searching capabilities etc....
Telegram has gain usage but for different kind of reason. And I dont see it ever being used in the same manner as WhatsApp.
So most of friends just clicked yes and share their Data. It is important to note despite the increasing hostility against FB on HN, and in Tech Circle, most people in the world seems to have no problem with it. I dont see WhatsApp going away any time soon.
Edit: How does this data sharing fit in with GDPR in EU?
I'm getting strange looks every day when people hear I don't use the platform. It's horrendous.
I also really fear for the moment where I've to tell a nice girl I met that I don't use the platform, and that we should use X other platform instead. I can imagine that to be a letdown or to be weird. That's insane to me.
It is possible, but difficult. You may lose access to some groups, but you can't have everything you want without some sacrifice.
Personally, I'm leaving WhatsApp. Yes, my family and friends will be a bit annoyed about the hassle of contacting me separately, but so be it.
Hope some lawyers can stop this in its tracks. Otherwise Signal or some other service will get our business
I don't think politicians are going to solve the problem for us entirely, but a bunch of us have been working on technical solutions for decades and they aren't the entire answer either.
A little regulation combined with the right alternatives may go some way. I'm optimistic, though we have a very long road ahead.
What is really problematic is Facebook monopoly for organizing any social activities or events. There are simply no alternatives especially among 30-50 years old. Like the saying, “What parents were afraid video game would do to children, Facebook did to parents.”
There is no way to cut WhatsApp from casual/family use in Europe.
Schools, kindergartens, mechanics, contractors, plumbers everyone uses it.
The problem is that WhatsApp is the easiest method to share photos on mobile.
If you do not have WhatsApp your plumber can not send you a picture of pipes they fixed. How do you work around that?
Other parents are using WhatsApp for organizing out of school activities. Again, there is no way to go full Stallman here...
Beyond that, I will not entertain personal messages on whatsapp, only work related. Each new person will be greeted with "Do you mind awfully if we use Signal?" Does this come off as self-important? Sure. But it helps that I don't care too much if it does. I had the same attitude quitting FB and Twitter too, I just don't need people that much. I don't have a 100 friends anyway. I have like 15 that I really want to keep in touch with. Those 15 will understand.
Here in the UK I am literally required to be on WhatsApp to live in the building I currently live in. I have no choice in this matter. It's just the default messaging service for everyone.
If you join any kind of club? WhatsApp group. If you want to talk to someone about renting a room or apartment? WhatsApp chat. Live with housemates? WhatsApp group.
Plus the whole fact that if I deleted facebook, I would cut off contact with my friends and family (I can't expect like 25 people all to switch messaging services just for me). I would lose access to my thousand-dollar Oculus VR headset (I hate them so much for buying and linking facebook and Oculus, and hope a better competing standalone headset comes out).
And don't forget, you can't use an Oculus Quest with a blank facebook account you made just for that - they actually check that you're really using the account and force you to verify with photos and ID.
They are the absolute epitome of evil. Facebook, in many ways, but particularly in regard to Oculus, is a moustache-twirlingly, cartoonishly evil organization.
Could I just never buy an Oculus? Hopefully one day. But when not just your hobbies, but also your study and skillset and career prospects are right in that industry, you swallow your pride and make a damn facebook account.
I was also required to be in facebook groups for university classes back when I was a student. I HAD to be on facebook to get a degree. And for an amateur theatre group I joined.
Not to mention everything going on with misinformation about elections, vaccines, etcetera etcetera.
Some of this stuff is now moving to Discord, which is probably better than anything owned by facebook, but being better than facebook is a damn low bar, and Discord is still ultimately a for-profit corporation that would sell your soul if it made them a dollar.
This "just stop using it" attitude you always get on Hacker News and reddit about facebook and their various messaging platforms baffles me. Do you people not have lives? Jobs? Friends? Family? If you (in or out of a pandemic lockdown) want to do just about anything outside your house, or a whole bunch of things inside it, you need to use Facebook services.
It sucks and I've love to stop supporting them but it's not like most of us have a realistic choice.
I'm so anti-Facebook now that it's a part of the way I identify myself, and for all that I can't delete it. I maintain contact with a friend in Germany via Whatsapp or Facebook messenger, and in this case it would be possible to use email (which is not nearly as casual as firing off a message in your spare moments) or some other service but it doesn't solve the problem about friend groups.
I have friend groups around the world that my only way to participate in is Facebook. I believe moving abroad is in my future again, and Messenger is detestably the only real way to keep up with my friends back home. Leaving Facebook and Messenger is like leaving a bar I hate; I'm only here for the people and I wish we could go somewhere else.
People have the choice and use it. Not sure what is holding other circles back?
