How WhatsApp for business changed the world | Hacker News Reader

How WhatsApp for business changed the world

restofworld.org

73 pointssurprisetalk163 comments

> Newton-Rex said privacy is “in the DNA” of WhatsApp and that the company is trying to clearly communicate with users about what privacy protections WhatsApp offers and where.

This is bunk. If someone is added to a Group Chat they get everyone's phone number. There's near zero privacy for Groups and Communities.

This sort of article is a puff-piece for WhatsApp.

My understanding is groups and communities are for people who already know each other directly or indirectly, like a mutual friend or parents of students of the same class.

WhatsApp for Business is something separate from this.

You want all the parents in your kid’s class to know your phone number? No thanks

Yes? Phone numbers are not top secret information. My schools always had a student directory that listed every student's home phone number and their parents' mobiles. We used to have phone books that listed everyone in town's phone number.

Back then, phone calls were expensive and my time/attention was cheap. Now phone calls are cheap and there's so many things I'd rather do than answer robocalls and anxious parents.

You know phone numbers used to be public, all of them, and printed in books?

Expectations about privacy has changed since this time.

That and the random "group invite" I get that pedals crypto. Spam and my number being disclosed to a bunch of random victims!

Also, it won’t work properly unless you give it full access to your Contacts

I noticed last year it stopped allowing me to use location sharing if I have the permission set to ask every time. It wants the permission permanently enabled.

It seems like they're trying to get people to enable extra permissions beyond what it really needs.

At least on iOS it works fine without contacts. You'll have to enter all numbers manually, but messaging works as expected. On android it's more annoying, because there's no way to explicitly enter phone numbers, but you can use the wa.me/[insert phone phone number here] to work around it.

This has been recently added, but Whatsapp if famous for being inconsistent and slow with feature rollouts

I know they stagger quite a bit, I can't even fathom pulling off their scale on so many variations of devices, keeping an indeterminate amount of versions all working in unison, so can't blame them either

It did. Till it didn't - one day, after an update, it just refused to work without full access to contacts. (On ios).

Don't set a prefered app for calls and messages. Open contacts, open the contact you want and press call/message button. Android will ask which app to use. Select Whatsapp (or whatever you want).

Is that even possible? Since at least android 13 you need to set the default dialer app, otherwise that app can't make/receive calls.

IDK, I'm still on Android 5.1. I thought permissions were separate from default app setting.

privacy is “in the DNA” of WhatsApp so you cannot delete a message there.

Same privacy as Facebook offers.

Telegram is much better than any other popular messenger. Pity it is owned by Russians.

Telegram doesn't use end-to-end encryption by default, so it would be a bad alternative to WhatsApp even if it was owned by Mother Teresa. At least if you care about privacy.

> Pity it is owned by Russians.

why is that?

Interesting article and I must say I am quite surprised having used Whatsapp religiously for now over a decade that I had never heard about _WhatsApp for Business_. Makes me wonder when I will get to interact with this part of the app too... Not that I want to though.

I discovered the feature while on holiday once, we could IM orders for food and drinks while near the pool so they can just bring them. It’s was awesome. Since then I’ve had several customer care services using this instead of email or calling. I like the async/treat it like a normal chat aspect to it.

WhatsApp's single main life-changing thing for me was not having to pay exorbitant roaming charges to receive calls from hotels (mainly to tell me that my room is ready) while on a trip.

There's always been methods to contact customers using data instead of VoLTE, but WhatsApp is simple and ubiquitous enough for businesses to adopt, since a lot of people outside the US use it in a personal capacity as well.

More hotels should get onto WhatsApp.

As non WhatsApp user or any other app for that matter. It annoys me that services expect me to install yet another app to get basic customer service.

I haven’t used WhatsApp in 10 years , one time I tried to install it because of some stupid service provider who I really needed to get info made me do it , they said my number is suspended or blocked whatever .

I have no interest to chase their non existent support or change my number! to resolve this issue. You don’t have this problem with telecom providers even if AT&T refuses to do business with you , there two other actual and dozen other MVNOs who will .

Businesses should absolutely stick to open standards and protocols for essential communication and not ask customers to also have service with another specific company for basic communication . Delivery is the first consideration, not some value added functionality.

Not sure what are you talking about, but if I'm abroad I'd rather have the hotel call me on WhatsApp than on my phone.

