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Comment by codeknight11 | Hacker News Reader

Signal won't be able to make even a dent in WhatsApp's empire.

WhatsApp isn't just a messaging app. With its stories and statuses, it's a mini social network in and of itself.

Beyond the HackerNews crowd, most people don't care about privacy. They care about features. Signal won't be able to compete with WhatsApp unless it builds some of those features into its app.

Edit - HackerNews crowd seems to get tunnel visioned when it comes to tech products. Every response below is something on the lines of "I don't use stories" or "None or my contacts use stories".

I don't use stories either. And most millenials don't use it unless they are extroverts. But we make a small percentage of their audience.

Take a look at boomer WhatsApp in India. Every single boomer shares stories with images of Gods or daily morning blessings, where they went, what they cooked etc. The network effects are too strong. Nobody wants to miss out on the stories of their grandchildren's birthday or their nephew's marriage.

Even I wish that there was an en-masse migration from WhatsApp to Signal. But that's just a HackerNews pipe dream. Not happening.

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I've seen chat networks come and go. Whatsapp is at it's peak; it can only decline at this point. Most users don't actually care about features, they care about reaching each other. Whatsapp provides that. You could argue that whatsapp was never about the features. It's always been a somewhat bland and bare bones UX. It's simple and easy to understand. That kind of is the whole point.

But Whatsapp got where it is through 1 simple feature: it discovered other whatsapp users through your phone book so that made it easy to start using it. Install the app, and others would find you. That feature has since been copied by world + dog. Telegram, Signal, etc. do the same. Now that both are getting to the hundreds of millions of users (telegram got there ages ago), that safe moat that whatsapp enjoyed is not so safe anymore. I know non technical users that are very eager to escape Facebook's clutches that already deleted their facebook profiles and installed alternative chat clients. Moving over is easier than ever.

Anyway, I'm old enough to remember reluctantly joining the msn network because a lot of people I knew started using that. ICQ, AOL, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, etc. all used to be popular and now are pretty much gone. Whatsapp can easily join those ranks. There's nothing inevitable about its perpetual monopoly on communication. Nothing whatsoever.

If anything, Facebook seems in a hurry to blow its feet off with misguided/dubious decisions on privacy, user hostile actions, and increasing likelihood of having to deal with anti trust legislation in multiple of its markets. It's not helping their case. Every time they are in the news it seems to have a negative tone and some of their users act on it. Facebook is being arrogant.

Signal is a breath of fresh air in this space. Structured as a foundation, OSS client and server (unlike most other things out there). Apparently, Elon Musk recommending it the other day caused a nice influx of users.

Why should it be at its peak? Look at WeChat. If WhatsApp successfully transitions to a platform with payments, business interactions, possibly in-app-ecosystem, then the network effects become even crazier.

Signal on the other hand doesn't even attempt any of that: it solves messaging with no perspective on third-party service integration.

One of the biggest reasons I use and like Signal is because it doesn't have a bunch of extra stupid crap like payments, in-app ecosystem, business interactions and all the other junk pushed by corporations in a quest to "expand the userbase".

I just want a solid texting platform, that's it. So far I've been happy, even with a few unnecessary updates like stickers (?!) and disappearing messages (ugh).

This is exactly the argument the GP made: your view is extremely niche.

Most people want features, convenience,… real stuff that feels like feature, instead of abstract concepts.

I disagree, most people just want to be on the same network/platform as their contacts and most people don't care about extra bells and whistles but a small niche is out there that actually does.

Most people don't imagine they want those features until they see someone else in their social group using them – fancy status in the form of stories is a great example of this.

People have a strong desire to imitate and one-up others in their social group.

If you build a feature that even 1% of users self-start to use, then the social network can snow ball that with the right mechanics. And these feature need only be used by 20-30% of users for it to be considered a success. Every user is not expected to use all features.

My sense for WhatsApp's dominance is peripheral contacts. I can convince close friends and family to move to Signal, but not distant friends, especially the large groups I'm in.

I'm pretty bearish on Signal for this reason. (even though I use it personally)

The playbook for unlocking adoption would be via a 'minority rule' where Signal users refuse to talk to people on WA, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.

