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Comment by nottorp | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, no one uses plain sms messages across the pond any more.

And sms group chats? I only know about sms group chats from US posters.

You can just assume everyone has Whatsapp here, and just message them over that.

Using Facebook to do messaging? No thanks! Sure, when communicating with international friends I use WhatsApp because that appears to be what the rest of the world uses, but here in the States? No. We don't trust Zuckerberg. And yes, iMessage group chats are very much a thing here in the States and SMS group chats in general. And also yes, there's always that techie friend with an Android and makes your whole conversation go "green." Thing is, only middle schoolers really seem to care. I just know it means the communication isn't secured end-to-end.

I didn't like FB well before it became fashionable, but I don't understand your logic here: what is that exactly that you can't entrust WhatsApp to send, but you can trust Apple, or your mobile carrier?

Apple's iMessage is secured end-to-end, your mobile carrier can't see the message. As soon as the box goes green then any intermediary, including your mobile carrier and your friend's mobile carrier, can read the message and/or make it available to law enforcement.

In a U.S. court of law Apple has stood up to authority and pointed out they can't provide the messages requested as they're locked even to Apple. Facebook on the other hand has acquiesced to U.S. law enforcement. That tells me that even if Facebook has secured end-to-end messaging, which I don't think they've ever claimed, they have backdoors.

WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted. WhatsApp actually uses the Signal Protocol. Probably the best protocol they could use. It's described pretty detailed in a whitepaper publicly available on the WhatsApp website: https://www.whatsapp.com/security/WhatsApp-Security-Whitepap...

You got me to look into this further. I was seeing if there was a backdoor - and it appears there isn't. https://signal.org/blog/there-is-no-whatsapp-backdoor/

Given that I don't see why more of us Americans aren't using WhatsApp! :)

Ofcourse WhatsApp is not open source, as opposed to Signal (the app). You can never be truly sure if the protocol is implemented without backdoors because you can't verify the code. But I agree, WhatsApp is a pretty solid app.

WhatsApp definitely claims end-to-end encryption. There’s a bubble telling you so at the top of every new WhatsApp thread.

If that's the case how do they detect if a message has been forwarded too many times ?

It's all about metadata, PRISM et al

I don’t know.

I'm not really answering your question, but in the States, there is a lot more trust placed in Apple over Facebook. This isn't that surprising - Apple has a much stauncher stance on privacy than alternatives.

I wish Signal would be more popular, but it's just not. I can't really ask new people I meet to communicate over Signal because it's a burden to get others to install some new application.

DMing on Instagram is super popular in USA. Most of the people don't give a shit about privacy to begin with.

Im tired of super secure apps that ask for your phone number and even publish it to your contacts. Wake me up when Signal doesnt depend on a phone number any more.

I don't know about GPs logic, but my logic is pretty simple. I don't use any infrastructure that Mark Zuckerberg had his fingers on. That was clear to me after the first time I saw him.

Facebook's goal is to extract as much information from you as possible. Apple wants to sell you a new phone.

It's absolutely not like that. Apple extracts profits in a lots of ways, including those which rely on gathering personal data.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32539762

> We don't trust Zuckerberg

This is a common excuse I hear in college to not use FB messenger or Whatsapp. But those same people usually have no issues using Instagram DMs. For most people, it's just a cover story to mask the real reason: Facebook messenger and whatsapp are uncool in the US

Well, I would fear verizon or whatever much more than Zuckerberg, especially that sms is plain text (not iMessage though).

Nonetheless, it is a self-made problem in the US, which wouldn’t even make sense in the EU because we don’t have such a high percentage of apple devices.

> but here in the States? No. We don't trust Zuckerberg

Completely false. I have multiple group chats in Messenger. The people who “don’t trust Zuckerberg” enough to not use his messaging products are a tiny minority of people in the US.

Even iMessage is barely used. In The Netherlands, WhatsApp is king. And WhatsApp doesn't discriminate.

> You can just assume everyone has Whatsapp here, and just message them over that.

Yea but that's a problem too.

WhatsApp doesn't have anywhere near the same lockin as Apple. You can run multiple messaging apps even on a low end android phone.

Lock-in through the network effect is lock in. The fact that it’s the de facto standard outside the US is quite a network effect.

SMS by contrast is an open standard.

> Lock-in through the network effect is lock in.

Exactly. If your complaint is about being locked in but the platform you use is the one everyone has to use because of network effect or otherwise you yourself are locked in with that platform.

The network effect only results in lock-in if there's an obstacle to using multiple networks at the same time. Obviously no-one is going to carry around two phones, so that's how Apple achieves lock-in. By contrast, keeping two or more messaging apps running is trivial.

And SMS is irrelevant.

SMS is just terrible though, and is just not worth using. It is plain text, limited in size and simply has less features.

What anyone means when they say SMS post ~2010 is SMS/MMS

It didn't get better.

That's just like, your opinion, man. SMS/MMS is decentralized, open, and works on every modern mobile phone out of the box. No other text messaging technology does this yet.

Open for Verizon to read/modify, you have no way of knowing the other half’s identity (was their number given to someone else in the meanwhile), no encoding is specified/due to non-ASCII characters taking more SPACE (in 2022) so auto-SMSs still today will just force ascii text, making it often unreadable. Like, it is literally a single digit number of bytes difference.

