[HN Gopher] WhatsApp gives users an ultimatum: Share data with F...
___________________________________________________________________
WhatsApp gives users an ultimatum: Share data with Facebook or stop
using app
Author : erwinmatijsen
Score : 2126 points
Date : 2021-01-06 20:45 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| sashokbg wrote:
| I live in Europe (France) and I don't have the part "As part of
| the Facebook family of companies .." in the EULA that is
| presented to me. Maybe they have different versions and the one
| in EU is kinda still OK ?
| Mc_Big_G wrote:
| Well, there goes the "You don't need to quit WhatsApp because
| they don't collect data like Facebook" argument.
| classified wrote:
| At least they made it unmistakably clear to those who'd prefer to
| forget it that their tentacles up your every orifice _is_ the
| price you have to pay for using their "free" products.
| Simulacra wrote:
| Sounds like my Oculus paperweight...
| violetgarden wrote:
| You're telling me! I got my mom an Oculus since she wouldn't
| need a beefy computer to run VR. A few weeks after getting it,
| they want the Oculus account switched over to Facebook.
| Luckily, she can use the Oculus account for a few more years,
| but it was still so annoying.
| jordache wrote:
| why not just create a burner FB account?
| sneak wrote:
| It's no longer a burner if you type in payment details to buy
| stuff, it's then linked to your banking identity.
| jordache wrote:
| However if you don't use that account for any other
| activities, it's a dead-end insight
| purplecats wrote:
| it ceases to be a burner with usage. gaze into the abyss and
| the abyss gazes back into you
| simonswords82 wrote:
| That's a really interesting point.
|
| I created a new burner FB account (I don't use FB) to go
| with my Quest 2.
|
| I used a fake name and a gmail burner account.
|
| However I've had to enter my credit card details to make
| payments so they have my real name, bank details and
| address information. They also know what I'm watching, what
| I'm buying etc
|
| So my question is - do they call me out at some point and
| tell me to add a real name or prove my ID. Or do they let
| me carry on under my burner account because they can still
| profit from me both from my spend on apps/games and by
| selling my real data?
| wayneftw wrote:
| Use a Visa gift card next time.
| ve55 wrote:
| imo Facebook has enough data that if you want to use it
| completely anonymously there is no reasonable way to put
| in half of the effort, and even Visa gifts cards won't be
| enough.
| bigiain wrote:
| I'm split here between saying "Doesn't mean you need to
| make it easy for them." and "How 'interesting' must a
| completely anonymous account look inside FB?"...
|
| (The only way to win is to not play the game...)
| ve55 wrote:
| It's very hard to say, and I would imagine it's hard to
| say even for the average Facebook employee too, given how
| large the company is. If it was a single coherent entity
| with its own knowledge map (which, last I checked, it
| still isn't, but I will check again in 2022), we could
| probably reason differently about it though.
| zizee wrote:
| Apparently this is against Facebook's ToS and it risks
| account suspension at any time (removing access to anything
| you bought in the Oculus store).
|
| I am thankful that I made the decision early on to use steam
| for purchases early on.
| LegitShady wrote:
| If you've got $200 and a chip in your shoulder, Oculus'
| arbitration clause in their user agreement ensures that if you
| pay $200, Oculus will pay thousands to handle the arbitration,
| and case law so far says they can't "combine" arbitration cases
| just because its convenient for them to do so.
|
| I no longer have an oculus HMD, but Oculus no longer has any
| profit from me.
| PakG1 wrote:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Whatsapp+founder Writing has been on
| the wall for a while.
| bibelo wrote:
| I was barely awake, and saw the popup this morning (I'm in EU)
| and with my sticky eyes, I couldn't see how I could send a
| message without accepting the popup
|
| So does anyone know if there's a way to revert the agreement?
| cesarb wrote:
| For me, there was also a clearly labeled "not now" option right
| next to the "agree" button. I quickly clicked that "not now",
| option (I didn't have at that moment the time to review a pair
| of long documents), and now I have no idea how to make the
| popup show again (so I can read these documents). I hope this
| doesn't mean my account will be banned in a few weeks.
| [deleted]
| elia_is_me wrote:
| good!
| dmje wrote:
| Literally noone I know is on Telegram or Signal. Literally
| everyone is on WhatsApp. Pretty much noone I know cares about
| privacy, and they're all on Facebook anyway. It's gonna be really
| hard giving it up :-/
| AlfeG wrote:
| I'm on opposite side. Literally no one use whatsup, only
| Telegram or Viber
| rusabd wrote:
| I am hosting rocketchat for majority of communication just for my
| family. It has some maintenance overhead but generally works
| really well
| tobyhinloopen wrote:
| Too bad I can't get rid of whatsapp. Clients commonly contact me
| via whatsapp
| sandGorgon wrote:
| this may fail regulatory test in India - where Whatsapp has been
| blocked from rolling out payments for 2 years now.
| https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/news...
|
| Because of regulations, Whatsapp may neither move data out of
| India or transfer to a third party.
| sauntheninja wrote:
| In India whatsapp is ubiquitous my whole family uses it my
| college uses it to send information all my friends use it using a
| alternative would be ideal but convincing people to not use
| whatsapp is a fool's errand here
| codegladiator wrote:
| Is there a possibility that we (us at hn, pro-privacy) are all
| just paranoid and the worst case scenarios we can imagine are
| never really going to happen ?
|
| I am a heavy advocate of privacy and the main driving factor for
| these conversations in my friend/family circle. Trying to get
| people to a different platform since 2 years now (they did and
| came back), so now I wonder if I am just wasting time really for
| a apocalypse that was never going to happen.
| blackbrokkoli wrote:
| I mean the advent of business computing was very literally the
| systematic eradication of 6 million Jews.
|
| IBM's custom designed punch cards and the absolute openness of
| census records (church books are rarely encrypted) was the only
| reason the third Reich was ever able to census all European
| Jews and then systematically deport them in any reasonable time
| frame.
|
| That is obviously very different from new WhatsApp TOS, but
| this incredibly prevalent opinion of "Well, nothing really bad
| regarding privacy and tech did actually happen, right?" irks me
| a lot.
| jjcon wrote:
| I'm pretty fricken sure they would have worked around not
| having that specific punch card tech - it's like saying 9/11
| wouldn't have happened if Linux didn't exist because the
| taliban used Linux systems
| bitcharmer wrote:
| The worst case scenario has been happening for years. Didn't
| Snowden teach us about how these platforms are a gold mine for
| shady government agencies and oppressive regimes?
| rusk wrote:
| And let's not forget organised crime. It's not beyond reason
| that some of the larger organisations could get their fingers
| into this.
|
| I think in Europe we are more aware of these issues because
| shady organisations in the past have been able to get their
| hands on government files and use them for nefarious
| purposes.
| scotty79 wrote:
| On one hand I never read through any TC or license and never
| agreed to anything in them. I'm just clicking buttons to be able
| to use the app. Often I don't even read the text on the button.
| And I think most people behave this way.
|
| On the other hand as tech savvy person I have no expectation
| about what happens to the data that I enter into the app beyond
| expecting it not to be immediately published for everyone to see
| unless that's what the app explicitely does.
|
| I know data I entered might be viewed by unspecified number of
| people all over the world during normal operation, and that this
| data might be published at some point in the future. I'm hoping
| none of the unknown people that can view my data knows me
| personally or uses this data against me.