I actually did just that. Changed my status to “only reachable by signal app” also same message on my profile pic. Just got around 5 people who talk to me on whatsapp already writing me on signal without problem. And funny thing 3/5 have also done same to their whatsapp now

Let's assume somebody said that for some other platform: "only reachable through Telegram" or Facebook Messenger.

What would you think?

That somebody certainly values the choice of platform higher than your convenience to chat with him or her.

Why do you need to convince them to move to Signal at all? Why does Signal need to unlock more adoption?

Constant growth and expansion isn't always a good thing and IMO it applies here.

> Why do you need to convince them to move to Signal at all?

Because ideally one doesn't want to be forced to donate data to Facebook because of WhatsApps network effect?

I require none of those things for being able to chat with my sister, mother, or random friends. Facebook wanting a piece of the action that is skimming off transactions I conduct with shops or online is not something I need or want in my life. And make no mistake, that's the only reason they are eager to get into that business. They'll fail because they add no obvious value here.

Sometimes I think HN people were born out of thin air and don't have families. That or mine is special, because if I said to them to change from WhatsApp to whatever in the basis of privacy concerns they'd say that: 1. FB already knows everything about them (btw, a social network the still use) 2. They'd lost contact with a lot of people

And all this without taking into account features that can make the product even more pervasive (I'm thinking payments)

The problem is that once a product becomes the de facto solution and everyone is onboard, is hard to change it, specially one with network effects. If it wasn't we would be using e.g. other search engines, wouldn't be?

Finally, I'd say the announcement of this change is perfectly timed: just after Christmas and in the middle of a pandemic. By the time we meet again with our extended families and we do the de rigueur holidays' technical support this change will have been forgotten by most people ;)

You reject WhatsApp and tell your family that they can write you on Signal, because it’s important that your communications are only for you, not for Zuckerberg

The app most useful to me in reaching family in the UK is Telegram. I realise WA is hard to dispense with for many people, but it is not a hegemony.

Unfortunately I'm from Spain where WhatsApp penetration is around 90%, vs a ~65% in UK, so I still know plenty of people, specially family, without a Telegram account (I'd say almost no one over 50 has an account)

I thought Facebook was too popular to ever fall down. And yet here we are, it's easier than ever to ignore it.

Also, installing an alternative doesn't make you lose contact with anyone. You can set up Signal and make yourself available there without removing Whatsapp.

Many people slowly stopped using Facebook without ever deleting it. Still has the same effect.

I'd say they're two really different products, so even if FB popularity is falling dow, that does not mean that WhatsApp would follow. In fact I'm pretty sure that thanks to services like money sending WhatsApp is poised to grow in quite a few countries.

re: #1, couldn't fathom having a family that ready to give up.

Mine asks me to set up sandboxed browsers/block scripts etc.

> Beyond the HackerNews crowd, most people don't care about privacy.

I really do not agree with this often-made assertion. The main difference between the HN crowd and the general public is that we are more likely to understand how, and how extensively, our privacy is being compromised. We are used to considering computer logs and monitoring as very real (because we work with them / create them); the general public not nearly so much.

Agreed, I see the topic come up more and more among friend groups with many of them not working tech. I’m starting to see topics on privacy pop up in mainstream media more too.

Unfortunately this doesn't explain why my circle of colleagues, at a major tech company, also don't care actively about this stuff. My take: these privacy violations get accepted because there is immediate positive feedback, and the negative stuff is delayed, misattributed, or never felt at all.

I agree with your take.

And I'm not saying that all people who work with IT are going to be protective of their privacy. Just saying that they are more likely to have an informed understanding of the mechanics of computer monitoring/tracking from which to develop possible concerns.

To a point, I agree, but there are still a large number of people that understand how their privacy is being invaded, and simply don't give a shit.

Why? Some don't believe these invasions negatively impact them personally. But I think, largely, it's about misplaced (IMO) trust - they trust Facebook et al not to abuse their privacy or "do anything evil", and perhaps worse, they trust all organs of the government completely and totally. Any suggestion otherwise is waved away as "who cares?", or dismissed as a conspiracy theory (yes, even post-Snowden).

Large sections of the media are certainly part of the problem too (as we are seeing for so many things) - some serious, privacy-related stories are either not covered at all, or covered with pretty blatant, extreme bias.