I havent had whatsapp in 4+ years and only rarely have to fall back to SMS
And it is, and I sympathize, but you and your family will not die or starve. It's possible.
I'm fed up an will remove fb and wa from my phone, at least. It will be painful
You will find WhatsApp contacts for any kind of communication, ordering a taxi, food, whatever.
Move out of WhatsApp, and it is going to be quite boring out in the Savannah.
WhatsApp is popular but not a monopoly. Not really something to celebrate since its main "competitor" and #1 instant messenger app is Facebook Messenger. Skype and Discord are also significant, and I expect iMessage to be important too.
Net neutrality not existing helps WhatsApp and other services here, one cell provider for example offers 1 year unlimited WhatsApp+Facebook including voice and video calls for a total (not monthly!) cost of 3USD on a prepaid chip. So you can't call, you can't write SMS, you can't use the internet but you can use WhatsApp for almost no cost. If you are on a budget this is a no brainer, for comparison - 5GB full internet access on the same chip is around 5$.
How are you going to break such a monopoly supported by providers? At this point it is something all providers do so if one starts offering it all other providers have a competitive advantage because everybody is already using WhatsApp. I am not sure if Facebook pays these providers, my guess is not - they are pushed into this by their competitors.
Net neutrality is very important to not let this happen. Similar deals exist for other popular services: Instagram, Youtube, TikTok, Spotify, Snapchat, Twitter, Netflix to name a few
Everything you said applies to the Indian subcontinent, SE Asia and South America which form the bulk of the WhatsApp user base as well but with lesser or no scrutiny whatsoever when compared to EU/UK.
It has to start somewhere. It is possible, but it takes will, and the acceptance that you will lose some contacts.
Personally I'm not really sure who's using WhatsApp, I know two or three WhatsApp users. They all use it because they have friends other countries, mostly the middle east.
If RCS actually becomes a thing, then I don't see much of a future for apps like WhatsApp.
This takes chat away from any single service.
I have Telegram and Signal installed and was chatting with friends above moving over (finally) but its painful especially right now.
With right amount of incentive, force and numbers - tipping point could be reached but I cant see it happening in the current situation.
With my cynical hat on I imagine FB know this and timed this policy change accordingly.
If I need anything to be delivered to the house I need to use Whatsapp (gas, water, food, etc).
It’s a deal!
What could be considered instead, is building public utilities as a community.
„ By tapping Agree, you accept the new terms, which take effect on February 8, 2021. After this date, you’ll need to accept the new terms to continue using WhatsApp. You can also visit the Help Center if you would prefer to delete your account and would like more information. To learn more about how WhatsApp processes your data, read our updated privacy policy“ (with an Agree button underneath).
I could close the window. But there is a hard deadline apparently: Feb 8th.
F* you Facebook. I‘d rather stop using Whatsapp altogether.
Edit:
Will start using Signal app, and for the transition period I‘ll keep an old smartphone with a throwaway Sim card and WhatsApp installed on it to keep updates from absolutely necessary groups I need to be part of.
I suggest something that lets you use any client/platform you want, uses the same crypto primitives, and lets you choose what server/country your data is hosted in and change your mind any time, e.g Matrix.
How many times do centralized services like VK, WhatsApp, Instagram, Apple, etc need to get co-opted into enforcing the will of private entities or governments before we learn our lesson?
The only network services this won't become true of at some point in the future are those with decentralized clients and servers obeying a common documented protocol.
Supporting tablets would allow us to chat and send files across devices, without resorting to apps like Messenger.
I am mostly using Signal and will let my WhatsApp expire.
I also think matrix is great and would recommend setting up an account by installing element. I think growth in matrix will more fully undermine FB's position as well as Slack/etc.
I wonder how Out of curiosity:
Does anyone know how the new Whatsapp TOS differ from the Gmail TOS in regard to user data and privacy. How does the Facebook group use data differently than, say Facebook or Microsoft?
It's an email client (with clever, seamless encryption based on gpg) with a WhatsApp style interface. There's a desktop client too.
I've only ever managed to get one person to use it, but goodness it'd be nice to get rid of WhatsApp.
Edit: URL https://delta.chat/
As far as I understand, because of GDPR, the sharing of data between Facebook companies is limited. This is different from the US terms.
UK/IE/RO/MD/UA/RU/etc - cheap and fast delivery :D
I can't do this because everyone else I know uses Whatsapp.
My wife recently got her entire extended family to use Signal. She has always refused to use WhatsApp. They all love Signal now, and use it all the time. However, this was during a family crisis.
During the Covid lockdowns, many companies I know used Signal as their preferred non corporate communication platform over WhatsApp... But again, that was a crisis.