The second option can be extremely expensive in some places.

There's no expectation for you to have it by the way.

Depending on the county, that IM app could WhatsApp , WeChat , telegram, Douyin or something else. You don’t know what the other person uses if any at all.

SMS and phone just works out of the box everywhere and given a phone number the both likely will always work.

If you were traveling abroad you would put a mobile roaming plan in the first place. It is not that expensive.

I am not that big traveller perhaps do 5-6 international trips a year to few countries on my standard T-Mobile roaming plan I get 5GB data unlimited calls and texts on roaming almost in every country I visit out of the box no extra cost.

It is just $10 extra per month, It is only expensive if you travel without doing that small change

WhatsApp would need internet to work, WiFi is not ubiquitous everywhere or easy to use, many public ones have some captive app that needs something or other like local phone number - I have seen in some airports(!).

To get reliable internet on your phone abroad you need data roaming in the first place, if you have that then there is no benefits of WhatsApp over call/sms.

I don’t have a problem if there is extra communication or features in their IM workflow versus sms or voice , but places just assume you have what they use although you are not from there even in tourist friendly places, that is just rude.

> WhatsApp would need internet to work, WiFi is not ubiquitous everywhere or easy to use, many public ones have some captive app that needs something or other like local phone number - I have seen in some airports(!).

> To get reliable internet on your phone abroad you need data roaming in the first place, if you have that then there is no benefits of WhatsApp over call/sms.

I buy eSIMs, which often don't come with a local number. But I get data.

I don't need to receive normal calls apart from the rare hotel call. Receiving SMSes while roaming tends to be free, while calls aren't.

Places do not assume you have Whatsapp, but they can contact you there if you have it which is a win/win to me.

> To get reliable internet on your phone abroad you need data roaming in the first place, if you have that then there is no benefits of WhatsApp over call/sms.

Not true at all, those are two separate concerns. You may have data roaming plans for few euros per week and yet, a single phone call may costs you as much.

> I am not that big traveller perhaps do 5-6 international trips a year

Jesus, it's more than the vast majority of the world's population does in a decade (and more than I have done in my entire life). You're very well traveled by global standards.

It is all relative perhaps. My travels are a function of distributed family and work and being a first gen immigrant.

In comparison to digital nomads and leisure travelers who travel a lot for the sake of traveling and experiencing new things and so on, my knowledge of travel do's and don't are more amateur and limited is what I meant to convey.

> not that expensive.

From my carrier:

Frais de roaming en Tha?lande CHF Appel local 2.20/min Vers la CH 4.75/min Entrant 3.00/min SMS 0.50 Data 15.60/MB Désactiver SMS info *135#

They offer “packs”: it’s a mere 39.90 CHF for 100 MB and an extra 49.90 CHF for 60 min of airtime.

So as much as I hate Facebook, WhatsApp, and closed standards… I don’t see a very good alternative here.

You can use xmpp

Yeah but if you create an open standard then it would just create current standard + 1 standard all over again

There is no new standard required , sms, rcs(apple dragging their feet apart) and POTS are already well established , that leaves only video calling, some form of WebRTC and SDP with more rigid signaling requirements could work there

Due to WhatsApp for Business, my inbox is constantly flooded with spam and scams. Companies register hundreds of numbers, and no matter how many I block, they always find new ones to message me. The worst part is that reporting and blocking seem completely ineffective on WhatsApp.

You can choose to not let unknown numbers message you. I have no idea why that isn't the default.

While great for a personal Whatsapp, this kind of defeats the point of using it for a business.

I believe he meant that you (personal account) can use this feature to protect yourself from scam companies using Whatsapp Business to "cold call" you

Not really. Many businesses have a fixed set of customers that changes very infrequently. e.g., many wholesalers may only have a small handful of customers that they sell to.

"Only if they exceed a certain volume." Who knows what's that certain volume? And why can't I block all?

What are you talking about?

https://faq.whatsapp.com/3379690015658337/?cms_platform=web&...

> If Block unknown account messages is turned on, WhatsApp will block messages from unknown accounts when they exceed a high volume. During this period, your contacts can message you as usual. Message blocking stops after message rates return to normal.

This kind of product design of opt out instead of opt in and non transparent processes is why I refuse to use these apps.