|
| There's no end to end encryption hosted service I currently trust
| to do what they say. If I were to transfer information that I
| don't want under no circumstances to go public I'd have to
| research what wikileaks is now using for communication.
|
| That's the contract I'm operating under. I think it's a good
| balance because it's aligned with physical reality.
| amelius wrote:
| I want to switch. But how do I migrate (or backup) my existing
| conversations (including images and videos)?
| [deleted]
| Tomte wrote:
| Wasn't not doing that a precondition that the EU imposed on the
| Whatsapp acquisition by Facebook?
|
| Was that time-limited, is it not running afoul of that, or does
| Facebook just risk it?
| comeonseriously wrote:
| Get that data before they're forced to break up.
| notananthem wrote:
| Time to break up Facebook
| saos wrote:
| I stupidly accepted this. How can I decline it?
|
| Edit: Just did a comparison of all the data collected by
| Whatsapp, Signal and Telegram
|
| Telegram - https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/telegram-
| messenger/id686449807 WhatApp -
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/whatsapp-messenger/id310633997
| Signal - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/signal-private-
| messenger/id874...
|
| WhatApp collect a stupid amount of data. Its time for me to
| shift.
| an4rchy wrote:
| An interesting strategy from Facebook.
|
| Although the privacy related changes were somewhat expected, the
| timing and aggresive timeline will likely play out in Facebook's
| favor.
|
| While giving users a 1 month grace period to either comply (share
| their data) or delete their account already seems like a pretty
| aggressive window that limits the ability for users to fully
| assess options or migrate existing groups/chats to alternative
| platforms, the short timeline combined with the on-going
| pandemic, and the fact that WhatsApp has become one of the
| primary means of communication for many around the world will
| likely lead to a very limited drop in users leaving the platform
| as a result of this policy change.
|
| Beyond Febuary, once users have already shared their data, there
| is likely minimal incentive for groups or individuals to overcome
| the network effects and move to another platform in the short
| term.
| knodi123 wrote:
| > to either comply (share their data) or delete their account
|
| Isn't WhatsApp still purportedly end-to-end encrypted? What
| data is "on the table" when it comes to sharing - just contact
| lists and phone numbers?
| randoantimine wrote:
| > Isn't WhatsApp still purportedly end-to-end encrypted? What
| data is "on the table" when it comes to sharing - just
| contact lists and phone numbers?
|
| It is, and same is claimed in their privacy policy and ToS.
| According to the original article it will include, what is
| already being collected: User phone numbers
| Other people's phone numbers stored in address books
| Profile names Profile pictures and Status
| message including when a user was last online
| Diagnostic data collected from app logs
|
| Along with possibly: Purchases
| Financial information Location Contacts
| User content Identifiers Usage data and
| Diagnostics
|
| A little more than contact lists and phone numbers.
| beagle3 wrote:
| I'd be surprised if this isn't just whitewashing some
| previously shared data.
|
| Also, a preparation for antitrust action - once the data is
| shared and integrated, even if they are forced to separate
| WhatsApp, they have all the metadata (which takes 3-5 years to
| become stale) and now they will have it "legally" (sadly, this
| extortion is indeed legal. It shouldn't be)
| nickcw wrote:
| How about pay $1 / year to opt out of all data sharing?
|
| I foolishly installed the Facebook app on Android for a while.
| When I asked for a data dump from Facebook I was amazed at the
| amount of data it had stolen from my phone, including full
| contacts list. It sounds like that is exactly what Facebook are
| planning with WhatsApp.
|
| I'd pay $1 / year to opt out of that and be the customer rather
| than the product.
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| > I'd pay $1 / year to opt out of that and be the customer
| rather than the product.
|
| And I'd pay $5,000 for a new Tesla. Though I have no idea why
| someone would sell me one for so cheap.
| noncoml wrote:
| If you live in US, the number has to be probably close to
| $30/month to match what FB is making out of you
| endless1234 wrote:
| How do you come to that number? $30 per month from WhatsApp
| alone? This source seems to think it's closer to $30 per year
| per user for the whole of facebook:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/234056/facebooks-
| average...
| noncoml wrote:
| For US users: https://market.us/statistics/social-
| media/facebook/
|
| Is it per year? Per Quarter? Not clear to me.
|
| But yeah, definitely not per month, but also much higher
| than the $1/year the GP is offering.
| endless1234 wrote:
| Ah true, for US users it would be a lot higher. Seems to
| be around $10 billion per quarter of revenue for US and
| Canada[1], which means around 15 per user (for around 250
| million users[2]. You weren't that far off! That's
| definitely a lot more than what the gut feeling I had was
| (which is why I just googled the first stat that seemed
| to align with my hunch - classic mistake).
|
| 1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/223280/facebooks-
| quarter... 2:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/408971/number-of-us-
| face... + ~20 for canada
| judge2020 wrote:
| $1 a year is super low. YouTube values their ads at
| approximately $12 a month[0] - FB can't be much less.
|
| (E: 12, not 18. 18 is for families)
|
| 0: https://YouTube.com/premium
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| YouTube values the _absence of their ads_ at $12 /mo.
|
| If I make $1/mo/per user from adverts, but my conversion rate
| is 1/12 at $12/mo, then I'm making $23 for every 12 users.
|
| Doesn't mean I make $12/user/month.
| robjan wrote:
| People who are willing to pay to remove ads are usually the
| more valuable eyes.
| mr_toad wrote:
| Facebook doesn't make $12 per user per month last time I
| checked. They have about 80b revenue from 2.5 billion users.
|
| Maybe in the US they might get that per user, but not
| worldwide.
| wruza wrote:
| Few years ago we discussed these numbers on a pretty popular
| (top 5 of its kind) local pic-and-discussion forum. Devs said
| that an average user brings around $2 in a year (including
| those using adblock, etc). I sent them around $8 and they
| turned off any ads for my account forever. I could just
| continue using ad blocking, but they made that "hey you're
| using" header that annoyed me on mobile, where it is hard to
| "pick an element". Of course their income/user ratio is not
| comparable to youtube's one, but they meet their ends well,
| and also have much much lower megabytes/user ratio. In infra
| costs they may be even more profitable per user than youtube
| (just a blind guess).
| judge2020 wrote:
| Only difference is that we've learned that third-party ad
| placements are much lower quality and barely worth the ad
| spend. YouTube ads are highly valuable since they're
| effectively first-party and will offer high(er) assurances
| of whether clicks are legitimate. And, as mentioned below,
| people willing to pay for YT Premium are probably more
| valuable than the average viewer.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25623858
| wruza wrote:
| _people willing to pay for YT Premium are probably more
| valuable than the average viewer_
|
| What does it mean in a context?
| beagle3 wrote:
| Average income per user is (say) $10/year.
|
| 80% of population is worth $5 and 20% is worth $30 ; but
| all of the YT premium subscriber are from the 20%, so
| despite the average only being $10, offering it for less
| than $30 will lose money.
| dest wrote:
| That was the original business model of whatsapp
| m3at wrote:
| Exactly the same thing played out for Oculus, so it we can't say
| that it's surprising. It is sad nonetheless
| sharken wrote:
| Yeah it's a sad development. On the other hand it might mean
| less Facebook dominance which is a win in my book.
| croes wrote:
| Don't count on that, most people don't care.
| pmontra wrote:
| I'm in the EU. WhatsApp showed me a screen about new term of
| service right now. There were two buttons, Agree and Not Now. I
| tapped Not Now, it kept working.