Due to the recent app bans and internet censorship measures, the knowledge of / willingness to use security and privacy apps among Indians went up. Similar to what happened in Venezuela with BTC.

Plus, covid forced everyone digital and I had many ask if Zoom was safe to install on their phones along with banking apps because China.

And a privacy service and app I built has highest number of users from India followed by Iran. In my interacting with them, it is clear government bans and privacy concerns due to BigTech were major drivers for them to seek such tools. These people are barely tech savvy right now, but that is going to change.

The thing is, as mobile phones and connectivity become more ubiquitous, people are only getting more familiar with tools they can use to make those devices / internet work for them. This trend, though small in absolute numbers, is only growing.

Signal will be become popular -- if it does -- just like how every other network based app became popular eg. MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Instagram, Snapchat. Examples from work... Zoom, Slack etc. First it's used among a small group of people, has a "cool"ness factor and a USP. Then slowly spreads as other people want to be seen as ahead of the curve and want to be part of an exclusive group. So the Hacker News crowd using it is actually a good sign.

What we need additionally in this case more than the "WhatsApp but better" argument is continually making people aware of the incumbent's behavior, since WhatsApp is well entrenched, to cast doubts in people's minds.

SMS lost because it was costly and lacked features. What will make WhatsApp lose?

> What will make WhatsApp lose?

It would have to be something fundamental. Any new feature that gains significant popularity can easily be added to WhatsApp (e.g. stories); in addition to having network effects working in their favour.

The only feature I don’t see WhatsApp adopting is Signal’s strong privacy focus. I guess we’ll see how important privacy alone is as a feature.

I think the key here is that the anti-backdoor argument is based on fundamental problems.

Whatsapp will be inclined to bow to one and then many governments and create backdoors and also wants access to content as part of its business model. They will eventually lose a lot of data that was supposed to be e2e encrypted, people will be upset, and FB's focus will be explaining how its not responsible for the damages.

For me, it’s the dilution of networks. WhatsApp has a purpose and it’s different from FB. Now I have my bike mechanic friending me on FB because I’m a contact on WA. I don’t want some smoosh of all my connections.

I am using whatsapp since 2012 (or even earlier) if I remember correctly. I paid $2 a year for 5 years to use WhatsApp. The reason being I have friends and family all over the world including different parts of USA, canada, Dubai, Singapore, Australia, India, UK etc. Whatsapp was the best tool for communication. And as you suggest stories and statuses are a part of whatsapp, it's just a second thought at the best. Out of hundreds of my contacts, I can count people who post stories and statuses on one hand.

Those features are not standing in the way of user's migration to signal app as far as I can tell.

I've been using WhatsApp for a similar length of time, maybe since 2010 or so - I had no idea WhatsApp even had such features beyond messaging, file sharing and videos calls, and I've no idea what "stories" or "statuses" even are. All I want is those core features.

I sort of agree. I call my mom on Whatsapp and there is not way this can change. Both of us are going to use Whatsapp. This is just an anecdotal example of network effects.

But this is also not a winner take all market as I think of it. I am a heavy user of telegram and massive broadcasts happen on Telegram. College students, Twitter handles banned on Twitter etc. have switched to telegram. You subscribe to a channel of a banned user and there is nothing Telegram can do about it.

Signal is especially popular among my political activist friends and few other friends.

Kik remains popular for some narrow cases I will not mention here.

Microsoft suicided its extremly popular Messenger and Facebook's took its place, then WhatsApp took over.... things come and go.

Now WhatsApp is on a similar suicide mission.

> With its stories and statuses

Do people really use those?

No one in my contacts ever use it, me included.

I don't. And most millenials don't use it unless they are extroverts. But we make a small percentage of their audience.

Take a look at boomer WhatsApp in India. Every single boomer shares stories with images of Gods or daily morning blessings, where they went, what they cooked etc.

Boomers don't care about the platforms. They will go where their kids go and continue posting there.

https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/14/is-there-an-actual-facebo...

I'm an extremely heavy WhatsApp user, as are most of my community.

Maybe like 3-5 people use stories regularly. I only swipe to the "Status" tab to get rid of the little notification dot.

> Beyond the HackerNews crowd, most people don't care about privacy.

That's just not true. It was my non-tech friends who suggested we move off WhatsApp. And zero objections from anyone in my WhatsApp groups.

