Hacker News Reader

Comment by tdubhro1 | Hacker News Reader

I'm also in the UK and I deleted WhatsApp 2 years ago when it became clear that Facebook intended to move in the direction of fuller integration (I deleted my Facebook account after 1 month of usage 10 years ago). However, I had to reinstall WhatsApp because all of my kid's sports activities and school updates are organised through WhatsApp groups and it is impossible to participate without WhatsApp. Much as I believe in the cause, I'm not going to go preach it to the volunteers who coach my kids' rugby team. The scary thing here is that the actual real-life "social network" has been privatised and monopolised, and now we can't participate in society in very important ways without going through Facebook.

View on HN

My experience is similar.

I want to add that when I left WhatsApp (~2y ago) I deleted my account. WhatsApp kept accepting messages on my behalf. People didn't know I wasn't getting their messages. I'm surprised I don't see this mentioned to the point I wonder if I did something wrong at the time.

In the end, I reopened a WhatsApp account recently because everyone is using WhatsApp in France and I couldn't stand breaking everyone's efforts to bring us together during lockdown.

> People didn't know I wasn't getting their messages.

They saw 2 ticks, meaning delivered to your device? Or did they see one tick, meaning only delivered to the server?

If it's the latter, that's a reasonable choice for the server to make. The server has acknowledged receipt of the message, and failed to send it to your device.

If you wanted WhatsApp to advertise to your contacts that your account was inactive, you could have maybe sent them a message yourself?

> The server has acknowledged receipt of the message, and failed to send it to your device.

Doing this without explicitly telling the other party is a dark pattern.

I would wager that most people using WhatsApp know the difference between one tick (server receipt), two ticks (client receipt) and two blue ticks (client actually read it).

I didn't know that until just now.

I didn't know that until after having used such apps for some year -- never thought much about those small symbols

@heipei: the curse of knowledge, i learned yesterday, via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25658216

Were you a regular user? I’d wager most regular users know this. It’s a verb among my friends, like “she’s blue-ticking me”.

What’s more, if you tap on “info” after long pressing any message, the app explains it to you.

I’ve been using WhatsApp a few times a day for the last year, a d infrequently for several years prior, and I had no idea.

I use it multiple times a day. I'm in half a dozen groups.

I use it somewhat reluctantly which might reduce the degree to which I actively seek out understanding. I wish we'd all go back to vendor neutral channels of communication but I also apprecitate the fact that it is less sucky than SMS.

Most users don't search for extra info screens and extra information in apps. ESPECIALLY not the older generations. I'd argue that the majority of people may understand the blue tick, but that _very_ few understand the difference between a single check and a double check.

Even the ones who do understand a little about the checks probably don't bother thinking about the difference between "sent" and "delivered". They'd understand it if it was pointed out to them, they aren't stupid. But they don't care enough to realize it because they shouldn't _need_ to understand it most of the time.

And even so, the checkmarks are very subtle and easy to not notice if you don't expect to need to look at them. A user is more likely to say "well it didn't give me an error so it must have sent, I wonder why nindalf is ghosting me" rather than "huh, I wonder if WhatsApp actually _delivered_ the message to nindalf, let me check"

If you click on the message you get a Message Info screen which shows you exactly what the state the message is and the timestamps. It explicitly says "Sent"/"Delivered"/"Read" alongside the ticks and at what time it happened.

I would take that wager. I certainly know what it means, and I imagine many users do, but the majority? I doubt it.

I can confirm my mother has no idea what these ticks mean. She can't make the difference between WhatsApp and iMessage either. At the time I left, I told her so and she kept wondering why I was not getting some of her messages (the ones she was sending on WhatsApp, that is).

Marking "Server received message and is holding it for user" with the same icon as "server received message and determined there is no such user" is dumb and bad and wrong, and probably also a dark pattern in this case.

What is with HN and throwing around words like dArK pAtTeRn?

No it’s not a dark pattern. They’re being as transparent as possible. If you long press the message and click “info” they even explain what each tick means and when each event took place. It’s literally not possible to be more transparent than that.