| danieldk wrote:
| Interesting. I am in the EU as well and got the new terms of
| service screen. Only an _Agree_ button, but I could avoid
| agreeing (I hope) by clicking the cross (X) at the top of the
| dialog.
| hutattedonmyarm wrote:
| Same here!
| pmlnr wrote:
| A/B testing, probably.
| Cocktail wrote:
| Same story here, i think i saw a deadline mentioned at tue
| bottom
| Ballas wrote:
| Yes, but if you don't accept before 1 July, you will have to
| find another solution for your messaging needs.
| ssss11 wrote:
| I'm in Australia and just recorded it. There was Agree and an X
| in the corner... I X'd and it kept working.
| A_No_Name_Mouse wrote:
| I'm in the EU and clicked agree before I realised the
| implications. Now I want to withdraw my consent, but there
| doesn't seem to be a way to do this. Am I overlooking something
| or is that not possible (which would violate GDPR)?
| latk wrote:
| They were not asking for consent in the meaning used by the
| GDPR. They are merely "asking" you to agree to updated terms,
| i.e. their contract with you.
|
| GDPR allows processing of data under various legal bases.
| They use consent (opt-in) only for things like accessing your
| camera. For sharing data with other Facebook services, they
| rely on a "legitimate interest" (opt-out) instead. In theory,
| you might be able to object to processing under a legitimate
| interest, but they make it rather cumbersome. Which
| processing activities they perform under which legal basis is
| actually well-explained in the privacy policy, if you manage
| to find the correct section (it has a rather labyrinthine
| structure).
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Oh, good. This is the perfect excuse for me to finally uninstall
| whatsapp. My friends and family can SMS me if they need me.
|
| So long whatsapp. I never needed you. :bird emoji:
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| What if I am a WhatsApp user but I do not have a Facebook
| account? Will Facebook use images from WhatsApp conversations
| with my friends who do have a Facebook account? So much for
| "WhatsApp will never cost you a cent"(post acquisition statement)
| isoprophlex wrote:
| A nice dark pattern in WhatsApp:
|
| Turning off access to contacts in ios immediately makes your
| profile picture invisible to others.
|
| Meaning: we cant all revoke access and try to identify contacts
| by profile pic.
|
| Fuck you FB.
| known wrote:
| If you are not paying, you are the product
| https://archive.is/lrCEe
| Number157 wrote:
| If you're in the EU, you could try reporting this as a GDPR
| violation.
|
| How to report:
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/refo...
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| The WhatsApp app on my phone already has permissions to access my
| contacts, so presumably they're already on WhatsApp's servers -
| how would I go about removing this information before February
| 8th?
| iagovar wrote:
| Telegram works fine.
| foofoo4u wrote:
| I'd like to move my family off of WhatsApp due to these concerns.
| I've used Signal before, but I am not a big fan of it. I often
| have to re-register my devices to sign in, syncing takes a long
| time, and conversations do not persist across devices. I am
| perfectly happy using a paid service. Does anyone here think
| Discord or Slack would be a suitable replacement?
| bigiain wrote:
| > or Slack would be a suitable replacement
|
| Jumping out of the Facebook frypan into the Salesforce fire
| doesn't seem to be a particularly winning move...
|
| (Which also raises the question, whichever alternative you
| choose, you probably need to evaluate the risk of Facebook (or
| some equally evil corp) acquiring them down the track. I wonder
| how likely Discord/Telegram/Signal are to be able to resist
| Facebook-sized acquisition offers?)
| 7v3x3n3sem9vv wrote:
| Signal is owned by a non-profit which cannot be sold to a
| for-profit like Facebook, Google, or Apple. The WhatsApp
| founder learned the lessons from the Facebook acquisition and
| improved almost every aspect when developing Signal.
| ObsoleteNerd wrote:
| Try Telegram. It's as easy to use as WhatsApp for non-tech
| family and friends, yet has all the features you want out of an
| IM without too much of the bloat. It has native apps on all
| major platforms, and for the techies it has a solid API so you
| can do fun stuff like write your own bots.
| FabHK wrote:
| > all the features you want out of an IM without too much of
| the bloat.
|
| Except default E2E (which WhatsApp, Signal, Wire, Threema
| etc. do provide).
| ObsoleteNerd wrote:
| Yes but it does have e2e if you "want" it and for 99.9% of
| people that's enough. The other 0.1% who "need" it are more
| willing to learn/adapt to Signal/Wire/etc.
|
| I use Signal with tech friends, and Telegram with
| family/non-tech friends. I feel like the latter using
| Telegram is still better than them using WhatsApp, so I'll
| take what I can get.
| frereubu wrote:
| I'd love to give up WhatsApp, but network effects are key here. I
| tried moving my extended family off WhatsApp onto Signal a couple
| of years ago and it failed miserably because the app wasn't
| nearly as easy to use, and they had all their friends on
| Whatsapp. Has anyone here had any success moving a large group of
| people onto something like Signal or Telegram? If so, do you have
| any tips?
| gsich wrote:
| Probably depends on you. Do people want stuff from you? If yes
| chances are good.
|
| Don't expect people to uninstall Whatsapp. Having multiple
| messengers is fine.
| hertzrat wrote:
| I had better luck because most of the people I know aren't
| deeply invested in their apps. I just told everyone to add me
| on signal and over the years more people have started using it,
| and suggest signal or a phone call when its time to have a
| conversation
| znpy wrote:
| > I'd love to give up WhatsApp, but network effects are key
| here.
|
| Be the change you want to see in the world.
| lrvick wrote:
| I simply stopped using anything except decentralized ethical
| services that offer freedom, privacy, and high security like
| Matrix.
|
| I refuse to help walled gardens get bigger. It has cost me a
| lot of contacts, but so be it. There is always a choice.
|
| If you had a friend you respected that was vegan for ethical or
| environmental convictions would you insist on continuing to
| exclusively have social gatherings at BBQ restaurants with no
| menu options for them? Would you take them seriously if they
| caved to avoid being excluded from the group?
|
| When I deleted all walled garden messengers by Google, Facebook
| etc they knew I wasn't kidding. Anyone that refuses to make
| small allowances for you living your convictions is not your
| friend.
|
| The people that need to talk to me use matrix now or found
| other ways to reach out like e-mail or in person. Those that
| don't respect my ethics don't get free advice from me anymore.
| tallanvor wrote:
| My response to anyone is "I'm sorry, but I don't use WhatsApp
| or Instagram, and I rarely use Facebook because I don't trust
| them. You can reach me through X, Y, or Z."
|
| If someone refuses to make an actual call, text me, email me,
| or use Signal, then clearly they don't respect me enough for me
| to need to communicate with them.
| Leherenn wrote:
| When I had roommates, one only wanted to use services A, B,
| ... and another one C, D, ... with no intersection between
| the 2 sets. So we had 2 group chats on two different services
| and we had to transfer messages from one to the other.
|
| I don't know whom was not respecting whom, but I didn't feel
| really respected either, despite respecting each guy wishes.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| I've used Signal for years, and for most of that time only had
| about three people who also used it in my contacts.
|
| My wife recently got her entire extended family to use Signal.
| She has always refused to use WhatsApp. They all love Signal
| now, and use it all the time. However, this was during a family
| crisis.
|
| During the Covid lockdowns, many companies I know used Signal
| as their preferred non corporate communication platform over
| WhatsApp... But again, that was a crisis.