I could even live with their dumb default choices, if they had Open official APIs to consumers, for third party services to offer these kind of add on blocks

A small subset of users who really care will use it like ad blockers and they will only loose marginal revenue, and there would be uneasy truce where user freedom and business profit could both live, but they want to squeeze every last bit of money from their users .

We are basically asked to bring a knife to a nuclear fight an against an endless army. Why bother?

I mean I would find it incredibly hard to believe if Meta pulls a "but what can we do" since they approve all those numbers for a business with a green fucking checkmark. Since it's mostly a paid service they encourage that is what I believe.

Do the following:

- Degoogle your phone and install lineageOS

- Install fdroid

- Install a GPS faker app that lets you set your coordinates manually

- Set coordinates to the European court of justice in den hague

- Install whatsapp and telegram

...never receive spam ever again.

Easy as pie.

Man, cutting up all the butter to make our crusts is such a pain. Glad to see the simile being used properly.

yeah, but the result is pie!

>- Set coordinates to the European court of justice in den hague

1) That's the international court of justice, not European.

2) What does the proximity to ICJ have to do with this? You're tryin to scare spammers, not Georg Bush, Tony Blair or Putin.

Maybe try it out because spammers are regionally targeting you and they have geofences in their software?

Edit: nevermind, I didn't realize I was talking to "cumpiler69"

That doesn't answer my question. What's special about the Hague as a geofence? Do you think the international court of justice will spend resources to start going after random people in Russia/India/Uzbekistan because they make scam calls from their mom's basement?

Interesting. I didn't even know it existed and I've been on for over a decade and am I heavy user. I'm not defending it because it sounds horrible i only wonder how I've been spared and you not? I would stop using the service instantly if i were you.

Consumer protection laws perhaps? For example here in Belgium/EU, it’s illegal to receive ads by phone or mail unless you opted in, with a clear and easy option to unsubscribe.

I'm on WhatsApp since 14 years and it has never ever happened to me.

WhatsApp after that Facebook acquisition has simply become worse.

More buggy, more clunky, lists of useless features like "communities", Facebook like pages.

I will soon be leaving it and being exclusively on signal.

Signal also adds random unwanted features, such as statuses.

And signal still won't stop bugging me to enable notifications.

I cannot understand why they have such a notification when I don't want notifications.

Am I costing them money for not having notifications on?

I guess is someone messages you on Signal and you do not reply, or notice, it significantly damages Signal’s reputation with the person trying to reach you. They will give up using Signal and try to reach you in another way.

For the vast majority of people, not enabling notifications in a messaging app is a mistake in the sense of something they do want to do but failed to because they're bad at technology or just distracted, not in the sense of an ill-advised decision they made intentionally.

Signal added Stories two years ago and they can be deactivated completely. I don't use them but fail to see the problem here. A reason for people to switch to Signal and a non-issue for everybody else.

https://signal.org/blog/introducing-stories/

The problem is that they will keep adding unwanted features, or features wanted by some shareholders.

One alternative is to switch to some open source protocol, like matrix.

Signal is a nonprofit; it does not have shareholders.

It does, however have a mission to bring secure communication to a large audience. That means it will add features it expects will expand the audience. I don't like stories in general (they're FOMO-driven engagement bait), but Signal having them doesn't meaningfully impact my ability to use it to message and call people.

Rubbish.

Signal has no shareholders and is a nonprofit, precisely so they don't have the wrong incentives.

Stories were added two years ago. There have been no "unwanted features" since, provided stories is an unwanted feature in the first place.

I read somewhere that Stories are essential to people in some parts of the world.

The other day I was downvoted here for mentioning not being able to restore a local backup is bonkers. Many people like me lost years of chat history because they moved everything to Google Drive.

The "stories" feature is just plain stupid. It doesn't make any sense.

Also the "business" thing is you with an AI chatbot that just offers a crappy answer and you'll need to contact a human anyway.

One of the worst cases of software enshittification.

The stories feature is actually the most used stories product in the world (more than IG or Snapchat)

There is zero chance the whatsapp stories have more views than IG stories.

Maybe not in the US?

I can vouch for a large amount of usage in LATAM, people that won't bother with instagram (like older folks) eat it up, just swipe and you're watching your nephews birthday photos, just like Mr Facebook intended

You’ll be very surprised if you saw internal dashboards for each feature usage.

I'm sure that's true, as that's how the company operates, but it's always a bit difficult to interpret. Meta has kind of been king of "this feature shows an amazing number of interactions", and large numbers of people seemingly genuinely hating it.

