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Comment by zamnos | Hacker News Reader

Only two? Between regular texting (sms), WhatsApp, Facebook and Facebook messenger, Signal, Instagram, Twitter, Slack, Discord, Snapchat, Tinder, and finally WeChat, which are currently installed on my phone (space is cheap these days) I'm jealous. I probably make regular use of like seven of those. They mostly have different groups of people on them, though there's a lot of overlap when sharing content within an app (eg Instagram content is shared via Instagram, Twitter content via Twitter, even when that person has other ways of contacting me). I wonder why our use cases are so different! Is it down to the fact that the people I talk to are terminally online?

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Mostly the same and I agree. So many messaging apps sometimes. Though it's not quite so bad. IIRC all the Meta apps (Instagram and Facebook, I don't think Whatsapp though) can communicate with each other's DMs on any of the apps. And I don't use Slack for anything but work. I've refused to put Discord on my phone as well. Tinder seems like an odd one though - you can't get in touch with a random person you met otherwise on there, and if you have met them and want to keep seeing them it seems better to move to some other form of communication.

Oh yeah totally, after forming an in-person connection with someone from Tinder, I'll move off platform, but rushing that is (at least where I am) bot behavior and hasn't lead me to success. Nor do I really trust someone pushing me off platform. It's just that there's so much texting that happens on-platform given even a low steam of matches that I chose to include it. I didn't include Hinge or Bumble in that list though, didn't want to inflate the app count.

I have none of those, my father has none of those, all we had was Whatsapp and Signal, after the SMS drop it is back to Whatsapp and built in SMS app, my mother and wife have some other apps but not that many, wife has only wechat, mother I think only facebook messenger, so one extra app makes a lot difference especially if none of the contacts outside family use it.

I use other messaging platforms, but when I'm sitting at my desk. If I'm relying on my phone then most of those communications are less important and I don't need to be fully connected/notified/tracked.

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