|
| It seems to be difficult to dislodge people from their
| preferred platforms without some kind of external driver to
| adopt it.
| lodovic wrote:
| In Europe the WhatsApp alternatives are generally framed as
| tools for pedophiles and organized crime. Even installing
| them on your phone may alert LEO that you're suspect. This
| move by Facebook is highly troubling.
|
| edit: mass downvote! here are the links.
|
| this link talks specifically about signal protocol being used
| by organized crime https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-
| achtergrond/waarom-criminel...
|
| https://www.securityweek.com/telegram-rivaling-tor-home-
| crim...
|
| https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2019/05/03/criminals-are-
| hi...
|
| https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-
| tech/ne...
| patall wrote:
| Do you have an source for that claim. I am in Europe and
| have never heard that. The closest I know of is right wing
| groups using Telegramm for their Anti-Covid agitation.
| lodovic wrote:
| updated GP
| patall wrote:
| Sorry, I have now spent almost an hour reading 7 articles
| of yours and, from my point of view, none supports your
| claim. Framing implys for me that some other person
| publicly claims something although that is not really the
| case (i.e Telegramm is not popular with criminals), else,
| it is just reporting.
|
| Neither could I find anything matching your second point
| that installing any of these messengers might make law
| enforcement suspect you to be a criminal.
| Tomte wrote:
| Nonsense.
|
| Here are links that show that WhatsApp is painted as a tool
| for pedophiles:
|
| * https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/whatsapp-
| has...
|
| * https://www.businessinsider.com/whatsapp-has-a-child-
| porn-pr...
|
| * https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/20/whatsapp-pornography/
|
| * https://endsexualexploitation.org/articles/whatsapp-has-
| a-ch...
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| Source?
|
| My friends and family have mostly been using Signal for
| over a year and we never had such worry. I also know
| laywers, lawmakers, doctors and CEOs who are also using
| Signal for important communications.
| lodovic wrote:
| some links in dutch:
|
| https://opgelicht.avrotros.nl/uitzending/gemist/item/beri
| cht... https://www.ad.nl/binnenland/criminelen-handelen-
| op-berichte... https://www.security.nl/posting/586026/Pol
| itie+kraakt+versle...
| midasz wrote:
| That's absolute nonsense
| aasasd wrote:
| So the solution is more crises.
| mister_hn wrote:
| but can you do video calls on Signal?
| godelski wrote:
| Yes, and in groups! This is a new feature though.
| fsflover wrote:
| See elsewhere in this discussion why Signal is not much
| better:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25668547
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25669657
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25668659
| the_arun wrote:
| I am moving to Signal too. Group by Group. May not happen
| over night, but in few weeks
| happymellon wrote:
| Signal, that's another one that requires your phone number?
|
| Yeah, thanks but no thanks.
| godelski wrote:
| Don't they all? But good news is that they have pushed
| code to allow for usernames (or not even that). It isn't
| open to the public (or beta) yet, but it looks like the
| feature is going to be released fairly soon.
| chappi42 wrote:
| Threema doesn't.
| happymellon wrote:
| > Don't they all?
|
| That's my point. I hate systems that require a phone
| number, as they usually mean that I have a substandard
| experience when I'm not on my phone and I can't sign my
| children up so that we have a general chat tool.
|
| The only option ends up being massively over the top team
| style chats like Rocketchat, Mattermost, Discord, or
| Slack. So we end up back on Hangouts.
|
| A bit shit for general family conversation.
|
| [Edit] If they do allow signing up/in with a username
| then I'll probably be all over it. That would be awesome
| news.
| godelski wrote:
| I'm curious why you value your phone number over your
| data.
|
| I'm unsure if they will allow signups without phone
| numbers, but they don't store that information. Signal
| doesn't have it. [0][1] It is very possible they go
| around this though.
|
| [0] https://signal.org/blog/looking-back-as-the-world-
| moves-forw...
|
| [1] (time-stamped to only the important part) https://www
| .youtube.com/watch?t=894&v=Nj3YFprqAr8&feature=yo...
| happymellon wrote:
| Reasons:
|
| > they usually mean that I have a substandard experience
| when I'm not on my phone
|
| > I can't sign my children up so that we have a general
| chat tool.
|
| This isn't a privacy thing, this is a general tool that
| is fundimentally broken if I'm not on my phone.
|
| I'm not always on my phone, and my kids don't have phone
| numbers.
|
| They are unusable.
| godelski wrote:
| I think these are fair points. I'll mention that I
| predominately use the desktop client and it works well
| since I frequently leave my phone somewhere else. But
| doesn't seem like a right fit for you until usernames and
| multiple device signup. Both are in the works though so
| maybe good for you in the future but not now.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| If you don't have your phone with you, you can't sign in.
| Some services, like Whatsapp, will not work if your phone
| is turned off/broken
| castorp wrote:
| > Don't they all?
|
| No. Threema does not require a phone number (it uses one
| for the registration verification, but your account is
| not linked to that number).
| FalconSensei wrote:
| So can I use 1 number to create 2 users?
| ent wrote:
| How well do Signal groups work these days? I tried moving
| friend groups to signal some years ago and even managed to
| do that for some large ones but the group chat just didn't
| really work. Keys changed and somehow the group got into a
| state where some people got messages and others didn't and
| the only way to fix it seemed to be creating a new group
| which, for large groups, isn't really an option and
| everyone ended up going back to whatsapp.
|
| I'd love to use signal with more people but that, and the
| ux around changing phones means I can't really recommend it
| to anyone but the most technical of my friends.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| How did the Covid lockdowns and family crisis in your
| examples affect the choice between Whatsapp and Signal?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| If the only way to reach you is to either install Signal or
| wait until tomorrow when they see you in person, people
| wait until tomorrow.
|
| If the only way to reach you is to either install Signal or
| wait a year until the lockdowns are over, people install
| Signal.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| For my wife, she had to travel abroad and the family had to
| stay in contact with her. Since she absolutely wouldn't use
| WhatsApp, they all installed Signal, and discovered it's
| actually really usable now.
|
| I can only speak for why one company adopted Signal over
| WhatsApp, but the main reason was that the company did not
| want their communication metadata tracked by Facebook. They
| were regarded as equivalent in terms of E2E encryption and
| functionality.
|
| EDIT: They also did not trust Facebook entirely not to
| break the E2E in some way (eg cloud backups or whatever),
| and the message contents had to remain secure. It wasn't a
| huge concern, but all else being equal, Signal was the
| better choice.
| techsin101 wrote:
| this is wrong way to look at things, switch is never binary.
| Yes i have whatsapp, but i also have discord, messenger,
| hangouts, etc. You need to find an angle to attract user for
| something different and then keep them for everything else.
| shadowfaxRodeo wrote:
| I managed to get most of my family to use telegram. I just
| stopped using whatsapp and convinced a few of them to do so
| also, the rest came because they couldn't speak to us
| otherwise.
|
| The key was being stubborn and banking on them eventually
| wanting to talk to me.
| midasz wrote:
| > The key was being stubborn and banking on them eventually
| wanting to talk to me.
|
| This. Same for me. I just put a message like this in the
| family whatsapp groups and then deleted the app/account: 'Hey
| everyone, I'm not going to be on WhatsApp anymore - you can
| call, text, signal, telegram or email me. Talk to you
| later!'. It was that simple. It took a little while but now
| my family is on Telegram. I know they still use WhatsApp but
| it's honestly not my problem or issue that they use the app -
| I just don't want to.
