Deleting WhatsApp, while annoying for me personally, has resulted in many people I know joining Signal or Telegram — the network effect can be broken by being belligerent.
If you don’t want to have a conversation about why you deleted WhatsApp, simply say it’s a moral issue, nobody wants to know.
This practical application of your advice depends on where a particular person sits in their social hierarchy.
E.g. an influential person that's a "hub" or "connector" in their social circle can switch from WhatsApp to Signal ... or insist on email only ... or insist on no email and only hardcopy snail mail (Donald Knuth) -- and others will follow their lead or accommodate them.
On the other hand, if you're one of the folks at the "spokes" or "edges" of social graphs... being defiant by deleting WhatsApp doesn't accomplish anything because others don't care to switch to reach you.
The above difference in social influence happens in Asia countries where many use WhatsApp beyond personal relationships for business to sell items or find work. If the business contacts you depend on for getting income use WhatsApp, you deleting WhatsApp just means you get $0 because they'd rather deal with other vendors who don't force them the hassle of switching to Signal. Power and leverage in social graphs matter.
I don't think it is worth holding contact in that case. Contrary to popular belief is that you don't miss out on anything.
Business contacts are another matter, but every professional understands if you want to use other channels. Same principle applies. If they don't make the effort, it wasn't a good contact anyway, although there are side effects because convinience is important. A bit of excentricity isn't a deal breaker, on the contrary.
Clout chasing is exactly the angle social media tries to satisfy.
That's a common counterargument that's similar to "then I guess they weren't very good friends, were they?!?" -- but oversimplifies the complexity of social life. It's not a simple binary dichotomy between "very good friends" and "no friends".
People also have an in-between status of "weak ties" that are mutually beneficial : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpersonal_ties
These types of relationships are more fragile and easier to "lose" by putting up barriers to communication. It's not realistic to impose a condition of "either you follow me to the Signal network or you weren't really my friend at all" on the whole world. Everybody doesn't have same weight of importance to everyone else and that's ok. Dunbar's Number may also be relevant here.
>, but every professional understands if you want to use other channels.
No they don't if you're one of hundreds of "disposable vendors" in Asia or other parts of the world using WhatsApp for business. The other business professional (with more leverage) just ignores your excentricity and works with others who don't inconvenience them.
>, although there are side effects
If the "side effects" are $0 income, that's a really big deal. It seems like you swept this aside.
>Clout chasing
It's not about about chasing "clout". Unfortunately, I used the word "influential" and I forgot that it has been tainted by recent phenomenon of "social media influencer". I couldn't think of a better word for "significant connector node on a social graph" other than "influential". (I think it's irony that by Donald Knuth insisting on USPS snail mail for correspondence -- and people actually getting past that friction to contact him -- that actually proves he has clout.)
In any case, I think your perspective is shaped by your experience in Western Europe so you really can't empathize with how some people (farmers, etc) depend on WhatsApp for their livelihood. They don't use it like a TikTok type of social network.
I’m no influencer, but i do have a big family and lots of very close friends. I’m very lucky.
Many people are isolated and struggle to make and maintain friendships — especially over the last year. They don’t have the luxury of being able to take a stand.
I disagree. It accomplishes at least one thing -- WhatsApp isn't tracking/recording your messages any more. That's what I would care about.
You're absolutely right. Because there's no such thing as other messaging apps, email, social media platforms, SMS/MMS, telephone, written correspondence or discussion over a beer/coffee/meal. Only WhatsApp exists.
Gee, I wish someone would invent some or all of of those things -- I'm so lonely! /s
I deleted Facebook/Messenger awhile ago, and asked that people use Signal to communicate with me. All of the people I cared to speak to use Signal to message me, and many of them have used it for other purposes as well. That hasn't precluded them from using whatever they were using before. This only applies to the personal sphere of my life, conducting business with WhatsApp may be a different issue entirely.
People get _offended_ when you tell them that you don't have Whatsapp. But I let them hold that hot coal themselves.
If people need to send me some information they text me. If sending a text is too much for them maybe I did not really need to know what they wanted to send. If I want to communicate with my friends and family I call them like we used to do in the 20th century.
So there is precedent for this, but we live in very different times now.
That's a wonderful idea. In fact, we've had such a standard since 1999 (protocol codified in 2004[0])
It's called XMPP[1]
In fact Google Talk, Facebook Messenger and Skype were all either based upon, or supported XMPP...and now don't. Slack used to support IRC and not doesn't. There's a term often credited to Microsoft that also applies here: embrace, extend, extinguish.
You're completely right that messaging clients is regional, but it's even more regional than just "Europe". I'm always confused when people claim that WhatsApp is huge in Europe, because I know literally only two people who use it. They only use WhatsApp because they have friends outside Europe.
