Unfortunately, as it's been implemented as opt-in on WhatsApp's side, this isn't really true. Honestly that decision alone means it's kinda dead in the water.
The regional limit makes it pretty much useless. The only reason I keep a whatsapp account is to stay in touch with my family in law and a few relatives who live in another continent.
Sounds like an easy fix. Europe just has to convince the rest of the world to ditch the 15 year old popular US apps ingrained in pop culture and with network effects, and have them switch to their own EU made apps, this way we can all communicate together. :hugs: Until then, let's keep chatting on $US_APP so we can debate on how we're gonna achieve that switch.
Maybe it was tongue in cheek and I missed it.
There have been several alternatives, and people didn’t switch.
WhatsApp strikes a good balance of usability and security. Telegram is too insecure (no E2E by default). Signal is too secure (no chat exports).
Nobody has even bothered to make an app that stands toe-to-toe with WhatsApp, even without the network effects.
Getting the 2 billion users is the hard part. But that is marketing not coding.
it's the network effect.
If normies who don't care for things (which is most people tbh) don't decide to switch, do you, as a techie/early adopter, just turn off whatsapp and disconnect with your normie friends? You are unlikely to be important enough in the friend group to force a switch, not to mention that this needs to happen enmass for a swing in the network effect to happen.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
Imagine all your friends love pizza, as do you. Suddenly you decide sushi is better so, naturally, you tell your friends to try out sushi at the next dinner. Assuming some of your friends are not absolutely against sushi, yes, you’ll have that sushi dinner. But what if they don’t like it that much? They will revert to pizza or accept sushi, occasionally, when they want to see you, while still prefering pizza for all other interactions.
There has to be a perceived advantage for changing habits. If few people see the benefits of Signal or other non-Whatsapp apps, they will not change their minds.
You just have to check the one they use. Also, both of the apps would support notifications when something has happened in that app.
> But what if they don’t like it that much?
There is no real advantage of WhatsApp over Signal except that some people are already using it, and a significant privacy disadvantage. Once someone already has Signal then the advantage of WhatsApp is gone and only the disadvantage remains.
Signal trades some decreased convenience (for example in terms of backup) for some added security. Whatsapp has more “cosmetic” features (polls,…).
If you value privacy over convenience and other features Signal is a great choice. If you value convenience and other features over privacy Whatsapp is a great choice.
I think it’s safe to say that different people have different priorities which result in different choices.
This can't be a barrier to adoption in practice because most people don't even know that it's a thing in order to consider it as a difference, and anyone who both does and cares about it from the outset would have no trouble setting up automatic backups with Signal, and then appreciate the privacy advantage.
> Whatsapp has more “cosmetic” features (polls,…).
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/9971667844506-S...
> If you value privacy over convenience and other features Signal is a great choice. If you value convenience and other features over privacy Whatsapp is a great choice.
There is no actual reason to use Whatsapp except for the network effect.
and only those who actually succeed being unreasonable is remembered. The other unreasonable people simply get forgotten or ignored - the vast majority.
Also, you're promoting defeatism. If it's just you and you succeed 1% of the time, it still helps a little. If it's millions of people -- even if that's a small minority of the population -- and they each succeed 1% of the time, that's actually a lot of groups getting converted. And it's more likely to succeed the more people in each group who do it.
So the conclusion should be that everybody should do it, since that improves everybody's odds, rather than that nobody should.
Therefore, you risk the loss resulting from a failure.
It's why you don't just use this argument to gamble or buy lottery tickets.
Signal is the closest but they fall short because they prioritize privacy over features. Which is their choice to make, but it means they have ruled themselves out from going mainstream. If you're not targeting feature parity with WhatsApp then you have zero chance of supplanting it.
Telegram prioritises idk the FSB spying on your chats, that app gives me the creeps.
I'm the only person I know who ever did it.
Android/media/com.whatsapp/WhatsApp/Backups/
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/whatsapp/comments/11oiwse/working_a...
I find Telegram the best app; its faster and easier than the rest I find. The default no e2e sucks so cannot use it for everything, but having everything immediately ready and working on all devices makes it very nice. When you buy a new one, immediately all is there. Yes, obviously I am aware that can only be because no e2e, but normies and non normies alike seem to really hate the whatsapp, and even more, signal losing all your messages because backup/restore is too annoying. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, but if someone manages to make more that experience... I mean turn it around; make e2e the default but allow people to create groups or 1-1 without e2e if they want (knowing then downsides and upsides of that).
Signal has end-to-end encryption working on all devices. Telegram doesn't because they're amateurs.
Edit: I guess you are from Ukraine? That is valid, the CEO is fishy. I did say I would not recommend it, I said it is the only performant and easy to use chat app I know off. That was a user perspective thing and more the hope of people pointing out 'no you fool here is another good one'. Definitely not Signal, slow and unfriendly. Whatsapp a little better, but Meta. Next.