Those two things can both be true.

When one is judged on 'impact', but not judged on 'postive impact'... Having a lot of people interact with your feature and hate it counts.

> The other day I was downvoted here for mentioning not being able to restore a local backup is bonkers. Many people like me lost years of chat history because they moved everything to Google Drive.

I remember how it used to be impossible to migrate chat history from Android back to iOS.

It looks like the feature was only implemented some time this year (!):

https://www.androidauthority.com/whatsapp-chat-transfer-cros...

It's not like FB recently acquired WhatsApp.

The acquisition was 10-years ago (2014). Which is an insanely long time in tech.

> WhatsApp after that Facebook acquisition has simply become worse.

Integrating Meta AI was actually genius. I use it all of the time.

Really curious.. use it for what?

Aside from funny pictures, I rough out concepts for personal projects while commuting or on off time, mostly. It's pretty decent at rough calculations now, but even if you don't trust that, if you have a project in mind and you describe what you want to do, it can tell you what formulas and background knowledge you will need to flesh it out and you have the names that you can look up for further details. Really cuts down on research time and it's better time spent than scrolling memes.

Had an idea to add tracking to my alt-az telescope, asked Meta AI what I need to understand and it explains right ascension and declination and even provides the coordinate transformations needed (and even in a language that I specify). I can audit the code and have it write some unit tests that I also check, flesh it out a bit and I'm done.

That kind of thing.

Is this non available in Europe. I don't see any AI chat in my search bar. Running latest whatsapp on pixel 8a

They roll the feature gradually.

It's been available to me for months now, so that's either a slow rollout, or EU restrictions are responsible again.

I use Messenger constantly and hate Meta AI when it tries to push itself on me thru Messenger.

For AI and search (50% use it for queries I'd otherwise previously used Google for) I use GPT... that is my AI / AI I use.

I do use Meta AI yet only through my Meta Ray Bans which are handy.

Plusses: better desktop app, dark mode, Meta AI, payments, multiple accounts, profile QR code.

Minuses: "communities", business spam, "channels"

I'd say meta did pretty well.

I don't know what communities on WhatsApp are or how they work; but my work partner is heavy on using WhatsApp and those communities / channels help him to organize his work. So I guess we are not the target audience for that one

I don't think they had any desktop or web app before they were acquired.

I feel like the sync solution with Whatsapp Web changed at some point - it stopped depending on your phone being online.

> I will soon be leaving it and being exclusively on signal.

How do you do this if all your friends are on WA?

I don't have many friends.

It won't be hard to convince 5 people.

If I badly need to reach out, I will just make a normal phone call or text.

Actually WhatsApp used to break on new years eve because everyone was sending messages at the same time. FB fixed that

If you're actually part of a community like a run club, the communities feature is pretty nifty. It's the typical "I have no friends and thus am not using social media and don't want to integrate into social circles at all" HN response I guess.

In the US, while many I know use iMessage or Android send via SMS/RCS, most all my friends and family also have Facebook Messenger and most all seem to end up sending there since one doesn't have to worry about if Apple/Android, or which features are supported etc. The only big downside is Facebook Messenger strips all meta data, so unlike say Apple Messages, not good for sending photos to friends family since won't have the correct date, location, etc (which you can turn on/off on Apple Messages), and with messages can send as large or as many as I want in one message so they can easily add to their Photo library with a click. With Facebook Messenger, even with the new HD feature (you annoying have to click each time), you still have limitations on how many and size you can send. Hoping Messenger or or WhatsApp eventually seamlessly support that. Some apps say they do but you have to add photo as a "file" which ends up with lots of down sides from a user experience. Also if WhatsApp is so popular hopefully eventually they let you merge your Messenger data into What's App since can't imagine starting in a new app and losing a lifetime of messages history. Was excited for RCS, but so far, has been problematic where sometimes RCS is enabled for a contact other times for same contact its not. Or slow to send, though is preserving meta data it seem now. But no support for replies, which is a deal breaker and of course not encrypted at all.

Photos sent on WhatsApp get so heavily reduced in size they are pretty useless for anything other than a glance at within a conversation

Signal offers the option to scale images or not, which seems like the best option from a user perspective (maybe not from a service provider's cost perspective).