And before the privacy brigade who’ve not used the app show up, this is configurable. You can opt out of sending and receiving read receipts. And since it’s a closed app with no other implementation, you can’t circumvent that either.

You're wasting your time. This is HN - any decision made by by Facebook or a Facebook-owned company is automatically evil.

Did these marks even exist 2yrs ago? I know they didn't when I started using WhatsApp ages ago, but I don't recall when they were added...

They've been present for at least 5 years

he deleted his account. it's absolutely not reasonable to accept my message without informing me the user I'm sending to is not on the platform anymore

I can only guess that people sending messages to my cancelled WhatsApp account saw only one tick. That's still meaningless to less skilled users and there's no way to tell if the user has gone forever or if they're just offline for a bit.

Anyway, my point is that WhatsApp shouldn't silently accept messages for a non existent user no matter what weak signals you get. When you send a text message to a non existent number, you get an error. Same for an e-mail.

I can't help but think it's a way to deter users from leaving WhatsApp.

> WhatsApp kept accepting messages on my behalf. People didn't know I wasn't getting their messages.

As an FYI to you and anyone reading this, you can convert your account to a business account using WhatsApp for Business. It has an auto-reply feature that you can enable with a custom message, to inform people you've moved to whatever platform you've decided to move to.

This is precisely the dilemma in a nutshell.

You have a choice but it's a bit like voluntary solitary confinement. Especially during a lockdown.

When I switched from Windows to Linux, sure there were some inconveniences but with enough technical knowledge and a bit of inconvenience I was able to get by.

But social media? What do I switch to?

> This is precisely the dilemma in a nutshell.

Exactly my problem too (car mechanic, plumber, school parent committee, loads of my friends …) – I need my car fixed, I need my plumbing fixed, I need to communicate with other parents. I hate that I have no choice but to use a Facebook product when I am not even on Facebook!

Just thinking out loud here, as I was considering something like this.

I can also not give up the WhatsApp account due to the social pressure. What if I would use a second phone, a cheap one, used only for the whatsapp (and some other essential but privacy invasive apps). I would not have that second phone always with me, but it would provide me access to the social network I need without feeling tracked or providing more data than needed.

I do understand that this doesn't fix exactly the issue presented here, but I already assumed that whatsapp data was already in Facebook's hands one way or another. But I would limit the amount of information that WhatsApp can track about me by having this application on a phone which does not really represent my full actions as i don't have it with me.

Edit: Corrected some typos.

Trouble is you are privileged enough to be able to afford two phones. For many families, even a $300 device is a significant expense. So if your approach was the only approach, only the rich would have privacy.

Why the use of the word “privilege”? We don’t know what balance of OP’s wealth is earned vs unearned (privilege).

It could also be that he had the "privilege" to earn it (as not everyone has that privilege).

Or it could be they just worked really hard or prioritised or what do I know.

But I agree privilege is vastly overused.

Seems a bit reductionist of the concept of privilege because everything becomes privilege as there is someone who has experienced worse with few options. For an extreme example, dying with cancer becomes a privilege compared to someone who loses their life immediately in an accident. Only one of those two has a chance to say goodbye as well as prepare their friends and family.

It’s not just reductionist, it’s a misuse of the word in a way that is becoming more fashionable. Buying phones does not come under the meaning of privilege, unless perhaps you’re in prison (I struggle to think of an example that might occur and isn’t patently absurd). The rest of us can walk into a shop, those things that are open to the public.

Hopefully this misuse is just a fad and we can go back to a more sensible use.

Exactly. Privilege can indeed be earned through hard work (without implying that's the only way to gain/earn it), and one is free to use privilege in life. It's still privilege, and the troublesome part is when that goes unacknowledged.

Who does not have the privilege to earn money for a second phone and what would that privilege be?

We also don't know how much the phone was. It could have been a very cheap device. My main phone was £200 and the previous one was £120.

Looking on Amazon.com, a Huawei P Smart 2019 (32GB, 3GB) 6.21" FHD+ Display, Dual Camera, 3400 mAh Battery, 4G LTE GSM Dual SIM is $209.99.

I think some have assumed that he went out and bought an iPhone 12 Pro Max as a second phone, and we don't know that.