You can't enable 1:1 secret chat from your desktop client. The secret chat doesn't appear on desktop when you enable it on your phone. So you're forced to drop end-to-end encryption if you want interoperability between phone and desktop clients. You can't enable secret chats for group chats on any client. The company isn't working to make secret chats actually usable.
>I guess you are from Ukraine?
Nope.
>Definitely not Signal, slow and unfriendly
The thing is, friendly apps are apps that respect your human right to privacy. There's a term for applications that appear to do something useful while doing something against the user's interests without them knowing: A Trojan Horse. Which is a malware classification.
When you view it through that lens, Telegram is the unfriendliest app out there outside completely unencrypted messengers like Palringo (at least used to be the case), where anyone can read your message from the cable with WireShark.
anyway, the point was not to use or endorse telegram, or the garbage i mentioned, but strive for e2ee while fast and usable.
I would sign up for anything e2ee but yeah ideally open source and hosting owned by an EU company.
Telegram is fast precisely because it's backdoored by design. Forward secret messaging app with proper key management has to encrypt the message to every peer in the group. Telegram can just use single packet to server that then pushes it to everyone else. This difference will die over time as 5G and 6G take over and phones get faster by generation. Telegram will not get more safe by generation. They're only playing to get as many users to their roach motel to make it as difficult as people for people to leave.
What about Deltachat/Arcanechat?
I use Signal to communicate with other tech folks, but good luck convincing your dentist/doctor/etc to send reminders on signal instead of WhatsApp.
I think they have different (and somewhat opposing, even) targets, Signal wants to be extremely privacy protecting, and it's a disservice to their goals to sell them as a replacement for WhatsApp, because they're not.
If you want people to switch, recommend Telegram.
Why would people switch from always-end-to-end encrypted group chats to never-end-to-end encrypted group chats?
Boosting Russia is not the solution.
That is the main issue.
There are alternatives but waaaay too many already. Some will say Signal, others matrix, xmpp, jami, deltachat, olvid, simplex, briar, tox,...there is a new one every couple of months but none everbody can agree on.
The sad part is we were halfway there with XMPP 2 decades ago when both google and facebook were interoperable with it.
It's not a technical problem. It's a political one
How do you do encryption?
The reason Whatsapp won out over competing services in the first place (over here at least) was that they managed to be both free and relatively spam free. All free alternatives quickly got subsumed by spam (even non-free SMS has a spam problem nowadays).
I don't know if you know this, but the EU cannot force a company to obey EU laws outside of the EU.
'Intel v Commission (C-413/14 P, 2017)' is another case where EU Antitrust explicitly punished global conduct outside of the EU.
Right now, with exception of antitrust, EU laws only incidentally affect global conduct, e.g. once a business is compliant with GDPR, it's often too costly to restrict compliance just to the EU. Nothing stops that from changing. EU absolutely can make a law that obliges e.g. chat app providers to either apply EU privacy standards globally or face bans/fines/seizure of their EU operations.
Are you on some funny medication or something? ROTFL.
I live in one of those countries, and I don't think I've ever had to use it to communicate with someone on another continent. I think most of its use is simply local, for your community or friend group.
The downside for me is basically the lack of appeal for a non-tech user (like my parents) to voluntarily want to stop using an app they've been using for, what, 10-12 years? It’s not that big of a deal; everyone uses Instagram or Facebook (maybe)... WhatsApp is definitely going to make the process difficult, too.
It's an interesting divide.
I do have some Caucasian friends who use WhatsApp. One stopped using it when FB purchased it, which I can respect. Most people I know in the states though just use iMessage or signal.
That's interesting; I have and use discord myself (owner of a 300+ member server for my WoW guild), but I've never really considered it a messaging app in the same way I do iMessage, WhatsApp, and so on. I think because everyone is pseudo anonymous, it's more like social media to me. Plus I've got the phone numbers and iMessage groups for close friends I've made over discord.
Given its popularity among gamers of all nationalities, I wonder where discord stacks up in relation to the EU's DMA?
(I just really don't like Discord and I'm bitter that it's what my guild de facto has to use because it's what gamers have standardized on.)
All the B2C services I work with are sending SMS to my phone. Not RCS, not iMessage: they are sending SMS messages.
All the MFA providers, such as Twilio and Okta, are sending SMS.
All the political campaign spammers are sending SMS.
All the reminders for appointments and bills are sending SMS.
All the notifications for apps where Push isn't good enough: they're sending SMS.
If user-to-user communication is using iMessage then that is fine. I have noticed that only about 2 of my human contacts use RCS, and at least 2 of them are using iPhones and not Androids for it. So that's some anecdata for ya!
iMessage?
> 40% of Americans are not using [iMessage]. I'd consider that widespread.
That doesn't mean those 40% are using SMS instead.
Here in EU you pay for that. Soon as you send an image, you get charged extra. Completely useless compared to Whatsapp
Have you considered that the EU isn't one country?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_Messaging_Service
It is not unusual for there to be hosting or intermediate storage of images and other files, and from the phone you may tap a link or something to download/access that file, instead of having it automatically download and appear immediately, due to bandwidth and resource constraints.
