https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/24/22995431/european-union-d...
This would solve it. Then you could simply use a single app.
This is a political thing. So, vote for it, talk to the politicians.
We had similar issues in the late 90s / early 2000s with ICQ, MSN Messenger, AIM, Yahoo Chat, etc..
Apps like https://www.pidgin.im/ existed to let you check everything within 1 app because all of these apps spoke the same protocol or close enough that things mostly worked.
It's one thing to allow independent applications to use the protocol and service, like Pidgin and others. And also many services did not like this and repeatedly changed their proprietary custom protocol to make this difficult.
It's another thing to be interoperable between services. Then you could continue to use only one service but still be able to talk to people on other services.
To be sure, interoperability requires a suitable spec for other clients to implement, but there’s absolutely nothing special about end-to-end encryption in this picture—it’s just a feature to implement like any other.
Did I miss the campaign to define SQL? Of the one to specify the x86 ISA? Perhaps they should merge the arm and x86 architectures, they're both CPUs right?
This feels very far away from a 'political thing'.
Regulation is hard. This doesn't mean that rules shouldn't exist.
So for me, what worked is to only use one channel (in my case, my work gmail) as a valid TODO-inbox. Everything else doesn't count.
This means that if someone WhatsApps me something that requires a TODO, I ask them to email me a reminder. In my particular social situation, this tends to work. If they don't want to do this, it's probably not important enough
I keep my email itself clean by using Andreas Klinger's classic gmail-TODO-setup (https://klinger.io/posts/dont-drown-in-email-how-to-use-gmai...). That article is 9 years old now but it still works perfectly, despite Google's reputation for killing niche apps/features.
Then, I enable email notifications in key apps (eg Slack and GitHub), most of which I archive right away, but occasionally mark as a TODO using the gmail-TODO-setup. This means I never have a secondary "unread message as TODO items" list in slack, or similar in GitHub. It's very nice.
Finally, I use "Simple Gmail Notes" (https://bart.solutions/simple-gmail-notes/) to add little notes to myself about what a TODO-email is about. eg "review this" or "delegate to someone", etc.
His solution: Schedule it. Reserve time in your calendar to check each of the sites based on urgency.
And if you don't want to be contacted by some method, don't reply using it. The best way to get more email is to send more email.
- For things which don't spam you (e.g. messengers like Signal or WhatsApp), use similar settings for the various apps on your phone. If you don't want a lot of noise, set them to show you unread messages as badges and put them on the front page of your phone
- For things which are used infrequently or do spam you, set up email alerts when possible (e.g. when someone @-mentions you on one of your thousand Slack workspaces), combined with email filters which put things in folders which you can check much like the badged apps.
- If a message comes in on a rarely-checked channel and you don't get it for a long time, respond with an apology on a more preferred channel (e.g. a friend messages you on LinkedIn and you respond with an email or message on Signal).
- Accept that you have to let some messages slip through, and trust that your relationships can handle some people having to try a second channel to reach you, some of the time.
- own your own domain name, so you can transfer it as needed
- own your email, having as many aliases as you need
- download ALL your mails locally (fetchmail, OfflineIMAP, mbsync, ...) perhaps on a homeserver and use them in a local maildir with a local client, like notmuch, so you have a unified inbox for anything
- avoid proprietary messaging platforms and teach others to do the same
that's works for me so far, surely many try to put pressure on me for WA, Slack etc but I always successfully decline. Anything is NOT ONLY centralized but also unified. In the same tool (Emacs/EXWM) I have mails, feeds, usenet etc I do not like much Gnus but in that case I can also get HN and Reddit there, with the same UIs, local antispam, local scoring etc.
The tip is always the same: as any of us you feel the need of classic desktop model and we all miss it, but something we can still do to have some kind of substitutes :-)
Essentially a Matrix-powered service focused on bringing a ton of inboxes. I've heard it's great, but never tried it myself.
I'd much rather see people move to Matrix (or Signal, I suppose) than to keep having to use WhatsApp but that's a pointless fight I will never win.
This has been very helpful for me and I no longer have the fear of missing out.
If it is important enough, people know how best to reach me.
I started writing a desktop app, Wavebox (https://wavebox.io) about 6 years ago to help me deal with this. It lets you add all your apps down the side of the window, each one with its own unread badge & notifications. Might be something that's helpful?
> Does everyone just deal with it?
Basically, yes. In my case I just end up not stressing about responding to things in a timely manner. Outside of my work apps (outlook,slack,teams), I am the most responsive on email and Instagram chats but that's mainly because I open and use that app on a daily basis. In Whatsapp, I mute any group chat that is too active because I don't need distracting notifications every hours or less.
Do I miss things? yes, but I've never really missed anything super important and my friends know to shoot me a SMS text or use one of my more active mediums (instagram or gmail) to get in touch with me for important things.
The best I can say is just prioritize and train your friends/family to know which medium you are most responsive in. Disable notifications on apps you barely interact with or mute very active individual chats that aren't important
Or if your phone supports notification badges on icons, just place their icons on home screen and you'll notice what app has updates by just checking the badge counts.
For professional needs, I'm also at a loss. I have Outlook, Slack, Signal/texts, Jira notifications, Confluence notifications, LinkedIn, MS Teams... and then Zoom, Google Meet, and Webex but these are at least scheduled. I never come across anyone using WhatsApp, Telegram, or Facebook/Messenger professionally but I'm sure it's coming and will be a joy.
I have seen people happy with Beeper[1] but I'm neither willing to hand over my keys, nor self-host it.
Those who havent migrated, well, not a huge loss and sone have switched over to email. Discussions also gained a bit more depth with the move to long-form writing. It really comes down to this - do you want to have fewer apps? then make the switch. Do you want to talk to everyone on their preferred platforms - continue as is. There are some apps that help mitigate this (I believe element can through addons) but I wanted to cut down not add complexity.
I keep my work and tech inboxes open throughout the day. Things like news, finance/markets, etc. I check every few days. Others I check whenever they're relevant (taxes, cooking, entertainment etc.)
It took a lot of work to set up but it works well for me.
For message apps I just rely on the notifications.
I haven’t used it myself but might be what you’re looking for.
This is the _only_ reference to the pricing on their website. I'm not signing up to the app just to see what the pricing is, it's baffling they don't include that information on their main website.
Decide what you are comfortable keeping up with, and tell your tribe to use those methods to contact you.
I'm on email. If you want to be my friend, use open standards. If you want to reach me, use email.
No, you can't reach me on Facebook or WhatsApp. If you DM me on Twitter, I will say please email me.
Also, there is no reason why you couldn’t be one of those friends who “only use Signal”.
