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> The impoverished

I am a bit mad at myself for not even thinking about that. I know people who still use flip phones and this basically segments them out even further.

I think we just need to look at AIM, MSN, whatever yahoo's was called. I think there is a good reason that those were very quickly replaced by just SMS. Even though I would argue that in many ways those were superior to SMS and had features that we really did not get until iMessage (for better or for worse) but we already went through this once and SMS won out.

>I am a bit mad at myself for not even thinking about that. I know people who still use flip phones and this basically segments them out even further

Don't worry, you're in good company - increasingly a gigantic amount of systems just assume that you have a smart phone and are willing to use it to do everything. And that you are fine having everything tracked and logged because you did it digitally. The assumption of "everyone has phones" is absolutely absurd, and it's way too wide spread. The final evolution of this is "cashless" stores/restaurants, where you literally cannot exchange money for goods and services without having a bank account and a smart phone.

I'm not so startled by the number of systems that assume you have a smart phone - most adults do - but am startled by the number of systems that assume you have access to a keyboard/mouse/monitor.

I have PCs at home and at work and a laptop that travels with me. I use these computers to do things like filling out forms, shopping, composing emails, reading PDFs, filing taxes, tracking my calendar, and otherwise interacting with businesses and governments that use computers.

A shocking number of my friends and family do all of these things on their smartphones. They're not impoverished, they might have a PC at work but none at home, they might even have an old laptop they haven't booted up in years...but they'll suffer through side-scrolling a PDF or typing on a ~3" square display (the top of their 6" display, with the bottom used for a touchscreen keyboard).

> I know people who still use flip phones and this basically segments them out even further.

We aren't all impoverished, it can be a conscious decision.

I like how SMS just works, it's far from perfect but feels closer to an independent tool, like a hammer - with the expectation that each time you pull it out of a toolbox it will continue to remain a hammer - other than that rare occasion when the head finally drops off you can rely on it doing it's job without getting in your face asking about updated ToS and changing how you have to hold the handle every few months before you smack a nail in the wall. It's the F-91w of the digital messaging world, somewhat quirky, a bit antiquated, yet provides permanence and doesn't fuck around. I also value privacy, and I can't rely on SMS for that, which is unfortunate.

"My God people, stop using AM/FM Radio! It's an analog signal, and this is a digital world! The quality and bit rate is so low! Use your phone + Spotify + Bluetooth for music! Use your phone + podcasts + Bluetooth for news, talk, and opinion, or switch to satellite radio!"

Problem: In breaking news moments like this, there should be a type of podcast you can listen to in real time, easily accessible for free.

Solution: Radio. You're thinking of Radio.

https://twitter.com/matthewkeyslive/status/12350720664134492...

This basically happened to me when a friend was scheduling group videogames for the week. "If X and Y had Prime then they could order a switch and have it in time for Friday with free shipping!"*

Gosh, if only there were some sort of local Amazon warehouse that I could travel to to procure the items I require when I require them. They'd probably have a lot of items stored! In fact, some of these stores of items might even cater to one or two types of items only, perhaps necessitating multiple stores at different locations!

* This was a real conversation from a human being.

I had a similar conversation with some folks regarding streaming a while ago.

Friend: Man, I can never settle on something to watch on Netflix/Hulu/Disney+, etc.... It would be nice I could pick a genre and the streaming service is just rotating through a list of popular titles of that genre - something that's just always on that anyone can tune into.

Me: TV. You're thinking of TV.

> It would be nice I could pick a genre and the streaming service is just rotating through a list of popular titles of that genre

Although I would say in this case it's not exactly analog with TV, for two main reasons: ads, and picking a genre. In general, TV channels don't stick to a specific genre, even when it's right on the name (like History Channel).

Also, I doubt your friend would actually want a live, always on thing. They might just end up upset that everything's already mid-way through, or that they can't pause. Netflix "random" feature makes more sense, and I guess even more if you could choose a genre.

edit: seems Netflix doesn't have the 'random' feature anymore

I really miss that feature of broadcast TV. I know there's some solutions for Netflix, but they're desktop only, and not built-in to their apps.

Unfortunately, the economic incentives for Netflix and similar means they'll never ever develop an app like that, because they want to discourage long-tail viewing.

this is kind of like tesla removing am on model 3/y

it's super old and sounds like shit but it works really really well and is great for relaying critical information that we now cannot get

They did? Aw, man....

I love tuning into AM 1610 when driving through National Parks to get park information. AM is great for low-power local broadcast for recorded tourist information on repeat.

agreed. AM 1610 in Delaware is an excellent service that I can't use when we road trip there.

Kind of a bad example.

If I could have a TRUE pots phone, I'd jump on it.

Instead all you can get it psuedo-POTS jammed over VoIP.

Real POTS in the old days was actually kinda magic. You never had the "everyone talking over everone else" thing you get with any VoIP solution because you don't have a syllable or two (more if using cell) of hidden latency.

Other than the audio rolling off everything above about 3.5khz, real POTS is as close as you can get to being in the same room.

I absolutely love the frequency roll-of! It's very nostalgic to me.

It's one of the reasons I love the move The Vast of Night. The audio for the whole movie sounds like it was run through a perfect band pass filter.

POtS came with other drawbacks too though.

Crappy line, often a fixed handset location (or near fixed) rather than direct to the individual.

Multiples calls were usually not handled, mum would use the phone when I wanted the internet…

In the rest of the world the answer is simply Whatsapp. China it's WeChat. No need to discuss. You can also see if their contact is in the app.

The second one is such a horrible thing that I wish it was blocked by the OS. Stop giving apps access to your entire contacts!

I did not consent to those companies knowing my phone number, name, and likely other information!