| _jal wrote:
| I don't know how you make your loved ones stop using specific
| software, and generally speaking I wouldn't want to. But if
| people want to contact me, well, they have to use a mechanism I
| also use.
|
| I know what you're asking, but I don't think there's a fix
| unless you somehow have tremendous influence with them. So you
| either put up with being coerced by your group, or you don't.
|
| This is probably easier if you never used the services in the
| first place. My mom will occasionally whine that she has to
| open Imessage to talk to me, and that's about the extent of it.
| But of course, I am missing whatever they get up to on FB
| without me. And that's OK with me, but I know it isn't with
| everyone.
| throwaway17_17 wrote:
| This is a genuine question, what is it that prohibits your
| group from using text messages and phone calls? I do not use
| any apps for communication, and can't think of why I would have
| a need.
| el_dev_hell wrote:
| Not OP but in a similar situation.
|
| The main lock-ins for WhatsApp with my
| friends/family/colleagues are:
|
| 1. Group chats. SMS group chat doesn't exist (or it's next to
| unknown) in Australia.
|
| 2. Sharing images and videos. SMS destroys images/videos/gifs
| (if they even send).
|
| 3. International. Messaging friends/colleagues when they're
| overseas is easy.
|
| 4. Videochat (however, it's usually FaceTime with an older
| relative).
|
| I attempted a shift to Telegram with a few close friends and
| family members. Eventually, we started to drop back to the
| "normal" comms route because our extended network was on
| WhatsApp/iMessage and juggling several methods was irritating
| (e.g you message a friend on Telegram and get no response --
| they then message you later that day on WhatsApp -- it's
| irritating to move the conversation back to Telegram).
| webmobdev wrote:
| I don't use any of the private and popular messaging apps on
| my phone and do rely on SMS and phone calls to stay in touch.
| But there are limitations:
|
| - SMS is not encrypted.
|
| - SMS supports text only. MMS is not well supported, and
| often not free.
|
| - SMS is sometimes not as "instant" as it can be delayed.
|
| - Delivery reports and, read receipts are not user-friendly,
| and maybe unreliable, too.
|
| - Group SMS support depends on your default SMS app.
|
| RCS or Rich Communication Service on 4g and 5g looks to fix
| this, but support and compatibility between network is still
| lacking. Privacy laws also need a reevaluation as even
| cellular providers are looking to data harvesting to make
| more money and RCS may also lack encryption support.
| kyrra wrote:
| FYI, Google has a working end-to-end encryption with RCS.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/19/21574451/android-rcs-
| enc...
| webmobdev wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this, good to know. But in the context
| of this discussion, it is kind of bad news. Those who
| avoid WhatsApp (and other messengers) do so because they
| don't want to trapped within it - SMS and RCS promises us
| more mobility and privacy because it is a standardised
| technology that works with all cellular service
| providers. Using a Google app for RCS, instead of
| WhatsApp, will just trap you within Google ecosystem,
| instead of Facebook.
| Jommi wrote:
| For impromptu groups when you don't want to give your number?
| eightails wrote:
| To list a few benefits:
|
| - e2e encryption
|
| - many extra chat features (reactions, stickers, replies,
| polls, etc). It might seem unnecessary but imo they do
| genuinely increase functionality and ease of communication
|
| - scalable to large groups (maybe sms is as well, I've never
| tried more than 3-4 people)
|
| - don't need a phone, can message from a computer instead
|
| - messages sync across multiple devices
|
| - video calling for groups with some apps
| Macha wrote:
| Most phone companies on their lower tier plans make you pick
| 1-2 of free calls, texts or a data allowance. High end plans
| aren't nearly so popular because most people don't get high
| end phones and of the people that do, many buy direct from
| Apple so don't have a contract associated with it, instead
| just using a prepay or sim only plan. So it's really only the
| high end android phones which get bought on contract which is
| a much smaller market than iPhones or the actual big market
| segment here: EUR100-200 androids
|
| Nobody picks free texts. This leaves 15c/message as a
| discouragement for using SMS.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| How's signal different? It's also in the same position as
| whatsapp was a few years ago. For the time being it may be
| better, but surely it is not a long-term alternative?
| midasz wrote:
| You don't have to pick a messaging app for life.
| inbx0 wrote:
| If the new messaging app doesn't have an option to import
| previous chats from the old platform, changing platforms
| does come with a price.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| My thoughts as well. If the product is free, who is paying
| the devs? Who is paying for infra? I'm exclusively on Threema
| since it's not free, and the yearly external code reviews are
| stellar. The only thing that bugged me was that it was not
| open source, which changed by the end of 2020. Multi device
| coming this year, which was the last thing missing for my use
| case.
| Triv888 wrote:
| One thing that is strange with signal is that you are required
| to have a phone number to signup?
|
| That's one reason with I prefer Matrix/Element...
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| Wait til WhatsApp gets ads. The only reason Facebook hasn't
| introduced them yet is because they are terrified we will
| leave.
| qalmakka wrote:
| I managed to get almost everyone I know on Telegram in the last
| few years, to the point I get a WhatsApp message less than once
| a week. On the other hand, I usually hundreds of messages daily
| on Telegram. It's not hard if there's already interest among
| the people you talk with and you find the right way to get them
| on board.
| Quiark wrote:
| And that is an improvement over WhatsApp when Telegram
| doesn't even encrypt group chats?
| cabamba wrote:
| Don't you think that Telegram has the same monetization
| problems (it burns "a few hundred million dollars a year"
| while the owner left Russia with $300m in his bank account a
| few years ago) and they already announced their monetization
| plans https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/23/telegram-to-launch-
| an-ad-p... Where would you move next?
| SpaceRaccoon wrote:
| What's wrong with their monetization plans?
| bozzcl wrote:
| Unfortunately, I'm on the same stand as you. I managed to move
| my direct family and one group of friends into Telegram, but
| the rest didn't follow and many have been pestering me to go
| back.
|
| I was thinking about going back, actually, but using a separate
| phone number (dual SIM FTW) and a work profile sandbox with
| heavily restricted permissions. I might still give it a shot,
| see if that's enough to quell FB's insatiable hunger for
| personal data.
| srfvtgb wrote:
| Fortunately I don't live in a place where WhatsApp is
| completely pervasive. I personally had luck saying "if you want
| to contact me use Signal, iMessage or at the very least SMS"
| and when people asked why, I would cite Cambridge Analytica.
| gotem wrote:
| Which turned out to be a bunch of hyped up marketing talk.
| Why does every person in SV I know seem to love the narrative
| that we're being mind controlled by micro-targeted FB ads,
| which to be fair is what I used to believe.
|
| Everyone on HN switches between "ads don't work and targeting
| is BS" to "ads are manipulating our entire country by taking
| our data"
| rpdillon wrote:
| I think they are both true, but the second is worded
| differently than I would.
|
| I think ads can work, but don't in many cases (based on
| recent stories that cancelling certain kinds of ad spend
| has no effect on outcomes). In some cases, like Uber
| advertising to get users, this seems entirely plausible.
|
| So I largely think ads themselves are kind of harmless. But
| ad-backed business models are dangerous, because they
| optimize for "engagement", which tends to promote content
| that is divisive over more thoughtful, nuanced content.
| Sadly, it also seems to require gathering huge amounts of
| information about users in a centralized spot, which seems
| risky for a variety of reasons.