Also, you need like.. a carrier plan to access, wouldn’t really call that open. Any network based messenger can work over my home or even McDonald’s wifi, without any third-parties

I get what you’re saying but your home or McDonalds wifi is decidedly a third party, although encryption may mitigate that.

I can run WhatsApp on my iPhone. I cannot get my kids' school parents-group not to use WhatsApp. It was a pain to get even my best friends in Europe to use anything except WhatsApp.

Well done that parents' group. Obviously something like Signal would be better, but that'll happen once there's enough social consensus.

Meanwhile, I am lighting a candle for every poor soul that has been pressured into installing Meta products.

What did you propose as the alterntive?

Did you mean WhatsApp doesn't have anywhere near the same lock in as the Messages app? I don't know what you mean by "same lock in as Apple". I also don't know what you would mean by lock in with the Messages app. What's locked in? I can use WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, WeChat, or any number of communication apps on my iPhone effortlessly.

Apple's messages app isn't really an app; it comes preinstalled on the phone, you can't remove it or substitute it with another app, and you can't install it on non-Apple hardware.

The lock-in is obvious: if you're part of Apple-oriented chat groups you can't switch to Android without losing access to those groups, degrading the experience for everyone, or convincing each one of those groups to make the switch to a multi-platform alternative. Claiming not to see this is disingenuous.

> Apple's messages app isn't really an app; it comes preinstalled on the phone, you can't remove it or substitute it with another app, and you can't install it on non-Apple hardware.

I'm not sure, but I don't think you can actually uninstall the default SMS from Android phones either without having another app installed at a minimum and then I bet similar to Messages if you were to somehow uninstall that app then the default app would appear since it's probably part of the core operating system (similar to other basic functionality like settings or a phone app to receive calls).

I don't know what you mean by you cannot substitute Messages with another app. If I didn't want to use Messages I would just disable all settings and remove it from the home screen and use whatever I wanted instead just fine.

You are correct that you cannot install Messages on non-Apple hardware. Not all software is open source or available for all platforms. For example I cannot install Playstation software on my Xbox, nor can I buy a Nest Thermostat and install a competitor's software on it (without hacking both of course). There are games that are made that aren't created with support for macOS. Etc.

> if you're part of Apple-oriented chat groups you can't switch to Android without losing access to those groups

What is an Apple-oriented chat group?

> if you were to somehow uninstall [the Android SMS] app then the default app would appear since it's probably part of the core operating system

No. Why would it?

> I don't know what you mean by you cannot substitute Messages with another app.

On Android, if you don't like the SMS app you can replace it with another app that has all the same functionality (and more). Does Apple let you do that?

> What is an Apple-oriented chat group?

Please engage with the discussion. One that uses Apple's proprietary SMS extensions, obviously.

Is WhatsApp open? Are there alternative clients?

Even better: it's a player in a competitive market. So you can switch your chats one-by-one to Signal, Telegram or whatever floats your boat.

I am glad that the EU actually has another definition of letting people use what is floating their boat: Force big-tech player to open up protocols, so users can send messages from any messenger to any other messenger.

https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/24/dma-political-agreement/

As a user I cannot see any downsides.

What do you mean by switch your chats. You can’t have the chat in more than one client at a time?

Yes, that's why it's switching.

How do you message when you don't have wifi/data? I can SMS from more remote places than I can any internet-based service.

I've never been anywhere where I legitimately had signal but no data. When it seems to be connected buy isn't, sms mostly also won't go though. I also think there are less "remote" places in europe in general.

You just don't. Their adoption of Whatsapp(at least in Spain), seems to have been driven by a period in time when WhatsApp was coming up that the plans sold by cell service providers were near unlimited data, but only X amount of calls/texts allowed to be sent per month.

In the USA we had opposite plans during this time. Unlimited talk/text, but strict data caps.

Well, with imessage being on topic, apple seems to be really terrible at changing to sms when someone is not available online — I ran out of internet data once and tried to text my girlfriend on imessage assuming it will just send an sms, and it just waited for like 10 minutes before telling me it couldn’t be sent. The other side is even worse - I would have assumed apple checks whether the other half is expected to come online anytime soon and if not, send an sms instead. Nope, you just don’t get a message and are expected to long press and send as sms manually.

With 4G taking over, this will no longer be a differentiator, as on 4G SMS also goes over data (via VoLTE).

At least where I live, 4G got deployed on the low bands freed up by the digital TV switchover and hence has the best reception in remote areas.

In most of the world you do have either wifi or data coverage.

Usually, if you don't have data for signal (as opposed to run out of data in your plan) reasons, then you don't have signal at all, even for SMS, either...

And I have been to a number of islands across Polynesia and Micronesia where the cellular service simply does not exist; however, there is always Wi-Fi in hotels. SMS is of no use in such places.

You don't. But in the US I'm rarely in a place where I have no data but SMS still works. And Europe has more effective telecom service.

> Europe has more effective telecom service

Some of Europe has very effective telecom infrastructure, but that's far from universal.

Cries in Canadian :(

It could be worse. Service is so famously bad in Germany that they invented a word for it - Funklochrepublik, which basically means "radio hole republic."

You can just assume everyone has Whatsapp here, and just message them over that.

Trusting your private conversations to ~Facebook~ Meta is also a signal.

Id rather not exclude people who dont have an iPhone, either because they cant afford it or believe Samsung marketing.

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