Hacker News Reader

Comment by driverdan | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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.

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.'

Reply on news.ycombinator.com