Meanwhile, WhatsApp still "punishes" users for denying contacts access by hiding everyone's names (only the phone numbers are shown), including for contacts that have their own names set in their own profiles.
Facebook^W Meta is scum.
Huh, had no idea that's why I only see numbers.
If I do allow contacts, does it show the name from contacts, rather than whatever display name they chose?
If so then I guess that's kind of a "technically we need contacts to display names, which are resolved locally" deal. But Apple could push back "you're big enough to plumb a display name through, not just resolve locally, and deal with spam implications" if they wanted to take a hard stand.
At least for me on Android, which is wild.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.trianguloy...
Usernames are not given much weight in the UI--there's no guarantee that my username reflects who I really am. Feels rightly more suspicious IMO to see a message from an unknown number than from "~Elon Musk".
I believe this happens regardless of whether the app has contact permissions or not.
I wish there were some kind of "modern tech" technical review panel on board in, say, EU and US regulatory institutions. Not to impose or forbid certain changes, but to curate an evilness score. Publicly.
And then if a monopolistic company consistently enshittifies things, when the time comes to apply a penalty (for some anti-competitive legal reason), the regulators will apply the reputation ("evilness") score as a multiplier (or divider, if you will) on the sum of the fine.
Evilness can't be measured and expressed fully objectively. So citizens should be able to override a reputation score mutation (remember, they're public) through a referendum.
An advantage of this approach would be that it could increase citizen awareness that things don't have to be this shitty. I'm occasionally amazed by how friends and colleagues put up with being pushed around by their OSes, their apps, their phones, sometimes to the point that cognitive dissonance makes them into apostate apologists.
Nope. With contacts permission granted, unknown numbers turn into ~names (per user's own profile) automatically. When you revoke the permission, the ~name is hidden to punish you.
> [...] there's no guarantee that my username reflects who I really am. Feels rightly more suspicious IMO to see a message from an unknown number than from "~Elon Musk".
It's an entirely separate problem, and as old as mail itself (which predates computers by many millenia). Would you know whether to trust elonmusk@twitter.io, without looking it up?
I would hate to dismiss someone for a troll only to realize they are not the real elon musk