It seems to be difficult to dislodge people from their preferred platforms without some kind of external driver to adopt it.
The move can be made faster now because groups are so prevalent on WhatsApp.
That’s added at least 20 or 30 friends/acquaintances into my signal contact list that I’m 99% sure downloaded signal for the first time this morning.
But once most people have both it gets easier.
Signal (UX wise) is not really super great for my family, I burned a lot of my "technical expert advisor" capital and reputation by pushing that too hard.
I refuse to help walled gardens get bigger. It has cost me a lot of contacts, but so be it. There is always a choice.
If you had a friend you respected that was vegan for ethical or environmental convictions would you insist on continuing to exclusively have social gatherings at BBQ restaurants with no menu options for them? Would you take them seriously if they caved to avoid being excluded from the group?
When I deleted all walled garden messengers by Google, Facebook etc they knew I wasn't kidding. Anyone that refuses to make small allowances for you living your convictions is not your friend.
The people that need to talk to me use matrix now or found other ways to reach out like e-mail or in person. Those that don't respect my ethics don't get free advice from me anymore.
In my friends circle we are all on telegram (after trying wire which is just buggy as hell), but I think this is mainly due to its multi device story and then fact that it is not WhatsApp.
I know what you're asking, but I don't think there's a fix unless you somehow have tremendous influence with them. So you either put up with being coerced by your group, or you don't.
This is probably easier if you never used the services in the first place. My mom will occasionally whine that she has to open Imessage to talk to me, and that's about the extent of it. But of course, I am missing whatever they get up to on FB without me. And that's OK with me, but I know it isn't with everyone.
It had some rockiness maybe about 3 years ago, but with their new group implementation and some other small tweaks I find it just as easy to use as whatsapp, albeit it a little uglier.
#1 complaint is the coloring - incoming messages should be high contrast, outgoing should have the background color. For some reason signal does the opposite and it's hideous.
Be the change you want to see in the world.
Then they got hooked up, mostly thanks to the huge amount of high quality stickers.
So I just use email.
As for converting people who are not that interested, I can tell you from experience talking about privacy generally doesn't sell it.
The key was being stubborn and banking on them eventually wanting to talk to me.
Don't expect people to uninstall Whatsapp. Having multiple messengers is fine.
We are all running what most would consider an outdated and poorly designed c.p.u. architecture by modern standards, simply because most software is not compiled to run on other architectures, and it won't be until those architectures see significant adoption.
I was thinking about going back, actually, but using a separate phone number (dual SIM FTW) and a work profile sandbox with heavily restricted permissions. I might still give it a shot, see if that's enough to quell FB's insatiable hunger for personal data.
Social technologies would benefit from some regulation along the lines of “you must be able to use other apps to send to/receive from your app” for at least a minimal feature set, but it would be super hard to nail down what that regulation should exactly be.
I just dropped the link in the title into all the group chats I'm in, said I'm headed to signal and removed myself from the groups.
I was not the first person to do that in these groups. Will it cause a critical mass exodus? Idk. I won't know, I won't be back.
If someone refuses to make an actual call, text me, email me, or use Signal, then clearly they don't respect me enough for me to need to communicate with them.
Signal is much harder to sell to non-tech users IMHO.
So tldr target the people you want to convert to develop a critical mass.
That's one reason with I prefer Matrix/Element...
Definition of Services: "all of our apps, services, features, software, and website (together, “Services”) unless specified otherwise."
Ads are the bulk of Facebook's "Services" but it's remarkable how they avoid saying it.
Sacrificing access to these social amenities on the altar of incremental privacy invasion and power transfer to an unaccountable basically malign organisation is hard to stomach. And rather inconsequential taken in isolation.
What technical and legislative means might be effective in limiting the network effect around group chats? For example requiring in law that groups be accessible to an open federated hub and spoke messaging protocol to allow messages to flow from syndicated groups established on other systems (like matrix or signal or whatever) to WhatsApp groups.
What technical and legal prior art is there here? I would be interested to hear some ideas.
What could be done legally to help this development is requiring services to offer open APIs to reduce the lock-in.
We joined Facebook in 2014. WhatsApp is now part of the Facebook family of companies. Our Privacy Policy explains how we work together to improve our services and offerings, like fighting spam across apps, making product suggestions, and showing relevant offers and ads on Facebook. Nothing you share on WhatsApp, including your messages, photos, and account information, will be shared onto Facebook or any of our other family of apps for others to see, and nothing you post on those apps will be shared on WhatsApp for others to see.
This is hypocrisy!!