Thankfully his approach is not the only approach - just don't use WhatsApp! I never have despite the pleadings of my friends to use it.

If they can't be bothered to email or send an SMS to me or use Signal or video call via the multitude of alternative messaging services (Duo, FaceTime, Skype, Signal etc. etc.) I don't think they're that bothered about being my friend are they?

If their friendship hinges on me using a specific mobile app, that's a shallow friendship.

There's a "social capital" thing going on here. Your friends are usually willing to make some amount of effort to talk and hang out with you, depending on how close friends you are, but there are limits to that. Nobody wants to get together with someone who insists on doing everything their way every time. Most people don't care to spend what social capital they have getting their friends to use a different messaging app. You're only burning even more social capital if you try to lecture them about things they don't care about, such as Facebook having their personal information.

Particularly, this social capital is at its minimum when you're trying to develop new friendships. Good luck starting any when you refuse to use the app that everyone else in the area uses to communicate.

That just sounds like "everyone else is smoking, so I should start smoking too". Just because everyone else is doing it does not mean it is the right thing for you to do.

In this instance, if developing friendships relies on me sending my data to some unknown person the other side of the world so that they can build graphs on my activity and follow me around just because everyone else has decided that's what they want to do, then I would choose another path.

Wouldn't you? If not, please send me all your data and details of your activities, all the time. If you can trust that data to some guy you've never met in a datacenter, then why not send it to me. You've got my username - that's more than you'll ever know about the people looking at your data at Facebook.

> "everyone else is smoking, so I should start smoking too"

No, what they said is equivalent to "everybody is smoking but I'll annoy the hell out of them so they stop, and I'll refuse to meet them in person before they quit"

It's an individual-level realpolitik. You (the general you) are welcome to take such a stand if you care to, but the price is that your social opportunities may be severely constrained. There might be other things about you or your life that also constrain your social opportunities, things more important than who has your data, and if that's the case, then taking such a stand may leave you rather seriously isolated.

I would not "choose another path" because those things are more important to me. To be blunt, I'm not sending such data to any individual HN reader because that would have no relation at all to my practical ability to maintain friendships with people in real life.

You may have missed the point that in Europe, many many things are organised via WhatsApp. Kids football clubs, dance clubs, parents' evenings, school closures, social club outings, ...lots of things.

Other people are saying that in their countries, Health Services and bank transactions are coordinated via WhatsApp.

It's not just about messaging your friends, and for many people, "opting out" of WhatsApp is not a viable path.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25669702

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25669600

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25671117

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25671855

I live in the UK. I understand that people arrange items via WhatsApp but it seems baffling to me. Why not just use email to notify people??

When you sign up to any service, they ask for an email address. They don't ask for a mobile number necessarily, and there is never a "my mobile number is on WhatsApp" checkbox. Why is the assumption of the organiser that you're on WhatsApp your concern? They have assumed you're on a certain platform, and it's their mistake.

It reminds me of the tidal wave of people suddenly abandoning their own websites and instead using "Find Us On Facebook". They might as well put "Use this keyword on AOL".

Facebook is not the internet, and WhatsApp is not the only communication method.

Perhaps it's baffling, and perhaps I agree, but one cannot deny the reality. They don't use email, they do use WhatsApp, and not using WhatsApp is effectively impossible for people in that situation.

Then the reality is insanity!

My mind is blown.

You can be as upset about the state of things as you want to be -- yes, it's wrong and broken and unfair -- but you can't change the state of things by just wishing hard enough. The GP's point stands, things are organized via WA, even though they shouldn't be, so your choices are exactly these:

  - Use WA and participate
  - Don't use WA, don't participate
  - Go stand in front of the home of whoever organizes the activity and have a little one-person picket parade with angrily-worded signs -- this is the same as #2 but might make you feel better

I am not upset about it at all - I think you are projecting that. I don't use it and it doesn't affect me. I was just presenting the alternative mechanism of using the established communication method of email for notification of events since an email account is requested for most things (tax returns, bank account, most accounts).

Please describe what you mean by “privilege”. Privileged enough to have a second phone? What does that even mean? Am I also privileged to have a second laptop and a PS4? Should I feel ashamed because of this and why, exactly?