|
| The whole thing reminds me of a call I got about 10 years
| ago to participate in a survey about smoking, and one of
| the questions they asked was "Do you believe nicotine
| causes cancer?" I paused because my understanding is that
| nicotine itself doesn't cause cancer, but the common
| delivery mechanisms at the time (smoking, dipping) do
| increase the risk of cancer. They forced me to answer
| yes/no, so I said "no", but obviously a decade later, I
| still remember it. Do ads cause harm? Probably not much,
| taken on their own. But everything _around_ them seems to.
| Retric wrote:
| Not everyone on HN is the same person. So, different people
| can believe each without any contradiction.
| [deleted]
| qznc wrote:
| Even individuals are capable to hold contradicting
| opinions.
|
| > There are lots of contradictions in people's strongly
| held beliefs. Someone might preach self-sufficiency in
| politics, but coddle their children. An individual might
| oppose abortion on the grounds that human life is sacred
| and may still support the death penalty for convicted
| murders. A person might argue for the freedom of
| individual expression in the arts but want hateful speech
| to be regulated.
|
| from https://www.fastcompany.com/3067169/how-your-brain-
| makes-you...
| yspeak wrote:
| Need better examples as neither given are contradictory.
| Coddling children is not the same as coddling adults.
| Unborn babies commit no crime deserving of death.
| [deleted]
| srfvtgb wrote:
| Whether ad targeting works or not, Cambridge Analytica did
| show that Facebook was willing to abuse the data people are
| trusting them with.
| golemiprague wrote:
| How do you use iMessage if you got android phone? I hate this
| thing, would rather give my data to facebook then use it
| because it creates class separation between poor and rich. I
| have seen it with my kids who wanted iphone because they
| couldn't communicate with all the iphone kids who used
| iMessage. That's in itself much worst to me than some privacy
| which i already gave up on.
| tryptophan wrote:
| Absolutely agree. iMessage is even more cancerous in its
| social implications than WA.
|
| I have had smart, educated people say "I got an iphone so I
| wouldn't be left out of group chats". Because downloading
| an app is too much work. I'm not sure how asking people to
| take 5 seconds to do something to improve their life and
| society became such a taboo.
| [deleted]
| jsinai wrote:
| Sure the network effect is strong but let's not forget how
| WhatsApp got here in the first place: people installing a
| strange new app, often shared by their friends via a text
| message invite link. I remember sitting in a circle with a
| group of friends one night 10+ years ago while each of us
| installed WhatsApp and had our first conversations on the app.
| It was a time when BBM was dominant and cross-platform
| messaging was new. Fast forward to today and already many of my
| groups are switching to Telegram or Signal.
|
| The move can be made faster now because groups are so prevalent
| on WhatsApp.
| decrypt wrote:
| I remember paying a dollar to use WhatsApp for an year. I
| wish it remained independent and subscription-supported.
| cat199 wrote:
| > cross-platform messaging was new.
|
| when was cross-platform messaging ever new?
|
| ... IRC, AIM, etc ...
| beagle3 wrote:
| Neither was effectively available on phones ever.
|
| This is in relation to iMessage vs BBM vs whatever was
| popular on Android at the time.
|
| (And they got on boarding, group functionality and UI
| better than anyone for a very long time)
| chupchap wrote:
| Telegram is getting really popular in India for bigger groups
| such as those in building societies and for parents in
| schools as they allow for more members. For one to one
| communication I don't see a change happening soon.
| lifty wrote:
| Whatsapp had to compete with SMS, so when I was introduced to
| WhatsApp I thought it was a godsend and immediately adopted
| it. Also advertised it to all my friends. Switching now might
| be harder because there is a lot less to gain, besides some
| non-tangible "privacy". What is this thing called "privacy"?
| esperent wrote:
| Even my mother, in her 70s, who somehow always manages to
| have a new virus or piece of crapware on her laptop every
| time I visit, knows about the importance of this thing
| called "privacy" and had no trouble grasping the idea that
| everything she shares on FB is recorded and used for
| advertising.
|
| It's not a hard concept, and it's not just tech people who
| care about it. It doesn't require any knowledge of tech to
| understand.
|
| On the other hand, she knows how to use FB messenger and my
| efforts to get her to switch to email/telegram have just
| caused confusion so far.
| dvtrn wrote:
| Am I off the mark in guessing your mother, in her 70's
| has some strong opinions about one Senator Joe McCarthy
| or Hoover? Has she ever spoken much about living through
| that period-assuming your family are American?
|
| My apologies for the imposition if that's not the case.
| sthnblllII wrote:
| J Edger Hoover was a cross dressing homosexual who
| collected blackmail on political opponents while he was
| himself being blackmailed by organized crime.
|
| https://www.mojeek.com/search?q=j+edgar+hoover+blackmail
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| Most of the search results on that page are pretty
| sketchy, the top result is a tripod site and one is
| literally a school paper.
| esperent wrote:
| Not American, no idea who Joe McMarthy is, and I doubt my
| mother does either.
| dvtrn wrote:
| I'm going to guess the downvotes are from people who
| don't know the history of people like McCarthy or
| Hoover's FBI and why someone who was lived through that
| era might be sensitive to and have opinions about topics
| of privacy[0][1]?
|
| [0] https://www.techrepublic.com/article/j-edgar-hoover-
| would-ha...
|
| [1] https://journals.openedition.org/diacronie/4823
| im3w1l wrote:
| Facebook is a private company. Freedom of speech doesn't
| mean they are obligated to give you a megaphone for asking
| your mom how she is doing. They can and do ban people for
| any and no reason, cutting you off from your social network
| at a moments notice.
| renjimen wrote:
| I was nodding along with your comment, wondering why it had
| been downvoted until I reached your last statement and
| couldn't tell if you were being serious or not.
| lifty wrote:
| Indeed, I was playing the devil's advocate. I definitely
| care about privacy and I am quite an ardent supported of
| projects that try to solve this issue. I just learned
| that if privacy comes at a large expense (losing their
| social graph or unfriendly UX), people will not care for
| it. So I guess we need to do better so we can have both
| privacy and good UX.
| toyg wrote:
| I think (and hope) he's just relying the difficulty of
| communicating the concept and value of techno-privacy to
| his friends and relatives - as opposed to the immediate
| and self-evident differential between whatsapp and sms
| texts.
| colmvp wrote:
| The parent poster is likely mimicking the people asking
| why are you asking me move to another app when this app
| does everything fine?
|
| To be honest, I'm not well versed in the debate of
| privacy, but invariably in discussing user tracking by
| BigCo's a lot of my friends just say "I don't care if
| they have my data, I've got nothing to hide."
| daemin wrote:
| I've been thinking about this a bit recently, and the
| saying should be extended to "I've got nothing to hide,
| now." Things change and either you'll do something which
| you'll want to hide, or society/politics/community will
| change which you'll have something to hide.
|
| An example in the first case is that you'll want to buy a
| secret gift for someone, but because of the tracking the
| surprise will be spoiled because they'll be seeing ads
| for it on their systems.
| cercatrova wrote:
| Are they not right though? People don't really care about
| "privacy", they just want it to work, and work with their
| friends. You or I can harangue all we want but it doesn't
| change the fact that people don't care in aggregate.
| linspace wrote:
| The next time someone says me "I have nothing to hide"
| I'm thinking of asking their salary because in my
| experience when people say that they actually mean they
| are not afraid of jail but would rather don't have a lot
| of details being made public like who they vote, their
| sexual preferences, their wealth or their personal
| opinion of a lot of their colleagues. Most of these
| details are easily inferred from their online behavior,
| not to mention personal chats. Part of the problem is
| that no one is going to say "I have something to hide".