Edit: The word "onto" in the privacy policy is so dubious. They said we aren't sharing anything onto Facebook. Probably it didn't mean they weren't snooping our data.
But says it will be used (shared) internally to target ads and product suggestions.
Very weasely indeed.
For example: What should be my response to questions like: . "What kind of data can now be shared with FB versus what was shared earlier (if any)?"
. "Whatsapp chats are end to end encrypted so how can my data be shared with FB?"
. "As an individual, how different is Whatsapp sharing my data with FB for ad/tracking purposes versus what other networks such as Google do to serve ads? Let's say I'm interested in ice-cream and I chat with someone about it and a couple of days later, I get ads about ice-cream, but I choose to ignore those ads, then how am I impacted/affected?"
* User phone numbers
* Other people’s phone numbers stored in address books
* Profile names
* Profile pictures and
* Status message including when a user was last online
* Diagnostic data collected from app logs
Purchases
Financial information
Location
Contacts
User content
Identifiers
Usage data and
DiagnosticsThey will most likely share metadata about you with facebook to sell that data to push more ads into your face.
They may very well sell also data to insurance companies making it harder for you to get insurance.
Options are limited only by who would like to pay for info about you.
Its rather a question about “How much you value your privacy?”
Ps. Ppl using facebook from the go “do not care about their privacy” so I dont know how much more it will affect you.
I would stress to them the difference between the encrypted contents of a chat the metadata ("it's data about data!") of that chat.
Hopefully they will get it if you give an example of how just sending a message lets them profile you based on metadata like the exact time, geographic location, and recipient of the message, all without needing to see the contents. Encrypted messages sent from Truist Park at 2PM on a Sunday? Probably about baseball, etc etc.
Probably too high-level and wordy to share with a non-tech crowd but this is one of my favorite blog posts on this topic, from the immediately-post-Snowden era: https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metad...
Why hasn’t Apple introduced a private/segmented Contacts permission like they have Photos, Location, etc.?
An ability to give untrustworthy software an access to a sandboxed blank copy of Contacts would've been very useful.
As a side note, Telegram is the same as WhatsApp. You can't start a chat on a fresh install unless you give it an access to the contacts. There's no way to manually add in-app contacts. Given how "pro-privacy" they are supposed to be, this was rather disconcerting to see.
https://github.com/subhamtyagi/openinwa
You can enter a number in that app and it will launch a conversation with them in whatsapp. I think it makes use of the API mentioned in sibling comments.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)#Encryption_p...
[2] https://threatpost.com/signal-audit-reveals-protocol-cryptog...
[3] https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/1013.pdf [PDF]
Shouldn't it be possible to delete your whatsapp chat and contacts data regularly from the cloud? Eg. one could delete the whatsapp account, clear data on cloud and make a new account again. Having more control over your data stored by Facebook would give more power to the users of enforced by the government.
EDIT: To the people downvoting this: I said the same thing a long time ago about whatsapp before Facebook bought them.
(Edit: this is rather a negative comment but its out of frustration -- I want to use it!)
That sounds a lot less alarming, in the third to last paragraph, than the headline or first few paragraphs?
Don't get me wrong, I ditched Facebook years ago, and wouldn't use WhatsApp but for family and a pre-Corona club I wouldn't have (much at all) contact with otherwise. That quote just makes me much less annoyed than my initial reaction was. Which is of course her job, but assuming it's true...
I use LineageOS for privacy reasons, and intercept various things I consider to be privacy violations.
I very much disagree with these ways of operating, for systems that monopolize human-to-human communication. We live in a bunch of walled garden communication apps, people don't use any open systems like e-mail and phone anymore, and those walled garden apps bully us into giving them data? They are all starting to behave the same way.
Then came the question - can we talk to people on whatsapp using signal because friends, aunts, uncles, cousins who live international all live on whatsapp. Moving your network, their network and their networks network becomes quite the task.
People, in general, don't have a qualm about installing another app when it's recommended by someone they trust.
I think we are now at the point where this applies to individuals. If a person or group of people rely too heavily on a single free service then they’re going to feel pain when that service finally decides to monetize.
There are no free lunches. All these “free” products out there that seem great have Venture Capital investors waiting until the day that the service reaches a critical mass and they can flip the cash-generating switch.
Personally I don't know anyone that started using whatsapp after the fb purchase, so they were all happy to pay for their use of a messaging app.
I wouldn't trust any api you don't control, don't have a solid contract (without the changable terms) or isn't owned by a nonprofit.
The free ones will hurt you but you expect it. The paid ones hurt more because you often build a business around an ecosystem that eats you up.
The solution isn't to say "profit = bad", it's to break up monopolies or force interoperability and forbid certain forms of "payment" (such as exploiting and reselling personal data) that are deemed nefarious to society.