If you can afford to have a throwaway phone with a second phone line of service -- remember, WA must be tied to a phone number, and you don't want to give FB your real phone number, right? -- then you are probably doing better than the average person. Remember all those articles about how the average US resident can't afford a single $400 surprise bill? That's called privilege. Nobody is saying to "feel ashamed" about it, just remember that if you're suggesting a second phone as an acceptable solution to this problem.

That wasn’t me, I did not suggest that. Though your choice of wording is horrendous and your understanding of the term “privilege” is ridiculously wrong and borderline humiliating. It is not a privilege if you earned it by hard work. I spent years, decades of my life learning languages, educating myself in tech, and now you are saying that I am more privileged than an average person because I am earning more? I don’t think so.

You can limit what an app can gather anyway, if you wish. If you would go to such extremes to have a second device just for WhatsApp, there are ways to hide things from it on your one main device, too. I go for microg in order to cut Google's surveillance, and usually allow no permissions on untrusted apps, so all they can get is the IP. You can mitigate that too when needed, though probably with more effort than is practical (accessing the internet is something that can also be restricted from default Android permissions).

When this article went up, I realized that I'd allowed WA to access my Contacts, so I went in and revoked that permission. It immediately reformatted my whole conversation list as phone numbers instead of names. I can't rename the conversation, but I can "add to contacts"... which inexplicably shows me my OS contact editor, which they're not allowed to read. So I guess that as punishment for not letting them constantly vacuum up my contact list and send it all to FB, they make it harder to figure out who I'm talking to. Classic FB.

I've recently switched to using Whatsapp in an emulator, which is kinda similar. I even almost got a virtual camera working so I can share my desktop screen via whatsapp call (would be super useful for parent tech support). Laptop cameras should work fine though.

I'd be very interested if you could add some info regarding what software you used to do this.

I used Bluestacks emulator (and Nox too, one has to be a clone of the other I guess) to run the app. For the virtual camera I used OBS with a plugin to emulate a webcam. This worked for the webcam feed in the browser, but in Windows > Camera it wasn't detecting anything. I got the same results when trying to use an old smartphone as a camera via DroidCam before I gave up.

>What if I would use a second phone, a cheap one, used only for the whatsapp (and some other essential but privacy invasive apps). I would not have that second phone always with me, but it would provide me access to the social network I need without feeling tracked or providing more data than needed.

This is what I'm doing currently: an old phone used exclusively for whatsapp (with an empty contact list); it always stays at home. I only use it to coordinate kid's stuff (school, social activities, etc), so there is no problem with me not having it with me the whole time.

On Android you could use Shelter [1]. Might no be as good as as second phone but it heavily limits the data you expose. You can also freeze the app if you don't use it actively.

The biggest annoyance is that Android only allows having exactly one of those "Work Profiles".

[1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.typeblog.shelter/

I have a second dirt-cheap used phone with a disposable SIM card just for WA. But you could make a WA<->Matrix<->Signal bridge (https://matrix.org/bridges/) using a temporary phone no.

Or even a VM if you don't want to have a physical phone.

I tried to run a branch of a charity without WhatsApp and Facebook for two years and it was impossible. I had to give in and sign up.

So, these things should be regulated and operated like utilities. Phone companies don't have the right to mine my contact list, and neither should Facebook.

> I'm not going to go preach it to the volunteers who coach my kids' rugby team.

Why not? I would.

And tell them what? Please all go install a different app? That only works if you can get everybody on board, it's unacceptable if a parent gets left out because he isn't there that day or cannot get it to work.

You would also have to explain to them that Facebook cannot read your messages, but they can see the meta data. And then you have to explain to them what meta data is.

I think your kid is not going to appreciate your efforts.

Wait for them to ask the why, tell them as succinctly as you can that fb is evil and there are alternatives.

How do you tell them succinctly in a way they can understand that the company that makes two of their favorite apps IG and WhatsApp is evil?

'they deliberately fine tune their product to make it more addictive'

'yes, and?'

'other companies have the same product (talking about chat) and don't contribute to the formation of monopolies'

'you're way out of line'

'i just don't trust them and i use a different service'

'ah? tell me more.'

