Hacker News Reader

Comment by computator | Hacker News Reader

> Privacy setting for Last Seen: Set by default to Everyone and nobody configures it.

It surprised me that only 10% of his random (French) sample is active daily (179/1751=10%). In my contacts, I do see people who have accounts but haven't used it in weeks, but it's not the norm. However, I see lots of people in my contacts who show no info for Last Seen. Is he underestimating how often people configure the privacy setting for Last Seen? Or perhaps there is another factor that determines when Last Seen gets shown?

View on HN

His script start from the bottom of 06 XX XX XX XX (french mobile number) and increases. This is not the most efficient way to have working/active numbers.

As he said, starting with 06 numbers are saturated by now and we opened 07 XX... numbers. Thus, 07 numbers are more likely to be fresher et more used by "younger" people. While first 06 could be more used by professional and "older" people

As I said in a previous comments, older generation do not use WhatsApp very much as we had unlimited text message before getting internet on our phones (before iPhone 1). Before Covid, my parents did not use WhatsApp at all while texting daily. They use it now to video call during curfew

good call about 07 numbers being more attributed to youngers. I took the 06 range to maximize the chance to get valid/active numbers.

At least in my group of friends (which is probably a very bad sample), hiding "last seen" is very common.

I really dearly wish there was one for the online status as well, and I'm glad to have spent my teenage years in a time where SMS was the norm, where neither read receipts nor online status was available. It made for a much more relaxed messaging experience (which iMessage seems to be much better at approximating).

Hiding last seen is useless as the online status cannot be hidden. There are various apps that exploit this for money so you can stalk anybody…

Reply on news.ycombinator.com