One is a google-style lock into an ecosystem of free apps that a company can monetize at any time. Stay away if possible: the users will be milked sooner or later.
The other is openstreetmap-style set of free data that anyone can download anytime, plus some apps (maybe free, maybe not) using it for some function. I see no problem with it as the lock-in is highly unlikely because the main feature (say, map data) is always available. My 2c.
Use a service until it’s useful, then be prepared to leave when you no longer agree to its terms. The average user will go through many social networks and apps throughout their life.
Not all of them. Some, like unroll.me, blatantly tell you they sell your data - and people still give them access to their entire E-mail inbox.
Tricked people into giving up info they trade like commodities so they can buy more useless crap in life.
Fortunately, it is generally expected Harris/Biden administration will come down hard on these companies.
then again they are wall street people so we will have to see if there's a recession (The simpsons predicted a global recession after Trump administration)
https://www.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/ewp99j/disable_webs...
Unlike Telegram, WhatsApp, Element etc. which work fine without Google, Signal devs have repeteadly refused to make improvements to the "always-awake" mode which happily eats 40% battery.
With that said, there is some work being done towards a FLOSS replacement for firebase [1]. Gotify can be used as a backend [2], among others ([3] too, I think). Not ready for prime-time, but almost, and development started pretty recently (mid-December).
[1] #openpush:bubu1.eu (https://matrix.to/#/!ajsXAmvYUOjfmMJnGJ:bubu1.eu)
[1] https://github.com/UnifiedPush/UP-spec/blob/main/specificati...
I have worked on many a project in my time, and I can't think of a single instance where we knowingly screwed over users or clients. Our teams' goals have always been to make the product better. What's going on here? I am honestly curious.
Ads: we could increase revenue if we had access to WhatsApp data, but that's Product and Legal's call.
Product: Ads asked us to access WhatsApp data, but we're just facilitating between them and Legal.
Legal: Ads and Product asked us to change the policy to allow access to WhatsApp data.
Monetization often trumps customer's best interests. It certainly has at most companies where I've worked (but not all).
Messaging in the Netherlands almost universally runs on WhatsApp these days. Nobody uses text messages anymore, understandably, but somehow we all ended up on a platform run by Facebook. "Whatsappen" (messaging on Whatsapp) and "appje" (short for WhatsApp message) are even official words now. Need to contact a friend? Send an appje. Need support from a company? Send an appje. Need to send a message to your team at work? Send an appje in the group chat.
Has anyone managed to get their contacts to switch to Signal? I can't even get tech-savvy people to switch, since they always seem to find some minor annoyance that makes them instantly dismiss the app and go back to WhatsApp.
At this point it's just a lost cause. I have some friends on Signal and use NextCloud talk (my own server, yay, still waiting for federated chat to chat to other servers), but so many "official" things are on WA, children's birthday parties, school announcements, sports related announcements, neighborhood announcements. We are really too dependent on WA, and you know, based on WA's original promises this wouldn't really be a problem. Now it is, although I fear I'm one of the very few that sees it that way.
[0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=whatsapp+buurtpreventie&t=ffsb&iax...
Messages from daycare, zoom class info for kids, alerts, are all connected to WhatsApp.
There is no way to avoid using it. Wish there was something I could do.
There should also be a copy of the messages database, and I'm sure there is some open source app to decrypt it somewhere.
[0] https://faq.whatsapp.com/android/chats/how-to-save-your-chat...
Businesses here have started using WhatsApp as an alternative to SMS, email for sending spam to important package tracking information (without prior permission).
But I see this as the best opportunity to convert some of my contacts to Signal/Email as this stays in mainstream news for a while(but quite sure that almost all of them have clicked 'Agree' to T&C banner showed on WhatsApp when they woke up morning without giving it a thought and I'm certain that's exactly what FB intended).
I do not know whether to feel fear, sadness or shame on the type of power WhatsApp/Facebook holds only my people.
With WhatsApp becoming the new defacto sms / mms it would make sense.
Could they even reuse pieces of the legislation that made it happen for usb chargers?
https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9941-how_facebook_tracks_you_on_...
I foolishly installed the Facebook app on Android for a while. When I asked for a data dump from Facebook I was amazed at the amount of data it had stolen from my phone, including full contacts list. It sounds like that is exactly what Facebook are planning with WhatsApp.
I'd pay $1 / year to opt out of that and be the customer rather than the product.
(E: 12, not 18. 18 is for families)
And I’d pay $5,000 for a new Tesla. Though I have no idea why someone would sell me one for so cheap.