In my contact circle many people have academic degrees or work in tech jobs and only about 1 out of 10 people would consider switching. I have asked, they just don't care to "have 5 different chat apps installed", when they can "just use WhatsApp".

> Beyond the HackerNews crowd, most people don't care about privacy.

I believe in this one you are mistaken.

Adblocking has gone from fringe to mainstream in just a few years. Tracker blocking and in general putting actual value on one's data is going through the same, only faster.

One piece of data: more than 80% of requests coming on our website disallow tracking. Respecting privacy as a concept has already gone mainstream, the only question is how far "normal" people are willing to take it and what tradeoffs they choose to make in the long run.

I would think that the main reason Adblock has become mainstream is because ads are extremely annoying and not because users are very concerned about tracking itself.

Who would ever use dropbox if you can use FTP on Linux?

It's obvious that Signal is going to release stories. It will just be in a privacy protecting manner when they're ready.

I really hope they don’t

Whatsapp wasn’t always all those things on this first release.

It was the first Universal messaging app across multiple platforms. It worked on a lot of obscure mobile OS’ and devices that didn’t have something like BBM. The ability to connect was novel.

Today’s world is different, it might not be easy to build the next WhatsApp, but technologies are being adopted quicker than WhatsApp was.

If people can learn WhatsApp, and the first app they used a lot was WhatsApp, they will learn other things.

In the beginning I had no idea, why people used WhatsApp. Line hat so much more features in the early messenger days. To use Line for phone or video chat was years before WhatsApp possible. But Line was mostly just in asia a thing.

Something I've been trying to polish which seems worth saying in this context: Physical property is like control over address space. Copyright is like control over strings. Patents are like control over algorithms. But fixed-endpoint SaaSS… is like control over types.

>Signal won't be able to make even a dent in WhatsApp's empire.

Doesn't matter much to me. Getting my immediate family to switch and then having them encourage their contacts to adopt Signal (even if only as a secondary app) is a small victory in my mind.

It's only until the end of your post where you say "unless it builds some of those features into its app". That's kind of an important qualifier. Signal has been steadily growing for a while, and while doing so, implementing plenty of features from other competing apps: disappearing messages came, stickers came, group video calling came, etc.

I'm not saying they're definitely going to overtake WhatsApp, but they've found a niche, are slowly expanding from there, and are doing so by implementing desired features. That's how most social networks have gotten where they are. There's no reason why Signal's current feature set is forever set in stone.

Not a single one of my Signal contacts (almost exclusively non-tech) uses any of the features you mention. It's been awkward watching them blindly copy "popular" features from other messaging platforms. The reason I like and use Signal is precisely because of the minimal feature set - all I want to do is text people directly or in group chat. Some emoji and gif support is nice and that's about it.

I hope Signal stays true to its roots and doesn't give in to more bloated crap like the other messaging platforms but unfortunately I'm not optimistic in that front...

> unless it builds some of those features

Here's a thing I don't understand - why is everyone obsessed with copycatting?

By aiming for feature parity you, as a business or service, are letting a competitor dictate your roadmap. And what's worse, with features they have already shipped.

As a general case, I think you make a good point. But in this particular case, WhatsApp really is pretty perfect as far as messaging goes - the only issue is the terms of service, so it makes sense for Signal to have the same features, but without horrible ToS.

That's a scary thought. You're effectively saying that small-screen, asynchronous, human-to-human text based communications have been solved, with no further improvement possible.

Isn't that a rather depressing vision?

I think partially almost every business has their roadmap influenced by what their competitors do. Note that WhatsApp/Instagram/Facebook didn't come up with Stories either.

That said, it'll never be just feature parity - Signal's moat compared to Facebook products will always be better privacy.

I love Signal and want it to be "the winner" here... but I mostly agree with you, with one caveat.

The internet kind of functions differently in some parts of the world, and if you've spent time in those regions, you see it's pretty aligned with what you've described. Like, there is a reason that Facebook bought WhatsApp to begin with. Those "ecosystems" are incredibly valuable.

Now, the thing that makes me open to being wrong? The absolute horror of a reputation that Facebook has as of late. I think if this was the debate a few years ago, it'd be much harder for Signal to pull people away, but now...

Go, Signal, go.