| I'm not going to continue this rant because HN is not the
| audience that needs it but to summarize: defending
| privacy is an uphill battle and people are not right.
| paride5745 wrote:
| I managed to get people on Telegram by showing Stickers and
| public groups you can join without sharing your number.
|
| Signal is much harder to sell to non-tech users IMHO.
| petersonh wrote:
| I had success moving my friend group onto Signal, but that was
| a group of young-ish, privacy interested, anti-Facebookers, so
| it wasn't much of a hard sell.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| Such implicit locks are quite common a hamper to let the best
| product succeed.
|
| We are all running what most would consider an outdated and
| poorly designed c.p.u. architecture by modern standards, simply
| because most software is not compiled to run on other
| architectures, and it won't be until those architectures see
| significant adoption.
| baxtr wrote:
| This is changing rapidly. Many people I know are moving Signal.
| Also, don't delete WhatsApp right away. Do a "silent" move:
| whenever people send you a WhatsApp answer on iMessage if
| they're Apple users and actively push the Android friends over
| to signal. Works well in my case.
| sundvor wrote:
| I'm taking this approach now too. There's a free text status
| message as well that's suitable for the purpose.
|
| App is going in February though.
| frereubu wrote:
| I like the simple idea of replying on another service, thanks
| for that.
| nifhel32 wrote:
| I moved almost all my friends and family to Telegram. I think
| the secret, once I managed to get them to install it, was to
| create common groups instead than many one-to-one chats.
|
| Then they got hooked up, mostly thanks to the huge amount of
| high quality stickers.
| bigiain wrote:
| From the opposite point of view, in the last hour I've been
| added to 3 different group chats on Signal that were all
| previously WhatsApp chats (in which I did not participate, in
| spite of many of those friends repeatedly asking me to).
|
| That's added at least 20 or 30 friends/acquaintances into my
| signal contact list that I'm 99% sure downloaded signal for the
| first time this morning.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| Why not just use SMS/iMessage groups ?
| marssaxman wrote:
| Signal is encrypted.
| bigiain wrote:
| That's why I was there already, along with a few of those
| friends who used to be part of various WhatsApp groups as
| well - and they've convinced large groups of pissed off
| WhatsApp users to download and use Signal today.
|
| I don't know how many of the new Signal users will stay
| (there's already discussion in one of the new Signal
| groups about "Why aren't we using Telegram instead?")
|
| Same as much of this thread - these people are not
| concerned much at all about encryption details, they're
| largely a pissed of mob of people departing WhatsApp. And
| some of them are already saying "there's no web client! I
| can't use this!!!"
|
| I suspect I may well end up back being "the guy who's not
| part of most group chats" if/when they decide Signal
| isn't for them... And I'm OK with that.
| FabHK wrote:
| In many countries, few people have iPhones, and SMS are
| costly.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| SMS prices (or 'lack of price') was something that really
| surprised me after I moved to Canada, as well as phone
| voicemail.
|
| In Brazil we hurry to turn off the call if it goes into
| voicemail, as we pay to leave a message AND nobody
| listens to them because it costs a lot to listen (or at
| least used to).
| anilakar wrote:
| As someone whose mobile data plan is faster than home wi-
| fi and who does not pay for receiving calls and SMSes,
| the "fixed landline data first" approach in Android
| really pisses me off.
| SturgeonsLaw wrote:
| SMS is not encrypted, iMessage is Apple only
| misiti3780 wrote:
| good point.
| frereubu wrote:
| You can't do group chats in the same way using SMS
| messages. People who receive an SMS have no idea who else
| the message was sent to, so they can't even "reply all".
| CincinnatiMan wrote:
| The person you're replying to probably meant MMS which
| can be used for group texting as you're describing.
| deathanatos wrote:
| The fragmented and quirky MMS implementations in the wild
| render MMS functionally useless, especially compared to
| what feature set an app can have. I've seen MMS
| implementations that send replies to only the sender of
| the original (so some replies, from better
| implementations, end up in the MMS group, and some end up
| only sent back to the sender, resulting in confusion);
| I've seen MMS implementations that allow you to "like" a
| message, and this is implemented by just sending "I liked
| this." as a message back to the other clients -- which
| can't interpret it as anything other than just a normal
| message -- resulting in confusion.
|
| Did you know that MMS can transmit _slideshows_ [1]? I
| didn't, until my father somehow sent me one. The UI that
| Android has for that is -- naturally -- a complete
| afterthought. (No way to pause the slideshow, no way to
| navigate the slides, nothing. Just one run through the
| animation at Warp 8.)
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_Messaging_S
| ervice
| codeduck wrote:
| MMS is not a common technology in Europe.
| foepys wrote:
| Many European providers are still charging for each MMS.
| Something like 40cent/MMS.
| frereubu wrote:
| Ah, I hadn't heard about that before. That's either not
| available or not common knowledge in the UK.
| toyg wrote:
| MMS are available in UK but not popular, because they
| were heavily overpriced and fundamentally underwhelming
| when they were introduced 15 years ago. They are also
| metered like SMS - one of the big wins when switching
| from SMS to internet-based systems was to stop worrying
| about yet another limit.
| avh02 wrote:
| I've lived in several places and nobody really uses SMS
| unless it's for 1) someone you don't really know or 2)
| notifications of some sort...
|
| My impression is the US/Canada are one of the only places
| where SMS is still frequently used for casual text
| communication and i'm horrified that Apple's iMessage is
| the one to somewhat challenge that.
| paulz_ wrote:
| I've moved some group chats to discord and have had pretty good
| luck with it so far.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Sadly, no 6 people was my max and those were my family members.
| And my mom still complains Whatsapp was easier..
| Hammershaft wrote:
| Telegram is fantastic! Frankly I think it has a better ux then
| Whatsapp, especially considering the desktop apps.
| qwertox wrote:
| Telegram isn't serious about privacy. They made my number
| searchable and notified people who have me in their Google
| contact list even though I didn't grant Telegram access to my
| contact list (before the time when Android would enforce this
| with permissions) and didn't allow them to use my number for
| anything.
|
| Then it turned out that they have a setting where one can opt
| out, but what good is that if you already were opted in
| automatically.
|
| In "Last Seen & Online" I had a deleted account in the
| exceptions of those who can always see my status, even though
| I never added one.
|
| Telegram may be better than WhatsApp, but it is far from
| fantastic.
| Hammershaft wrote:
| Those are fair problems that I wasn't aware of.
| neuronic wrote:
| You're right but I prefer it over WhatsApp/Facebook and I
| started using it when about 3/4 of my network moved to
| Telegram (to support their move away from
| WhatsApp/Facebook).
| easytiger wrote:
| I'm fairly certain I enabled all possible privacy options
| when I installed telegram. I went to specific lengths to do
| so. I still get "xyz has joined telegram!" when a new
| friend joins up from my contact list.
|
| Yep: just checked. Nothing more I can do to increase
| privacy settings. Zero confidence in it after that
| Tepix wrote:
| Telegram lacks end-to-end encrypted group chats and normal
| chats are not end-to-end encrypted by default, you have to
| switch to a "secure" chat every time you start a new chat.
| brobinson wrote:
| Consider Threema instead. It recently went open source and it
| has top-notch, Signal-quality crypto and you don't need to
| provide a phone number or email.