I like what Matrix is doing but they are far away from becoming mainstream. Within 2-3 years a new platform will rise and it will fix flaws of existing messaging apps. This will then be followed by social media but it might take another 6-7 years to fix that mess.
When smartphones came out people modified IRC with support for push brokers and message replay but because of app stores this means push brokers for community maintained clients have to be maintained by the individual volunteer paying (yes! paying, shut up about the free dev accounts they don't allow you to send push notifications) for the "privilege" of submitting the app (meaning they have low to zero availability.) The relay Mozilla maintains allows servers and users to choose who brokers push messages but Apple and Google screw over their users for profit and this is the result.
Smartphone app stores have made IM unusable.
My friends from Europe and Brazil are locked into WhatsApp, my American friends seem to prefer FB messenger. They’re really using 2 versions of the same company’s products which are “incompatible” at this point. Facebook could make them compatible with one another and with each other only OR they could do the socially beneficially thing and use an open protocol. Unless employees at FB push for this, they’re likely to take the former route.
And then 2-3 years after that an entirely incompatible platform will do the same thing...
Yeah, Matrix is great. I was probably among the first people to install Riot, but the grim reality is nobody (well, one geek-friend of mine and his wife) uses Matrix. Look, even I was surprised when you mentioned "Element": thought it must be some new messenger I didn't hear about...
But I'd surely rather like people to promote Element here, not Signal.
I demoed it recently as a Slack alternative and it's not very user friendly. Our groups ended up just using Signal.
(1) claims that Facebook promised Whatsapp would not be monetised, and that Facebook and and Whatsapp's data would not be combined. This information was also provided to European antitrust regulators
(2) missed out on $850 stock option grants vesting by quitting early over disputes with Facebook about monetisation strategy
(3) promoted #deletefacebook on Whatsapp following the Cambridge Anlalytica scandal
(4) Donated $50m to the non-for-profit alternative, Signal.
Also, I'd be happy to pay for Whatsapp but then they need to isolate themselves from Facebook/third parties and slow down with the feature creep. It works great for what it is. If they mutate the thing further, it's going to become a gross/convuluted app that tries to cater to all use cases.
One can dream, right?
Anyway we have so many ways to communicate with one another that if someone wants to reach me he can, probably it will be less a big deal than what most of us think.
If all of your tech savvy friends disappear from WhatsApp in a matter of a couple of weeks maybe some other people might follow... I kind of hope in a domino effect right now, let’s see how it plays out!
I am a heavy advocate of privacy and the main driving factor for these conversations in my friend/family circle. Trying to get people to a different platform since 2 years now (they did and came back), so now I wonder if I am just wasting time really for a apocalypse that was never going to happen.
_______
>WhatsApp, according to the App Store, reserves the right to collect:
Purchases
Financial information
Location
Contacts
User content
Identifiers
Usage data and
Diagnostics
So does anyone know if there's a way to revert the agreement?
Forget whether or not they can, legally; if I recall correctly they explicitly promised not to.
People who work for those without integrity are baffling to me.
Edit: Just did a comparison of all the data collected by Whatsapp, Signal and Telegram
Telegram - https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/telegram-messenger/id686449807 WhatApp - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/whatsapp-messenger/id310633997 Signal - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/signal-private-messenger/id874...
WhatApp collect a stupid amount of data. Its time for me to shift.
Even for me, my kids school sends updates on WhatsApp. Bank also sends its updates on WhatsApp etc. But I have avoided using WhatsApp for these purposes. And so far I have survived. Because almost all businesses don't rely exclusively on WhatsApp. Atleast in my case. They send emails, SMS messages etc. It's not as clean as WhatsApp. But everything has its pros and cons.
If we really want to move, then I think we can move. It will be a little harder to start with. But then something better will hopefully come across. Tech has always filled gaps which come up.
https://medium.com/@kloudtrader/reducing-whatsapp-digital-fo...
Not sure if it still applies to the latest version of Android and WhatsApp but it might help. However it only mitigates certain real-time tracking and contact discovery, not to mention switching profiles is somewhat of a hassle.
Users: whatever.
I like Whatsapp, and this change seems in line with what Whatsapp always has been. Of course I'm always wary of advancements, ready to uninstall it if really bad news arrive, but in general Whatsapp has been respectful of its users, especially those that are privacy concerned.
They hired a lead developer from Signal to implement E2E encryption, its functionality is almost completely transperent, which reduces the need to inspect source code to understand functionality. The most severe of privacy criticisms have amounted to "Facebook knows who you message and at what times you message", which is a very good position for a 2B user platform to be in, since it doesn't read message contents.