I'd rather want Matrix to be the winner here. Signal is just another ecosystem that will profit from the network effect once it's big.

>WhatsApp isn't just a messaging app

To many that is the sticky part though.

>Beyond the HackerNews crowd, most people don't care about privacy.

I thought so two...but there does seem to be some ground level chatter on this among young non-techies.

iPhone won’t be able to make even a dent in the BlackBerry empire.

I just got 3 of my groups migrated to Signal. I expect many more to be migrated by the end of the month. While many may still remain lots of people will be off WA by 8th Feb.

Suggested to move and within one hour my group of peers all moved. Didn't expect it be to smooth but they are happy to add emoticons to each message and won't go back. The feature of automatic message expiration and deletion gives more options for conversations which are more sensitive and requiring higher levels of privacy. The next hurdle is to realize your keyboard application can log all you have written, so no Swift (Microsoft) or Gboard (Google) on that surface of snooping around.

I feel like worrying about GBoard reading your keystrokes is a little unnecessaru. If Google wanted to spy on your private conversations, they can find a way, even if you use a different keyboard. They... built the OS itself. Whether they can keep their meddling secret is another matter.

Hardly agreed, they just don't care about their privacy.

Most of us is somewhat related to the software industry. We know what's the worst thing could happen when we don't care about privacy.

On the other hand, 90% of people be like "so what? should i throw my phone to the lake because they changed privacy policy?". I really like Signal, but yeah. WhatsApp at the another level that couldn't be changed in some privacy assaulting policy changes.

> Beyond the HackerNews crowd, most people don't care about privacy.

I think the ratio of people who are technically literate is growing. So even if true, its still important. Think of how many non-technical people are trying to push their kids towards coding, in part, due to the unavoidable evidence that techies are making more loot that lawyers and doctors. Its a top profession for middle class now.

Change happens on the margin. If success is defined by everyone moving on the same day, we’d still be using ICQ. This issue is an opportunity to make some people aware and maybe move a few networks to better solutions. So make a few changes, nudge a few groups, make people aware of the implications of their implicit decisions.

It is happening. I had barely 5-6 contacts on Signal for the past 2 years. Suddenly half my contact list is there.

It won't be sudden but is is happening. And it is only going to be accelerated by the footgun behaviour going around on twitter and Facebook this week

Churn rate is a more realistic measure than onboarding rate. Only time will tell :)

I don’t know about that. I’ve seen three local communities here migrate over in the last few days. The reason they did that was due to a couple of vocal members. That includes my wife’s company, the school parents group and the local cycling club all of whom are about as technically aware as a potato (I end up doing most of their out of band IT support)

I suspect it’s a little more complicated though. Some of the WhatsApp groups are quite fatiguing to belong to due to politics and quite frankly unbearable individuals and this allows people to have an excuse to exit them without having half of your contact list trying to get hold of you and drag you back in again.

As for features, absolutely no one I have seen locally here use anything other than basic use cases that signal supports.

Me, I just uninstalled it. I’m going to see if I need to replace it. It appears after all that everyone I need to talk to so far uses iMessage.

Why does signal need to compete?

It doesn't need to compete but without competing it's even less likely to cause a mass exodus from WhatsApp.

These features came over time, and there was a time when people lived without.

The real deal is the network effect, and managing to mobilize enough friend networks.

you always start somewhere.

I’m personally involved in migration of 3 groups, two India-US, one US. Most had never installed Signal.

It’ll happen, it’ll just take some time.

I have just migrated one non-IT group chat from FB. Everybody is happy so far. Actually all of them dispise Facebook and were more than happy to move to something else. Setup was easy.

This is so true. All the "uncles and aunts" of India use stories to share stuff that is predominantly god photos and related.

Colour me skeptical, given the veritable flood of new signups to Signal among my contacts that hit my phones this morning.

The only way we can limit these network synergy based monopolies is to force some level of interoperability.

HN and Reddit pipe dream, not even Telegram with all the features it adds makes people moved form WhatsApp.

So nobody uses stories but it's somehow the critical feature that keeps WhatsApp in power? Ok.

> They care about features.

This I certainly don't agree. Telegram would have been the most popular app in India if this was true. It is only recently that WA has come close and slightly more in some cases.

Will we ever end the MySpace monopoly?

going to go ahead and bookmark this for future reference

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