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Comment by leipert | Hacker News Reader

I am actually using this argument in the inverse: “hey grandma, do you still wanna see baby pictures, please install <other-messenger>”

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Is Grandma happy that none of the pictures are saved to her camera roll? This seems to be a gaping lack of a feature amongst people I know.

> Is Grandma happy that none of the pictures are saved to her camera roll?

Why would they be? If I mail you a bunch of pictures in an envelope, they don't magically convert to negatives and transfer themselves to the roll of film inside your analog camera.

<rant>

Snark aside, "camera roll" must be one of the most confusing attempts at "user-friendly" abstractions I've seen in widely-deployed software, especially with so many apps shipping their own implementations (in addition to the OS/camera gallery), some of which mix together some combination of pictures downloaded to (but not taken by) the phone, pictures existing only in the cloud, pictures existing only in a different app's cloud...

There's skeuomorphism, and there's building a bad abstraction on top of a limitation of ancient tech, seemingly forgetting the ~10+ year period between analog cameras and smartphones with good imaging sensors, where everyone got used to digital cameras shooting photos to a "memory card". My non-tech-savvy relatives are definitely more confused about "camera rolls" in their phones than they were about managing JPGs on SD cards using standard desktop OS filesystem tools.

Hell, number one support request I get from family these days is, "How do I copy ${these photos from a "camera roll" of some app} to ${OS gallery app} and to ${this USB stick}? We want to show all photos of ${grandchild} to ${neighbor} without Internet. And we want to have them in ${a folder on a PC} so it's safe, and we can view it on a large screen." The process isn't that involved, just confusing, and somewhat different for every other app. It's like vendors really don't want people to store their photos as files anymore :).

</rant>

> Why would they be?

Because they were saved to the central photo place with WhatsApp, and she likes seeing all of her photos there.

> It's like vendors really don't want people to store their photos as files anymore

In case you haven't noticed, there seems to be an active effort to do away with the notion of files. Because making things more abstract is supposed to reduce confusion somehow.

Dude, files are hard.

Files are OPEN.

You can do whatever you want with a bunch of bits and a spec that tells you what they mean. Even utilize different software/hardware to consume and manipulate them, which is the last thing your software/hardware vendor wants you to do.

Did anyone really think doing away with files ever had anything to do with simplicity? Another magical thing you can do with a bunch of bits is build abstractions over them to simplify their manipulations as much as you want. It's vendor lock-in and it's not only awful but evil too.

You don't understand. Ordinary people don't understand what a file is, what it can do for them etc.

Result is they can't find them, lose them, don't have backups etc. I have interacted with users who hadn't grasped before they could make folders themselves.

Ask your mother or your sister.

Some people are unable to refill the windshield wiper fluid of their car. Some people cannot reattach a button. I think we shouldn't continue to tolerate such incompetence from the general population, or at least charge them an arm and a leg as punishment.

But unfortunately, vendors have caught up and noticed that "an arm and a leg" is lots of money, so if they could just make it a tiny bit harder...

The plan in motion is, in the name of "making reattaching a button simpler", prevent anyone able to reattach a button on their own from doing it, so the shirt manufacturer makes more bank.

Me being able to freely manipulate my own data according to my capacity has NOTHING to do with providing uninterested/incapable people with tools that hide complexity.

> Ask your mother or your sister.

Mine can work with files just fine. They teach this stuff in schools over here.

My local equivalent to grandma doesn't know what a camera roll is. When she wants to see family pictures, she goes in the family conversation and scrolls through messages until she finds them.

It might not be the "best" way but I'm not sure there is one. Instead of browsing content by type ("all photos") and scrolling until she finds what she wants, she browses by context ("all stuff involving family") and scrolls until she finds photos. She is not totally comfortable with the idea that a photo is a bunch of bytes that can be read from multiple places. She prefers going back to the place the content comes from, because that's just easier.

Of course one way is better in some situations, and the other is better in others. But not putting photos in the camera roll has one advantage: it doesn't store them in a storage that's probably unencrypted and readable offline by someone with physical access

That’s an anti-feature, unless you’re only getting family photos. What people really need is cloud sync plus a good interface to browse and search photos.

That is only going to work if you are prepared to be seen as unhelpful. The likelihood is that she'll just as someone else to show her the photos and complain about you while doing so. Personally I'd be fine with that, but it depends upon your family dynamic.