I have tried Signal, but I cannot recommend it to family (yet), since I don't find what they do with metadata harmful, it's just a price to pay for the otherwise free app, like advertisement. Anyone who has recommended Signal so far sounded like an inflexible Stallman fundamentalist. I reserve my voice for other more serious incidents, if there is a successful warrant for message contents or if there is ad targetting based on message contents, then I will start sounding the horns, but for now: Meh.
On the other hand as tech savvy person I have no expectation about what happens to the data that I enter into the app beyond expecting it not to be immediately published for everyone to see unless that's what the app explicitely does.
I know data I entered might be viewed by unspecified number of people all over the world during normal operation, and that this data might be published at some point in the future. I'm hoping none of the unknown people that can view my data knows me personally or uses this data against me.
There's no end to end encryption hosted service I currently trust to do what they say. If I were to transfer information that I don't want under no circumstances to go public I'd have to research what wikileaks is now using for communication.
That's the contract I'm operating under. I think it's a good balance because it's aligned with physical reality.
Can't find any downside, really - except that few people are on it.
>https://www.latimes.com/business/la-xpm-2014-feb-24-la-fi-tn...
>The WhatsApp acquisition has raised concerns among some users that WhatsApp would become, well, more like Facebook. Zuckerberg took the opportunity to quiet those concerns, saying WhatsApp would continue to operate independently from Facebook.
>“We are absolutely not going to change plans around WhatsApp and the way it uses user data. WhatsApp is going to operate completely autonomously,” Zuckerberg said. “They might use people and infrastructure to grow, but the vision is to keep the service exactly the same. They do not keep the content you send, and we’re not going to change that.”
WhatsApp uses "privacy shield"[0] to allow it to flow data from the EU to the US.
However, privacy shield was rejected by the European Court of Justice on 16 July 2020 (Schrems II) [1] so we're back to "standard contractual clauses" [2].
There's currently no alternative to Privacy Shield.
[0] https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/privacy-shield/?lang=en
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU%E2%80%93US_Privacy_Shield#L...
[2] https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/inte...
Let's keep in mind however that these are advanced use cases, and that for 99% of the users these are just apps supposed to deliver text and media from A to B. In 2021 it's not hard to build an app like these, even with E2E encryption and 2FA. Social lock-in obviously plays a role, but I'm really appalled by the scarcity of alternatives that enables companies like Facebook to bully us into reading our private messages for advertising purpose and easily get away with it.
Although the privacy related changes were somewhat expected, the timing and aggresive timeline will likely play out in Facebook's favor.
While giving users a 1 month grace period to either comply (share their data) or delete their account already seems like a pretty aggressive window that limits the ability for users to fully assess options or migrate existing groups/chats to alternative platforms, the short timeline combined with the on-going pandemic, and the fact that WhatsApp has become one of the primary means of communication for many around the world will likely lead to a very limited drop in users leaving the platform as a result of this policy change.
Beyond Febuary, once users have already shared their data, there is likely minimal incentive for groups or individuals to overcome the network effects and move to another platform in the short term.
Does anybody have this picture ? I can’t find it
This is not just a founders problem - investors are equally compliant since they keep on throwing their money as long as they see that sweet exponential curve.
Once they get tired of seeing their money being lit on fire; they give the founders one option; monetize what you have or shut down.
Since users are now used to your service being free, the only thing you can do is to look at what you have; User data.
At first, you just sell this info to your “trusted” partners because you want to be able to sleep at night, but as the revenue keeps on growing, your investors realize you have a money printing machine at your hands.
At this point you you’ve lost your compass and forgot why you even founded the thing, being stuck at a big table discussing with investors and lawyers how to find loopholes in the new iteration of the GDPR laws, ending the meeting with deciding to funnel a big chunk of cash to lobby the law out of existence.
At this point, everybody looses except from the stock owners. Or maybe you find it hard to sleep at night, because even thought you now have infinite amounts of cash, you lost a part of yourself that day when you threw your entire user base under the bus.
So the company with the deepest pockets controls our daily communication channels and as consumers we feel powerless due to the network effect.
One way to overcome this would be to make it mandatory that communication services must allow federation. Sure, it would not be a perfect solution, but it would be a lot better than the current situation and should be acceptable by all parties involved.
People I talk to and my IP address but what else?
Wish Apple would let us choose which contacts to give specific apps access to, like they did for photos.
In the meantime, you can try minimizing what WhatsApp sees about you by turning off access to contacts, using the desktop or web app, and just talking to people via
I switched to Telegram and never looked back.
I know some crypto fans who really try to push for folks to use Signal, but there's too much inertia. WhatsApp isn't really on the radar.
It's wild to read how much of a monopoly it enjoys elsewhere.
