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Comment by tadasZ | Hacker News Reader

Oh no. Anyway, lets' hope this happens, would be very interesting to see Facebook pulling out of Europe.

I so much hope this happens. For me and a surprising number of my peers (25+) Facebook is just that thing you sort of have to use. Not as bad as LinkedIn, but that's not saying much.

Most of us prefer to chat via WhatsApp (yes, I know it's also FB, but I hope that'll disappear too) or Telegram. I'd love to see more people move to Telegram.

Most of us preferred to use meetup.com or the like for events, but Facebook just kind of sucked all the air out of that world. Without Facebook there might be a chance for new initiatives to take over.

The one thing FB still seems to do best around here is business listings and everything around that. But I'd also love to see startups take on this area when there isn't a Facebook to dominate.

I hope they'll be able to continue providing Messenger. It's a successor of skype for me

I'm glad it works for you. I hate it so much I'm telling everyone not to contact me there. It's integrated too deeply with Facebook. I actually succeeded to get people I talk to the most contact me on Signal instead, and they quite like it. (Signal now supports calls from the desktop client)

I wouldn't say it particularly works for me in any specific way. It's just that everybody that was on skype years ago is now on messenger plus some new people. Deep facebook integration is cause of this so I can't be mad at it.

Telegram is much better than Messenger. Why don't you use it? Plus there are ton's of more features. Like so many, its hard to keep up.

It's ad free and open source.

No end to end encryption is deal breaker for most.

He is switching from messenger. It's not exactly leading the way in privacy.

Signal is not alternative to Messenger. Signal is an alternative to whatsapp.

I doubt that is true and anyway Telegram does have end to end encryption.

It does but not by default and it only works between two specific devices.

Which is why I recommended it as an alternative to Messenger.

Which means you get better usability by default and E2E when you need it.

Telegram still uses MTProto which was criticized for making quite a few odd choices.

It’s odd that people would recommend it over say Signal.

I'd say Telegram is probably the "nicest" app I've used for messaging. WhatsApp and Messenger are Ok. Signal, whilst being idealistically the best, is spartan, kinda ugly, and lacks many features that make messaging "fun".

Signal is openly hostile to alternative clients, making it hardly better than other corporations' offerings.

Alternative client without being to independently verify their correctness do not fit the trust model of Signal or any of the chat systems.

I don't care why Signal tramples on its users' freedom.

It doesn’t, you aren’t compelled to use Signal, I care that the clients I’m talking to are conform to the spec and don’t expose myself to side channel attacks (e.g. previewing content directly from the client)

Fortunately, I'm not. But due to the nature of messengers, I likely would if Signal became popular.

If you don't want others to use a client of their choice for some (real or imagined) security benefits, that's between you and them. I think most people will think your priorities are silly.

Signal cannot be even compared to Telegram. they are different. Telegram is Discord+Messenger, but on steroids.

> Telegram is much better than Messenger. Why don't you use it?

Because nobody that I want to talk to has it.

The answer to this question is always "network effects". No-one that I know uses Telegram.

Telegram has been picking up steam in my wide network. It's been surprising to me how easy it was, as an early adopter, to convince people to use it. It doesn't work with everyone; WhatsApp dominates around here. But in the tens of people that I care to communicate with have happily switched to Telegram for much of their chatting.

Why don't you be the first one?

https://telegram.org

Once you start using it, you will never go back. It's awesome compared to Skype and messenger.

Yes, you will go back, because using a messenger alone is kind of pointless.

> Why don't you use it?

Because you need to convince all your friends to use it...

Maybe I understood that wrong. I couldn't get past the paywall so there's that too.

Can't Facebook keep EU data in the EU and "deploy" ADs to the various regions?

I'm not sure I understand why the data has to go the the US. The only thing I can image is that AI models are better with larger data sets. But even then it's not too awful to have an EU ML model and another for the rest of the world. Is it enough to exit the whole EU market?

I like Facebook. How about we let people use the websites and apps they want to?

People are being let. It's Facebook who are saying they will exercise their liberty by exiting the EU market because they don't want to obey the law.

The EU laws contribute to the Balkanization of the Internet. It seems most people on HN are happy to have governments tell people what data is allowed to be transmitted and where it has to be hosted, as long as Facebook or TikTok is at the receiving end.

> most people on HN

most people in Europe. I think in this instance the EU is generally thought to be doing the right thing. The only people I hear moaning is the odd sour-puss on the internet.

Facebook like any business has to obey the law to operate in the EU.

Considering the mass surveilance issues of foreign governments(i.e US, China) I believe the law is sensible if not too weak. Even people who do not use Facebook can be/ are affected.

> How about we let people use the websites and apps they want to?

Nobody is stopping Facebook from complying with the laws. If they choose to exit the market rather then comply its on them.

What is the alternative? Let Facebook (and other companies ) do whatever they want?

I like Standard Oil. How about we let people buy from the businesses they want to?

Yeah, letting people buy from businesses they choose sounds good.

Standard oil was a great company, that benefited consumers by driving down costs and improving the efficiency of oil production and distribution. Prices fell from ~30 cents to ~5 cents per gallon between 1870-1900, and when they were broken up by the government they had more than 100 competitors, and only ~65% market share.

They were benefiting shareholders and consumers of that age at the detriment of society.

Slavery also invigorates the markets with cheap produce for consumers and high profits for shareholders. Shall we legalize that as well?

Nothing is easy in reality and you can find positive effects to the markets in almost anything if you just look at localized effects

I hope it does and hopefully if https://okuna.io times their release properly we might finally have some sort of alternative to fb.

Edit: Introduction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGrP80GVkW4&feature=youtu.be

I followed that link and was faced with a sign-up page and some fairly generic blurb. It might be the BEST SOCIAL NETWORK EVER but to get my attention I need to see what it does and what people are doing with it. The thing that facebook does, and that it needs to to better is integrate with the wider internet. What we need is geocities with apps and messaging.

It's in 'invites only' mode. People who have been following it since inception know they have been doing some good work.

Besides they are not ready for public yet and hence not so much info on sign up page which I think is completely fine.

I'm not giving out. I'm just saying what I think needs to be done to get my interest. Maybe that's not important. Maybe as you say they're not into getting my attention just yet, and that's fine too.

EDIT I suppose in the context of this discussion it is important to remember that for the first while, Facebook too was invite-only, it didn't do them any harm, but on the other hand is Orkut still around?

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