I think we need to think in terms of single countries when talking messaging apps. Again take WhatsApp. Pretty big in Germany and Spain, but almost non-existing in Denmark (who instead rely more on Facebook Messenger or iMessage).
Want to get a delivery? You'll be told about it via WhatsApp. Want to order food online? WhatsApp. Want to pick up your laundry? WhatsApp. etc. It's everywhere here and totally dominant. Deciding not to use it would make your life significantly harder.
Now I've got so many messaging apps. I just want one. Only one.
(based in the UK)
People who do have WhatsApp, probably have it, because most of the people they know have it.
Cause what parent described is common in EU + LATAM
And what's with all the downmods and downright flags lately? I'm trying to be funny here.
In this case the joke wasn't even related to the discussion, since neither Signal[0] nor Telegram are self-hosted anyway.
[0] You can sort of self-host Signal, but last time I looked there was no way to change the URL in the client without rebuilding it, and it's not federated, so that's pretty pointless unless you also get all your friends to install your new version too.
The discussion was about some people getting offended because some other people don't have whatsapp accounts.
I selfhost xmpp (ejabberd) and matrix (synapse) servers for my friends and family. When someone asks - and this happens fairly often - how come I don't have [insert evil big tech IM company here] account, and how can I be contacted, I say I can be contacted by means of open federated protocol like xmpp or matrix, using open source apps like conversations or element, having account on one of many xmpp or matrix servers, including ones that I administer.
Most people say 'ok whatever man', but some say tell me more and get to get in touch with me.
Because of my knowledge and skill to avoid Evil Greed, and because I am actively working on liberating people from it, I think of myself as a better man than those who argue whether Signal is better than WhatsApp or Viber or whatever. And at the same time I remind myself I am no better than anyone or anything else in the Universe. And I am quite auto-ironic about it.
Is this enough lines of explanation?
Allows you to connect to/chat with WhatApp users using Matrix/Element.
Why ? for recent transaction, they need to keep it for tax purposes but they have no legal need to keep old records.
I wouldn't call 10 years "recent transactions". Heck, for most of the online shops, it's more like "forever".
The GDPR/CCPA/etc. likely has different requirements here, and probably requires deletion after they're no longer needed (for tax purposes or whatever).
But I personally have financial records going back decades, so I can't fault a company for wanting to do the same thing.
[0] https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/refo...
They could unlink it from your purchase history, but they would still have to maintain the record of the purchase. I believe this is effectively what 'Archiving' order does.
Is this really true? I do a smattering of weird/non-conformist things for moral reasons, and people are always _overly_ interested. IME, if you say "I don't do X for moral reasons" to someone who does X, they take it as a personal attack. It's closely related to the concept of "anticipated reproach". While they may pay lip service to it, most people aren't fundamentally able to understand the concept of moral pluralism/relativism, and won't be satisfied with "I think it's wrong but it's no black mark on you if you don't think it is".
> many people I know joining Signal or Telegram — the network effect can be broken by being belligerent
Did you not use the same network effect to get people to join Signal/Telegram? While I agree that Signal is morally better (being a non-profit and all), it is still a closed garden, which makes such network effects possible. And this in itself is a moral issue, I think. Personally I would like to use a system like, where everyone can choose his own server. But nobody in my social circle uses it, so I'm stuck with walled gardens...
[1]: https://element.io/
Network effect is irrelevant for pure messaging services. If someone needs to talk to you, they'll send a pigeon if they have to.
Then I guess they weren't very good friends, were they? If they were, they might make an effort, no?
A good point. I can't (and don't pretend to) speak for anyone else, but I want to be around people who want to be around me. And not all of those.
Take from that what you will.
I'm probably showing my ignorance around SMS and iMessage, but why can't SMS simply use your data allowance? Doesn't iMessage do this?
iMessage is a proprietary messaging system
That was the state of affairs in the US until fairly recently; most carriers (in the US at least) offer a pretty standard plan that includes unlimited texting.
WhatsApp first value proposition has been to enable cheap ("free") messaging while, at least here in Argentina, SMS would still cost a lot of money. The Android SMS experience is bad, too - or at least it's not a nice one.
Add groups, multimedia, audio calls with no long-distance fee, or even video calls (I don't think the phone system offers an alternative, at least here), and all of that being "cross-manufacturer" (we have 92% Android users here, so you still don't want to leave your two iOS friends out) and it's pretty much clear why WhatsApp works best.
Signal & Telegram could have make it, too - but WhatsApp was probably first, and they offered support for some feature phones back then when they still were around.