Also what happened to the "if you're not the customer you're the product" mentality. Do people expect some entities to pay for servers and teams of Android and iOS developers to create a chat app without getting paid and out of pure goodwill?
Please bear with me if this doesn't belong here. Normally I wouldn't dare posting on HN (don't want it to become mainstream and have idiots like me gush out their opinions) but I really dunno who else to ask this.
It's open source and very secure: https://www.securemessagingapps.com/
On a related note, as a regular Signal user (and I've had a modicum of success converting some friends to it), I worry how they intend to stay afloat with "grants and donations" for the next 95 years.
Well, there’s an IM service already deployed to all mobile systems and it’s called SMS.
All that’s needed is some sanity in the pricing, some modernization of support for multimedia and cross-device sharing/archiving.
This whole industry exists for 1 sole reason: telco ineptitude
https://tweakers.net/nieuws/176412/whatsapp-verplicht-datade...
I've settled for just talking to the people I can convince on different messengers and now have ~5 messenger apps on my phone.
I use LineageOS for privacy reasons, and intercept various things I consider to be privacy violations.
I very much disagree with these ways of operating, for systems that monopolize human-to-human communication.
All because "the users don't know better, so it's good to filter the information they get access to" or because "information overload is somehow more likely to push people to the extremes than siloing and letting people live in filter bubbles" and other similarly paternalistic justifications. It's interesting how facebook trying to get the information is bad, but using that information, among other things, to filter what its users see or not is apparently good.
Usually people have it installed alongside WhatsApp, i am the only one without it i think.
Just started the process of notifying my connections that I'll be uninstalling WhatsApp. If not Signal, then just Phone, iMessage, SMS and email work well..
Hopefully this will drive larger adoption of Signal..
None of my friends can see it (I checked for two close friends).
Can one of you guys try the same and confirm Whatsapp does not block such status?
Nowadays most people i know have signal installed alongside WhatsApp, i even migrated my mother.
Actually maybe I can put it in my bio and keep the account floating ? Hmm
Because of regulations, Whatsapp may neither move data out of India or transfer to a third party.
Was that time-limited, is it not running afoul of that, or does Facebook just risk it?
Turning off access to contacts in ios immediately makes your profile picture invisible to others.
Meaning: we cant all revoke access and try to identify contacts by profile pic.
Fuck you FB.
I guess it's time to say goodbye to my fb account.
So long whatsapp. I never needed you. :bird emoji:
I mean, we should help our friends to migrate to new solutions. If we don't we lose.
I'd been putting off moving all our family WhatsApp groups to Telegram.
Now I can actually justify the time it will take.
The only surprise is that this was not done sooner.
WhatsApp is somewhat more essential for a lot of people, and contains more sensitive information, so this is not good.
At least with FB and Insta, you can just keep rubbish information stored in there.
But doesn’t this violate GDPR? Correct me if I’m wrong but I thought asking the user to share data or leave service was illegal under it.
Also the same under iOS 14, again I have almost zero knowledge regarding the app store policies but I thought it had the same condition that an app should be functional without the user accepting data sharing policies.
Signal works pretty well for anyone who isn't my family.
I'm puzzled where Denmark went "wrong". I see other EU users say that WhatsApp is absolutely dominant in their countries, and yet everybody i know uses iMessage, which may not be surprising if you look at graphs like this https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/denmark
For "social circles", coordinating sports activites and more, people use Facebook or Facebook Messenger, which is just as bad as WhatsApp.
Schools here use Microsoft Teams for remote teaching classes, and Office365 for schoolwork, and there's not a single Google account to be found anywhere. O365 may be just as bad, but the contract is negotiated on a government level, and bound by the GDPR and other local laws, so i assume my kids personal data are relatively secure.
https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/privacy-policy-eea
I especially like how their email template asks you to fill out a bunch of unnecessary fields and implies that the request might be denied if you don't.
I think most WhatsApp users would just give up at that point.
I think both of these adresses work: - DPO-inquiries@support.whatsapp.com - Objection.eu@support.whatsapp.com
However, I don't really know how to best formulate such a request.
(By the way, the server might refuse to receive you mail, if they don't recognize your domain.)
If I had money I would do a foundation thing to kickstart something like that.
Is that a dumb idea ?
edit: maybe the latency between the app and the block service would be too high to be reliable/tolerable.
edit2: there used to be a lot of applications that relied on dropbox to store things but I have a feeling SSG captured the dev mindshare (or maybe Dropbox restricted the API).
edit3: I just corrected `id` to `idea`, my brain does that when I am tired :D
How to report:
https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/refo...
We invented social media.
Who can't?
lol. whatsapp