The point is that you can tell everybody why you don't like WA, and even come up with a really good way of explaining the problems to non-technical people. This might even work in some cases. The problem is that WA has an enormous head-start in Europe. So maybe you talk around your gym, but your kids' school can't justify switching. Guess what, you're still stuck picking between using WA and missing out on big chunks of your real life.

If you think privacy is important, you have to do something about it.

It's a lesson in civics. To do nothing and say nothing while expecting someone else to fight the good fight is poor citizenship, but it is very good consumerism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...

Wow I had a similar experience at university. I only joined Facebook because my course had a Facebook group where we all communicated. Now this same hook exists in WhatsApp. It’s pretty crazy

the issue is that people would probably not want to pay for an app like WhatsApp, and so the 'free' alternative takes hold, and whoever controls that gets the cost of running the infrastructure in advertisement fees.

If some company could set themselves up as a utility, and the mobile network operators were to pay that company to run the messaging app + infra, then it could be made to operate like a utility and nobodies data would have to be sold.

I could remember initially paying for a Whatsapp subscription a couple of years ago, I was happy to do so as I believed they were providing an essential service.

I think that model could've worked.

And wasn't it just $1 for a year?

This could work as a good argument to switch if executed well.

'your device owns you and is siphoning cash from you'

In the U.S., my experience with Whatsapp was that I created an account and never used it once to communicate with anyone, then I deleted it.

I've also withdrawn from social media.

The exception for now is HN, because it's more of a forum, even when bad information sometimes instates itself as reality for a large conversation, like a big gathering of fans talking about their team that will inevitably fail to win or perhaps a bad STD.

I learn what others are doing through direct and intentional communication, even if technology is used or if the information is second-hand. I don't text back or call back immediately, which my friends and family forgive, but it sometimes seems to hurt my relationships.

I still worry of dependence on large companies, big data companies gathering more information about me than I know myself, and the potential of out-of-control AIs. However, I attribute these in-part to my own paranoid thinking that use my memories of large company layoffs, privacy concerns raised in the tech community, and mostly fiction.

While I've come to the realization that the act to trying to be happy and successful is the very thing that makes me unhappy, and I just need to exist, maybe becoming better at whatever I'm naturally good at, while being here and now with those I'm with, giving my service to them... I still keep wasting time replying about things that don't matter.

WA is not particularly good, it's just that I don't know anyone who doesn't use it (in the Netherlands), even when you want to contact helpdesks it is sometimes the preferred way. I mean, we have this in many streets: [0]

Without kids I could see myself getting away with not using WA, but with kids you are really setting yourself up for a very hard time (and prepare to be judged by other (annoyed) parents and your kid will feel the consequences at some point, the kids will miss out on critical and fun information).

WA has almost become what email used to be. Except that it's a controlled platform and we are locked into a single provider, a provider that once promised a focus on privacy and an app free of commercials, forever...

[0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=whatsapp+buurtpreventie&t=ffsb&iax...

It has completely replace texting in NL and some parts of Europe too, and I mean that literally.

At one point I had unlimited data (2011-ish?) for 5 eur/month and a text was 20 euro cents per 160 chars or so... So I guess providers wanted SMS to disappear here.

yep, here in the UK everyone I know uses whatsapp. Some people have telegram as well, but WA is the baseline. The only SMS texts I get are marketing and automatic notifications.

What does it do that's so great?

It's "good enough", and it used to be free when texting wasn't.

And it's better than SMS at Unicode.

And at sending/receiving pictures... MMS was even more expensive here.

it just replaced texting back when phone contracts tried to charge lots of money for texts. The network effect does the rest.

It's more reliable than sms - I used not to receive some of the texts people would send me, which caused all kinds of misunderstandings. I ended up doing experiments with friends sitting beside me just to prove my point. The same thing happened to family members.

I'm not sure what the problem was, but WhatsApp solved it.

I don't actually use SMS but I don't think that most people get read/receipt confirmation. The little check-mark system in WA is a big step forward compared to plain texting. Of course, similar features exist in other chat applications, but if the comparison is just between WA and SMS, that's a big difference.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com