But you clicked a little button that they can so its completely fine! \s

That is likely my single biggest pet peeve of the current state of tech is other people being able to consent to MY information being gobbled up just because they clicked a damn button.

Although note that with SMS, you're consenting to multiple phone companies knowing your phone number, name, and definitely other information in the form of all your messages. Possible I should have made that clearer in the original article: it doesn't make sense to me that someone would stick with SMS because they don't want Meta/Google/Apple/whoever to have their info, unless they truly believe that AT&T/T-Mobile/Verizon/etc. are better stewards of our data. (And I don't mean to dunk on that latter group of companies here...I just don't have any reason to believe either group is better than the other.)

It's very confusing to me that Europe seems generally skeptical of big American tech, but has evidently jumped straight into bed with Facebook's WhatsApp with far more enthusiasm than Americans.

Maybe because most of the initial success was before Facebook bought Whatsapp. Until recently, lot of people were ignoring that their whatsapp was part of facebook (but those people were also using facebook messenger anyway).

Germany and Switzerland have some exotic secure messengers that were quite popular (and may still be) like threema.

There was also some quite suprizing stuff. My inlaws were, until recently, using Viber. They didn’t know why (none of them are computer people). It was wild to me to discover a chat app I never heard off in a circle of people completely outside of tech.

Anyway, the only longterm solution is an open standard. Propably XMPP. Or email after all (it works, look at delta chat).

Much as I would love an open standard to win here, their track record has not been great with respect to messaging. If someone (looking at you, Google) were to jump on board with one, that could change stuff.

But to be fair, most consumers aren't going to care about an open standard directly; they'll care about finding and chatting with their friends. An open standard is a great way to get there when it works, but, for example, WhatApp being a de facto standard in much of the world accomplishes the same thing in those regions.

> If someone (looking at you, Google) were to jump on board with one, that could change stuff.

Google jumped on jabber years ago, then jumped off.

> Maybe because most of the initial success was before Facebook bought Whatsapp.

I guess. But it doesn't really explain why it continues to be so popular, to the extent that even on forums like this (where well-grounded skepticism of big tech companies like Facebook is generally taken for granted) you have Europeans acting like Americans are backwards fools for not wanting to jump into bed with Facebook.

It is on every persons phone, it is the defacto standard. There was a big push about two years back by many people to change application when Whatsapp's privacy policy was changing and many pushed telegram and signal. The two or three of my friends, who left and held out, have now reinstalled Whatsapp. There's simply no easy way for them to speak to everyone else. People are reluctant to text and won't bother installing another application. (BTW this was in Africa.)

It was already fairly popular in the UK prior to being acquired by Facebook.

I’m guessing but in these other countries were SMS messages cheap/free?

While yes for many in the subsequent years, it wasn't at the time WhatsApp took over the world in 2011-2012. It didn't help for SMS when telcos were already giving unlimited social media in their plans and even prepaid, even when this already started to include unlimited SMS as well; people already migrated.

Its simplicity, cross-platform (as people out there use Android more than iOS) and user base was and still is the big moat; there have been quite superior applications over the years, yet none of them are used as the main messenger except by some niche communities. Telegram has been there since 2013, it's quite popular because of the features but I doubt it will take over: WhatsApp is enough and everyone already knows it.

No, that is not true, and five seconds of googling could have told you that.

What did you find?

For example this map:

This map also only shows the most popular, but that doesn't mean it's the dominant messaging app in that country. It's very, very messy.

It's safe to say the median app is Whatsapp. Countries like Australia still use Whatsapp. This picture you provided excludes the rest of subsaharan Africa which uses Whatsapp.

I'd rather not cite the below but where's smoke there's fire. This indicates Whatsapp has twice the active users of Messenger. https://www.statista.com/statistics/258749/most-popular-glob...

Yes, it is absolutely very popular, that's not what we're talking about here.

The problem is that given a random person off the street, how can you figure out which messenger apps you have in common? And assuming everyone outside the US uses WhatsApp like the grandparent poster I replied to did, doesn't work.

> Yeah, this feels a lot like saying "My god, people, stop using telephones! Facetime has video! And the bitrate! It's a million times higher! It's 2023, why would anyone use a POTS call?!" Sure, nicer technical specs are...nice, but they're a far, far second to solving a problem.

I understand that this is supposed to feel like a clearly ridiculous example but my gut reaction is "well yeah, I hate the telephone and I'd be quite happy if I never have to give my phone number to anyone or answer a phone call again."

It's something of a clearly ridiculous example and I'm sure a lot of people (myself included) would prefer using more modern solutions 99% of the time. However, I suspect that when you tell most people that also means their 911 calls that basically cannot fail by law now also need to work on Discord or whatever they'll at least take a minute to think about the implications.

911 calls are pretty clearly a special case that is obviously worth pointing out if someone is advocating for literally dismantling the entire telephone system without a very good proposal for replacing the 911 system. That would be a much more extreme position than simply disliking routine (especially unsolicited) telephone calls and preferring than most people in society default to another form of communication.

> Problem: I need to contact a new acquaintance. Solution? Talk about messaging apps. Find the intersection of the ones you both use.

This is the beautiful thing about phone numbers. The likes of iMessage will use iMessage if both users have it.

Imagine a world where one app could use sms, iMessage, WhatsApp, Snapchat etc. It’ll never happen, but I can dream.

Signal on Android is doing just that and I love it. But they announced that they will remove that feature due to too many users thinking that an SMS sent with Signal is secure (despite an open lock displayed next to the message)

I know this is off topic, but having spent a significant amount of time convincing people around me to use signal, once they remove this feature, literally 100% of the non-tech folks I've gotten onto signal will drop it and move back to SMS. It makes me so sad.