I guess a phone/app could exist that does convert to MMS instead, though, since the app can make that decision.
Both of these exist, as do middle grounds between them.
I'm in only one WhatsApp group with someone local, everyone else in my chats is from abroad. Yet I'm from a country with dirt cheap data and nearly universal smartphone ownership. People just don't use WA here for whatever reason. But drive an hour across the border and suddenly everyone is on WhatsApp.
There are phone deals that include unlimited SMS messages, but not MMS.
Now try, exporting all your whatsapp messges to standard format that can be interpreted in any text editor. Again, SMS wins.
Looking for the abusive messages a nasty acquitance sent you? Again, SMS wins.
edit: okay, sending MMS isn't always free, depends on the countries[1]. still free for USA, Europe, Canada, etc.
(Although most Americans have iPhones so just transparently avoid SMS for most of their conversations.)
I still only use WhatsApp because it’s a lot better than sms.
I live in one such country, and indeed, the bulk of my usage is to coordinate with local groups based in the same city.
But tend to meet many people from the US who don't live here, and they all straight up ask for my whatsapp.
I'm also a heavy telegram and signal user, and can't recall a single instance of anybody mentioning these.
I don't use Google or Apple accounts either so RCS is out too. WhatsApp is meta now unfortunately but for historical reasons there's no avoiding it here.
I use WhatsApp and Telegram pretty much exclusively (telegram more for group chats)
To you maybe. Not everyone has overseas contacts.
It's not really the "overseas" usecase that is the sticking point for many businesses.
Does your business in Spain ever need to message Brits who are there on holiday? Does your business in Greece ever have customers who drive across the border from Albania?
And we both met them here in Europe.
People are so welcoming in latin america that when you marry someone, you literally marry the whole extended family. After just a handful of years is not like my partner's aunts and cousins are strangers to me. I can contact them anytime for advice on a topic related to their work/career field and they will do so about mine.
Add to that some cousins and friends who moved overseas and I have many regular contacts that live more than 10000km away from me.
Most people communicate with the ones in their region. Even when going on vacation most people can afford only to travel around their own continent.
Ukraine isn't in the EU, neither is Swicerland, Norway or, most famously, the UK. All of these are on the European continent, all of these have citizens living right near a border with an EU country and regularly having to communicate with the EU side.
Yes, it does not include UK, but that's on them.
I encourage people living in other countries to complain to their goverment on Metas policies.
… useless FOR YOU. not useless overall. its just that you in your limited use case cannot use it.
So I am usually "in the region" with those guys, but since "region" probably means "similar phone number" it will be useless to me too.
Spam prevention is a likely angle, however. EU should force it to be opt-out, not opt-in -- probably what people want anyway.
With BirdyChat though, it feels like you'll be confronted by its silliness in perpetuity.
And how many of these are there? Anyone?
FAIL
Chatting with anyone has always been opt in from the point of the receiver, so I don't get your point?
I am not even sure how this is GDPR-compliant (that app is European and thus must care about GDPR). They do not have my permission to have/handle my private data, and GDPR does not allow WhatAspp to hand it over without my permission either... My name (which whatsapp exposes simply with my phone number) is considered PII under GDPR and
And speaking about the other end: I have bad news about all the data you share with untrustworthy contacts on WhatsApp…
Quite practically, anyone that enables backups (which WhatsApp heavily nudges people to do) uploads a copy of all your messages and media sent to them to a cloud provider you have no privacy agreement with.
As for your second comment, updated first comment with:
I am not even sure how this is GDPR-compliant if that app is European. They do not have my permission to have my private data, and GDPR does not allow whatAspp to hand it over without my permission either...
Only to who you choose to make it available to. And if you choose “everybody”, I don’t see how you can reasonably expect this to mean “everybody not using third-party software”?
You should get to control how/ to whom your data is distributed, but also requiring these recipients to only use software and services of your choosing seems excessive. Platform lock-in at this point seems like the much greater harm.
I could see the case for a small indicator in the contact details that they’re using a third-party client, but anything more (green bubbles?) would be counterproductive.
Being able to reject spam , regions, specific people, specific topics, all makes sense. Wanting to approve/reject the program used to make the connection is a pretty useless way to segment communications - how will you determine “questionable” clients, and what when there’s a person you want to chat with and a person you don’t both using the same client?
You did have to initiate the call, but you still didn’t have any kind of agreement about it.
If you are bored and have a computer, you can add every possible phone number as a contact. Not many people do that, but some did.
> old telephone lines did not disclose info about me with merely my phone number.
Did you call that drug dealer every Tuesday evening? Looks suspicious. Did that criminal call you the day before he robbed a store not far from your home? Looks suspicious. Do you call Pakistan twice a week? Looks suspicious. Have you ever called a suicide prevention hotline? A bank other than your own? A mosque? An independent political party?
Your POTS phone was always revealing information.