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Comment by flurdy | Hacker News Reader

When Netflix a few months ago prompted me with "Hey your number is a Whatsapp account, do mind if we send notifications via Whatsapp?" I was generally horrified.

It felt a serious transgression of my privacy. Though in hindsight I realised it was an easy task, I can, after all, see if people are using Whatsapp if I have their number so there is little to stop companies doing the same lookup if they have my number.

But it felt very uncomfortable.

I don't want companies involved with my Whatsapp, it is exclusively for messaging my missus, and group chats with friends and family. Nothing else.

I did read somewhere that one of the founders said the aim was to integrate apps/companies into Whatsapp, but for me "No!".

I am dreading what the ad monetisation will be like. Since everyone I am friends with, related to or worked with use Whatsapp, their market penetration is ubiquitous here in my London ecosphere. Hope they don't ruin that.

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Whatsapp specifically though, it is just your phone number. You don't have that control over your phone number. Seems a little harsh to hold that one company to higher standards than literally anything else with your number.

Direct marketing rules should still apply, in the UK you can't legally cold-call mobile numbers.

I mean, I get it I agree with you and use whatsapp the same way. The one time I tried to use it to message for a takeaway they just ignored the order.

To be fair to Netflix it was a polite question banner at the top of the screen. Though fairly large and in your face. They did re-prompt a few times, but I have not seen it for a while now.

But it caught me off guard as I was not expecting it. And did not welcome it.

I wonder what the stats are for their members' responses. Maybe was just an A-B test.

I get that banner. I don't have WhatsApp and have never used it.

The container Netflix is inside doesn't know anything about me other than my Netflix account. Presumably they've decided that annoying paying customers is a good idea.

> I did read somewhere that one of the founders said the aim was to integrate apps/companies into Whatsapp, but for me "No!".

This was from the Forbes interview with whatsapp founder Brian Acton ( https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2018/09/26/exclusive... )

"An SMS has just come in from his local Honda dealer saying “payment received.” He points to it on his phone.

“This is what I wanted people to do with WhatsApp,” he says of the world’s biggest messaging service, which is used by more than 1.5 billion people and provides ad-free, encrypted messaging as a core feature. “This was informational, and useful.""

"Acton had proposed monetizing WhatsApp through a metered-user model, charging, say, a tenth of a penny after a certain large number of free messages were used up. “You build it once, it runs everywhere in every country,” Acton says. “You don’t need a sophisticated sales force. It’s a very simple business.”

Acton’s plan was shot down by Sandberg. “Her words were ‘It won’t scale.’ ”"

Edit: someone else also mentioned this in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18431281

"An SMS has just come in from his local Honda dealer saying “payment received.” He points to it on his phone.

Forgive my skepticism, but this sounds fake to me. Unless there are countries where you local auto dealer finances your car. Everywhere I've lived, financing goes through a bank or the manufacturer's bank/bank partner (GMAC, etc...).

Perhaps the WhatsApp founder is not financing a Honda?

E: Actually, I guess he’s just paying for his minivan repair.

Actually, I guess he’s just paying for his minivan repair.

Ah, that makes more sense.

> the aim was to integrate apps/companies into Whatsapp, but for me "No!".

When Facebook opened themselves up to everyone instead of College students, I felt the same way. When FB opened up to companies, I cancelled my account.

In the end it didn't matter. Companies were creating FB accounts anyway. Curbing them to a more explicit form of corporateship was the right thing to do than let them masquerade as users.

Internationally, WhatsApp is a very large force in both friendly communications and corporate/public/commercial avenues to communicate. Creating a WhatsApp business account (payable) to communicate with customers is the right thing to do. And I would not mind it as long as it is behind a portal and filter.

> I did read somewhere that one of the founders said the aim was to integrate apps/companies into Whatsapp, but for me "No!".

Everyone on WeChat claims it's amazing, I hated it.

>I did read somewhere that one of the founders said the aim was to integrate apps/companies into Whatsapp, but for me "No!".

https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp

Yes, I definitely don't want Netflix (or any other websites) sending me stuff through WhatsApp

I don't want, I don't care and while I don't find it "terrifying" I DO think it's an annoyance not asked for

If I want to see what's new there I go there. Period.

You know you don't have to give Netflix your mobile number right?

> I was generally horrified.

So was I and I immediately finished my relation with WhatsApp.

There’s no one there I can’t get on Facebook, Instagram or signal.

> There’s no one there I can’t get on Facebook, Instagram or signal.

I'm actually waiting for FB/Whatsapp to announce it's specific monetization strategy so that it becomes the trigger to tell my friends/family on WhatsApp off of it and onto Signal. Otherwise, you're correct, it's very difficult to convince people otherwise.

Doesn't signal require Google play services to work? That's a deal breaker for me.

Historically yes, but not anymore!

https://signal.org/android/apk/

(scroll down past the warning urging you not to use this method)

Not since last year. See the previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13691050

Why is that a deal breaker for you? AFAIK, Signal only uses GCM to send notifications to wake the app. No data is sent over GCM. What messaging platform you use to avoid GCM?

I don't have Google play services installed on my phone, and don't want to install it anytime soon.

Actually Signal (and 95% of the Android app ecosystem) works almost perfectly with microg in place of Google Play Services. Using microg to use Signal does require that you allow Signal to connect to Google's "cloud messaging" push notification infrastructure, but in addition to Signal not actually sending any content through this infrastructure (as mentioned by the sibling poster), it apparently replaces all the data that is normally hoovered up by Google Play Services and attached to the requests sent using that infrastructure, so that you are sending almost nothing. I should emphasize I'm just regurgitating the claims made by microg developers, and I haven't done any research into the truthiness of these claims. But I will say that microg is hyper-focused on privacy (perhaps obviously), and this is an important issue to the entire userbase, and these kinds of things can't be done inadvertently or by default. The microg backend is extremely explicit with plenty of warnings indicating what it's doing and when and most importantly, giving you an opportunity to cancel the action after you've initiated it, but prior to it being executed.

Why did you give them your phone number anyways?

Mandatory; account recovery.

It doesn't seem to be mandatory for me.

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