I took a similar tack over malware & backups some years ago. I was spending far too much time being family tech support in "oh shit" moments, trying to remove crap from people's laptops and other, then (when I gave up doing it that way) hunting down all their files and backing them up before hosing and reinstalling the OS, hunting out the correct drivers, and each time giving advice on keeping backups, avoiding malware, telling them that they must keep any driver discs (or generate them from the machine) when they get a new device so they can be identified & reinstalled later, etc, each time being completely ignored because once things were restored they completely forgot the issue. Once I stopped rolling over and being infinitely and immediately helpful, instead saying "without the backups and such I asked you to keep it might take a few hours to sort this out, I can do it for you but I probably can't fit it in for a couple of weeks" most stopped asking me to help - not because they see my time as having value or because they've started to get less dim about letting malware in, but because I'm seen as grumpy and unhelpful.

If only grandma could use Signal, etc. The problem is that Telegram has by far the best UI and UX IMO, and yet we cannot trust it. Then there are applications which we could trust more (like Signal) but they are ridiculously hard to use and lack many features. Actually, I would say FB Messenger also sucks a lot and apparently FB does not care.

not accurate.

I was able to get grandma on Signal precisely because it was the little secret between us. She knew that a signal coming in was from me, and only me. I was using it to talk to her. And she thought it was cool that we talked via signal to her before any other family member caught on the signal craze.

I was able to get my SO to use signal on the same principle. Pick the people in your life that care about you - and care back. You are available via signal, while you ingnore whatsapp et al. You answer right away on signal whereas on other stuff, you wait.

Its funny how far along you can take a feature-lacking app provided its simple for others to use, and there is an emotional attachment in its use.

You could also customize the notification sound for incoming messages in whatsapp and mute (or just use a short plop sound for) anyone else for grandma. Now grandma can focus on learning to use only one app for all her grand children and will find all the pictures from all her relatives in one place and will more likely be able to even forward pictures to other people on her whatsapp. Assuming Grandmas in their 80s.

But then grandma is using WhatsApp, which is what we're trying to avoid. The point is not that it's possible to make her use WhatsApp. The point is that it's possible to make her use a better alternative.

But how is it better for Grandma? Does she really care on her own or did you talk to her until she accepted that she cannot receive messages from you unless she uses Signal?

She likely wouldn't know to care. But she most likely trusts the judgment of her grandson (mine does) in what's best.

I didnt have to spell out instructions.

I just told her to dowload the app.

At its core, signal is still a messenger app. Its not hard to use. I dont think you realize how powerful are simple things like "good morning" and "i love you" to your family and loved ones. Give a little of it, and see the results.

In the global and indirect sense, it's for better for grandma in the same sense as it is better for the whole of society and the entire world. Privacy is something well worth preserving instead of selling to a large corporation and/or overreaching governments.

In the local and direct sense, it is no worse for grandma, and that is the point everyone is arguing. It will work for her use case while also being better in the global sense.

If you need to keep conversations across 2 messengers, that's at least less convenient. But noone seems to see that and everyone else around here is living in their idealistic bubble.

I'm also a privacy advocate, but there are downsides that you need to acknowledge.

Sure, I acknowledge this as a (small) downside, but it is at least no larger a downside than not having control over your conversations or being part of a dragnet to be spied upon by corporations and governments alike.

I would however have trouble with the implication that having this stance is the consequence of being in an idealistic bubble, though perhaps you did not mean that.

I appreciate that. "Idealistic bubble" was a bit harsh.

Signal is an E2EE messenger app with as little shared metadata as possible. Unless Grandma uses the "Status" feature, or wants to know at what time a message was received or read, it provides the same features as Whatsapp with an increase in privacy. It's fair to say that it's a better alternative in her case.

That whole UX issue really needs more explanation. For low-tech usage: you open signal, you select who you want to talk to, you see/type a message. The interface is almost the same as WhatsApp which people of all ages use every day. What's "ridiculously hard to use" here?

I don't know, my grand parents (80+ years) get along well with Signal. We have been using it actively over the past years and they can text, call, videocall and share pictures without issues. I am sure the UI can be improved, but it's not unusable at all.

I trust Telegram, with its open API and third-party clients, more than a company that bans alternative clients. Why do they want me to use their client? Does it have some alterations from the source code?

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