Where is this option? I often get errors about the video being too big and then need to crop my video length to send it. Super annoying

Settings > Data and Storage on Android. Settings > Chats on desktop. It does have a 100mb limit though; you can't send long videos through chat.

You can send them in the original resolution by selecting "Document", then "Gallery". But yes, this requires some amount of knowledge.

That’s good knowledge though! Thanks

You can select the compression level in settings.

Toggle the HD button before sending.

Do the experiment: it's still not the original file.

Try sending a proper DSLR camera photo using HD, it will still get damaged and "artifacted".

I'm aware it's not the original file, rarely do I want to send the original file because it would be way too big. If you want to do that then you have to send it as a file instead.

I believe that if you send it as a file instead of as a normal image you can send it uncompressed, (Attachements Button > Documents / Files > Select image in file picker, I guess they make this non obvious because people will gobble a ton of space even if 95% they can make do with hyper compressed blobs

yes, sending it as a file preserves 100% integrity.

it would MD5 checksum match.

There is now an “HD” button when you select photos. By default this is disabled but just make sure you select it and it’s way better. Might be a new feature, I only learned about it last week or two.

Edit: Saw someone mention it a few comments down, and that it’s not quite the original. It is indeed an improvement though.

I've had the same experience. Practically everyone I know primarily uses Facebook Messenger (or sometimes Instagram) for messaging since its available everywhere and has the features we like. We occasionally use SMS/RCS since it has photomojis or WhatsApp for international groups (e.g., all the family overseas). A few folks use Signal.

But its mostly Messenger.

Even without WhatsApp for business, it's changed the world. I'm an American in the US and have multiple messaging apps on my phone, but have recently taken recruiter calls via WhatsApp from overseas headhunters. It was surprising, and I'm still a bit befuddled when my phone rings and it's an app that isn't indicating a POTS call, especially if I haven't received a text message in advance to let me know it's coming.

I was thinking about the same yesterday, if there is something that can be done to tell people why it is so bad to do business on whatsapp. I don't know why so many love it other than convenience. The replies get lost and they are lazy to scroll and ask for the same information again. Many professionals like accountants want to share all confidential information on whatsapp and don't even care for sending an email. That mixed with a new style of writing short hand, 'S' for a yes and one word reply instead of an answer that requires a sentence at the least. All manners have died, just the damn text and pictures instead of a proper communication.

It's in the name, WhatsApp for busy-ness. By forcing all your clients and potential clients to chat with you instead of just putting the information on a website for them to find, you will indeed stay busy all day with people asking the same questions over and over.

website? do you mean a Facebook page?

The layout of Facebook pages are controlled by Facebook and not very good for businesses or their potential clients, since it puts emphasis on social media updates. What I'm talking about is a real website that shows up on a Google search, where clients can purchase/order the product and easily find the information they are looking for. It costs business owners a pittance to hire somebody to make it.

But some of them think it's better to not give any info and force potential customers to call or chat with them, believing that they are such great salesman that they have to get in there. In reality they are like the bazaar salesman who didn't have prices on their products and got completely crushed by super markets, which are organized and price transparent.

At this point there's a strong argument that the interface is the whole point

Sure, most of us would love it if we could go to a dedicated web page, fill a tailor made form or send an email and be done with it, but that requires some knowledge (And forethought) to both set up, operate and use

And you may argue that people should know, but as any Tier 1 tech support, will tell you, some people really just don't know

But since IM is basically required to be a functioning member of society even if you never have had to fill paperwork in your life, people that don't care or don't need to care just use what's already familiar, with the secondary effect of every (Whatsapp) business having an assumed mimimum difficulty curve, just ask them and both of you will figure it out

It‘s worth noting that they are doing all of this expansion on top of (or parallel to?) the Signal protocol.

Does anyone have specifics on how they do it, what compromises they‘re making? Because they are doing it on a whole different scale than Signal and any other e2ee messenger I’m aware of (take note, Matrix folks)

It's odd how ubiquitous WhatsApp is in Europe. How and why did it catch on there so completely?

I am sure it’s directly correlated to iPhone market share.

It's not. Whatsapp was popular in Europe before iMessage existed.

The ubiquity of unlimited SMS on US phone plans in the early 2010s is probably the biggest factor.

In Spain I guess it is because SMS have never been free (or similar). It took off well before wifi was widespread in homes and offices, IIRC.

Edit: it costs me around .10€ to send an SMS...

Same in the Netherlands.

In Italy SMS are included in the monthly plan since many years, but everyone is using WhatsApp too.

My plan includes free SMS, but nobody is capable of reading or sending SMS anymore. Mobile phones can only have three apps: phone, WhatsApp and shop discount apps

Easy. European Countries are so small, esp compared to America, and there is a ton of movement between them so need to communicate between countries was high. However, SMS between different country cell networks was extremely expensive for various reasons. However, data and data roaming was not. Since WhatApp is entirely data to cellular company, it caught on and network effect took over.

It’s also nice to use for calling with US people that are willing to put up with it.

How do US people do intentional calls?

Most don't. The few who have international contacts tend to pick whatever their contact uses.

Depending on your family/travel background, it's very possible you don't or don't enough to need WhatsApp.

We travel overseas but everyone we have met just keep in communication over Facebook.

All our family is in the United States. When we are overseas, we just use wifi calling to communicate back home or since most people have iPhones, iMessage/Facetime.

My brother is about distance of Moscow to Lisbon from me, still a free call since it's domestic.

In addition to that, WhatsApp was available at the time on Symbian devices and Nokia’s S40 devices (I remember downloading Jar and Jad files for button mobile devices, and each update was free up to year then it was a dollar for a year)

Crazy! You made me remember i actually once paid for "something" when it comes to Whatsapp! Then they added somekind of disclaimer "will be a paid service xxxxxyyyy" but it never happened!

Yes I don't remember what I paid for.

Pretty sure i paid 0.99 for ... something. I don't remember what either. Might have been 1 year of service after the first year.

Hilarious we both don't know what we even paid for or why!

But it seemed all worth it at the time, right?

I think it was more or less “nag ware”. I remember clicking “no, later” multiple times in a row and they’d only ask like twice a year. I don’t think it ever stopped working for people who didn’t pay (afaik).

The fact that WhatsApp is also gigantic in large countries with no intermobility between them (Mexico, Brazil, Nigeria) would suggest that the only issue that mattered was the fact that ~2011, mobile carriers would charge insane rates for SMS.

For sure, but from what I understand, in some European Countries in 2011, SMS was free if your recipient was inside the country but cost if they were not due to tariffs and interconnect fees. Since Europeans do move between countries thanks to that European Union thing, it became a problem and WhatsApp became the solution.

Sure, other countries it might have picked up domestically thanks to high SMS prices but low data prices.

But why WhatsApp in Western Europe and Viber on the Balkan Peninsula?

I am not sure this is true. European countries are smaller but they are not that small. The number of people sending SMS to a foreign number regularly is I guess not significant. Potentially it was easier for people working abroad to stay in touch with people back home. If anything like that, it would be more true that it's the cost of SMS within the country - it was always increasingly unlimited but not 10+ years ago, mine was I think 9 cents. If you had like a 1GB of data, then it was a no brainer to save the 9 cents.

From what I've heard, it's ubiquitous everywhere except North America, where it is still quite popular. In South America, everyone uses it, even to message their doctor with a random question.

Free messaging. And nowadays free calls- when my brother calls me from Japan he uses WhatsApp. I have no idea how they make money but I'm not complaining.

Imagine a time when telcos literally demanded 50 cents for every time you asked "where are you".

It's meta. They make money from advertising.

there are no adverts on whatsapp

But Facebook collects your interactions, adds them to your (shadow) profile, and sells this marketing data to advertisers.

Yep, its popularity basically matches up with places where SMS cost money. It's ended up being a work around the ridiculous telecom billing.

I'm not sure if the sms cost was the reason, at least in my fuzzy memories. I think by the time whatsapp showed up I had already had unlimited national sms for a couple years.

However, sms is extremely limited and mms is crap.

Whatsapp is text messaging that works.

iMessage is useless because more than half of your contacts have Android. Plus it's less intuitive and has fewer features than WhatsApp. Possibly because it's designed by americans used to the dark ages of sms :)

And why not Signal?

Whatsapp is huge more or less anywhere that isn't iMessage or Line Dominated, so... S. America, Africa, Europe and some subset of Asian Countries

They got a HUGE headstart back when Black Berry was the smartphone to have and basically never stopped

> These users send more than 100 billion messages every day in 60 languages

How do they know what language the messages are in? Isn’t WhatsApp “end to end encrypted, for real, trust your pals at Facebook”(tm)?

Somewhat related, every time I open the web client of WhatsApp I see the side widget animating through my history. What is going on here? As a programmer, this looks like some very lazy work, but I wonder if there is more to it (?)

Whatsapp desktop/web is the epitome of laziness.

When they switched to Electron or whatever it is they removed a ton of options, for example enlarging the font.

Their new macOS app is surprisingly pleasant to use, and much snappier in performance.

Still browser based and no enlarge font option. It obeys cmd +/- to adjust the font size but only for chat text, not for the chat list or the rest of the app.

I’ve been using the beta version of WhatsApp on macOS for a year or so and it’s a native Catalyst app. I kinda assumed the main version had dropped electron and moved to the catalyst version too, has that not happened?

WhatsApp uses your phone as the primary message store. Its architecture is more similar to SMS than to typical DB-driven client-server apps. Their servers are only designed to pass messages through, not persist them (they persist them only until they're delivered to all recipients, which usually is very short). This is an uncommon design these days, but it's also what's let them serve half the world with 5 backend engineers (!) back before Facebook/Meta bought them. It's also why, if you didn't make any backups, you lose your WhatsApp message history when you switch phones.

So the web/desktop clients are thin clients over that store on your phone, which keep an eventually-consistent cache of the messages somewhere locally (indexeddb or something like that I bet). So if I'm not mistaken, when you open the web client, it connects to a WhatsApp relay server which wakes up the WhatsApp app on your phone, asks it for any new messages since last time it connected, and syncs them over. This is a fast but not instant process and what you're seeing is the UI realtime updating as the messages are being synced. The longer since you've had the web client open, the longer this takes.

I'm not sure if it's deliberate but I can totally imagine it to be. It very clearly shows the syncing taking place. Personally, since I'm rather enamored by their design, I love seeing it play out in realtime.

Note, I'm not 100% sure about any of the above, notably core aspects of the architecture might've changed since Meta took over.

Is this still the case? Afaik you can use web Whatsapp without phone now

PC is independent from phone now, but from observation, it seems like it picks a "main" device and syncs the other ones to that (Inconsistently, probably whichever you used latest)

I can see how ocasionally I'll get a message way sooner on PC, respond, then pick my phone and that will "animate" messages in my phone, so it works both ways

WhatsApp has certainly been a boon to those at the SEC who care about collecting scurrilous fines.

Never used WhatsApp business once, it’s always from fb messenger or iMessages where business talks

Restoftheworld typically deal with stories outside of the United States.

I sense a conflict of interests or at the very least sponsored posts.

Latest 3 stories from Rest of World are about WhatsApp[0][1][2].

What's up with that? As a person who dislikes WhatsApp[3], I find this extremely concerning.

In my opinion, this is a PR move.

[0]: https://restofworld.org/2024/whatsapp-lifeline-conflict-zone...

[1]: https://restofworld.org/2024/how-whatsapp-became-a-global-cu...

[2]: https://restofworld.org/2024/how-whatsapp-for-business-chang...

[3]: https://www.ivanmontilla.com/blog/goodbye-whatsapp

It is definitely a PR move

Hmm I have yet to ever use WhatsApp and not sure why I would.

Well, this is a new way to spot an American in the wild.

WhatsApp is basically cross platform iMessage. That’s why many parts of the world use it.

While I do use iMessage a lot, I have typically used Facebook Messenger for cross-platform.

But now I am using RCS more and more since it's on iPhone now.

Always has been. Many Americans, myself included, never used WhatsApp since SMS between people we have needed to contact was "free" since like 2007.

Given most messaging apps are pretty much interchangeable from a UX perspective, the main reason you would use it is that people you want to talk to are using it.

If you live in the USA, that's probably not the case. If you live in Europe, it probably is. If you live in Europe and there's a group chat taking place, it's almost certain to be in WhatsApp, and that's a much better UX than if it was SMS.

SMS is also unencrypted, fairly spoofable and offers no delivery guarantees.

"How WhatsApp changed the world by becoming more like WeChat"

Enshittification claims another victim.

whatsapp should be divested from fb(meta). and yeah the business api has a lot of potential.

I don't know whether a fb account is required though to use the api.

It is down now btw

No, it didn't! WhatsApp spam is out of control! If you want a spam-free messenger, use Viber as it does not allow VoIP phones!

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