| zouhair wrote:
| I just stopped sending stuff to friends and family who want to
| keep using whatsapp.
|
| So I just use email.
| qwertox wrote:
| I also use email (and Threema), but it annoys me a lot when I
| then get those "(no subject)"-Emails with multi-megabyte
| VID-20201225-WA0005.mp4 attachments.
|
| I just wish they would keep all their WhatsApp stuff away
| from me.
| [deleted]
| majjam wrote:
| I moved family and friends quite successfully over once I'd had
| a child and told them that I didn't want any photos sharing on
| facebooks platforms.
| contradictioned wrote:
| I managed to get a part of my family to Threema. Just the part
| of "you are paying for the product, thus you are not the
| product yourselves" was reasonable enough.
|
| In my friends circle we are all on telegram (after trying wire
| which is just buggy as hell), but I think this is mainly due to
| its multi device story and then fact that it is not WhatsApp.
| veddox wrote:
| I shifted my family to Threema last year. Paid for it myself
| in the case of my younger siblings :D But it's working really
| well.
| narrationbox wrote:
| You can try locking down the app, it's not ideal but it is
| better than nothing:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25664130
| godelski wrote:
| I've had success and you're right that it is about network
| effects. So you gotta take into account who you can convince
| first. But also consider that Signal hasn't been fully featured
| until about last month. So it isn't a good idea to just try to
| convert random non-techy people. For them you'd need to use
| current events that highlight how important privacy is (which
| there have been quite a few this year). But also focus on
| generating a critical mass. Now it isn't hard for me to convert
| people because we'll be planning things and 4/5 people have
| Signal so you just strong arm the fifth person and then they
| start using it more because they realize a fair amount of their
| friends are already there. It takes time though and let's be
| real about that Signal hasn't been fully featured. Until
| recently it has been more a geeky app.
|
| So tldr target the people you want to convert to develop a
| critical mass.
| Akronymus wrote:
| I personally moved to Element/Matrix with a large community. It
| works quite well.
| nalekberov wrote:
| It's just not worth it.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| My family is on Threema, but I advocated for it heavily and
| it's still an island and they all use WhatsApp in parallel. But
| at least family photos get shared on Threema now.
| stainforth wrote:
| Network effects as a emergent principle has been discovered to
| violate the promises of capitalist economics. We have a right
| to come together and set the limits and terms by which a few
| can extract from the many.
| netizen-9748 wrote:
| Why must there be extraction at all? Even trade seems like it
| would be better for the majority of parties involved,
| including having the effect of not having a bunch of pissed
| off people down the line.
| pier25 wrote:
| It's not only about friends. Here in Mexico many small
| businesses operate with Whatsapp (eg: food delivery, gas
| delivery, plumber, etc).
| codemac wrote:
| Signal - moved my immediate family to it, and now have a few
| friends on there as well.
|
| It had some rockiness maybe about 3 years ago, but with their
| new group implementation and some other small tweaks I find it
| just as easy to use as whatsapp, albeit it a little uglier.
|
| #1 complaint is the coloring - incoming messages should be high
| contrast, outgoing should have the background color. For some
| reason signal does the opposite and it's hideous.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| For info, the colors (and whole style) in Signal are the same
| as iMessage.
| codemac wrote:
| ?? It's not for me on android :(
| dijit wrote:
| I contact the majority of my friends with telegram, the UX is
| similar enough and people get on board quite quickly- the
| difficult part is convincing someone to install /another/
| messaging app- if they have network effects too then it's a
| hard sell.
|
| But once most people have both it gets easier.
|
| Signal (UX wise) is not really super great for my family, I
| burned a lot of my "technical expert advisor" capital and
| reputation by pushing that too hard.
| shard wrote:
| It will be a hard sell for me to switch, that's for sure. I
| am already using Whatsapp for Western contacts, Kakaotalk for
| Korean contacts, and WeChat for China contacts. I don't have
| any Japan contacts currently, or else I'm sure I will have to
| install Line. I installed Signal on my laptop for one heavy-
| privacy-proponent friend, and had Telegram for a while for
| another friend's group business chat, but I never really used
| either.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| I had success at least moving my parents and sister to chat
| with me on Telegram. I was having weird issues with Telegram
| video call (very low sound on my parent's phones), so I still
| had to call them on Whatsapp. Also, didn't find any audio
| call option on Telegram, only video call.
| subaquamille wrote:
| Contrats ! Genuine question: Why don't you use phone call
| for audio-only calls ? In my experience the quality is
| better and degrades better. Is it because of bundles quota?
| In my country most plans includes unlimited voice but not
| sure what's the "world norm".
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Well a 6 minute conversation cost me $21 on Xmas day from
| USA to Europe.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| Yeah, and considering every time I call my parents it's
| 20 to 60 minutes long... I would go broke
| chiefgeek wrote:
| Does Android not have the equivalent to FaceTime audio? I
| get that for x-platform you have to use one of the apps
| being discussed. I use FT Audio with my sister, who's in
| UK, all the time (I'm in Chicago). Completely free and
| excellent sound quality.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| No, nothing native for Android
| InvertedRhodium wrote:
| Android (at least used to) has native support for SIP
| through their phone application. I used it quite a bit 5
| years ago or so, but moved over to...well, I can't
| remember. A 3rd party app that gave better visibility
| over what was happening with the service. I don't use
| VOIP too much any more, Signal is fine.
| technofiend wrote:
| Google surprisingly has a raft of telephony options.
|
| You can use Google Duo to make voice or video calls for
| (other than data costs) free, Google hangouts also has
| voice-only plus video options and of course Google voice
| integrates with the classic telephone network and has
| cheap international rates.
|
| Google Fi has free calling from the US to over 50
| countries and otherwise their plans start at one cents a
| minute depending on destination.
| https://fi.google.com/about/unlimited-calling/
|
| Most of my friends from Asia tell me WhatsApp was and is
| popular because it carried voice over data, bypassing the
| PSTN which apparently has very high per-minute rates.
|
| If you want to go slightly higher tech there are
| telepresence appliances like 8x8, Amazon or Google IOT
| devices or you can just use sip phones and call between
| the devices free of charge using your own pbx software or
| a free service like Callcentric's IP Freedom plan.
|
| There a million options that either let you opt out of
| Facebook's data collection and trade it for Google's, or
| just opt out entirely.
| Zak wrote:
| Google was pushing Hangouts heavily for a while, and I
| think that's still bundled with Android but is now on the
| way out. It did the job last I checked.
| codecutter wrote:
| Try Google voice. https://voice.google.com/rates
|
| I call my family for 1 cent per minute.
| 1_player wrote:
| US only.
| 75rchkiyt wrote:
| You can use a web browser aimed at the Skype website to
| setup a calling card equivalent system to dial out
| internationally over plain old telephone service for 2
| cents per minute. You don't even need an app installed.
|
| Don't get the subscription, pay as you go with Skype
| credit.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| Because making a cellphone call to an overseas cellphone
| number costs way too much vs free?
|
| Edit: sometimes I also start with an audio call, but
| midway there's something I want to show them, so we
| switch to video by just pressing 1 button.
| Tepix wrote:
| Telegram has no end-to-end encryption for group chats at all.
|
| And normal chats are not end-to-end encrypted by default. Are
| you using end-to-end encrypted chats with your contacts?
| aabbcc1241 wrote:
| Another bonus of telegram (as compared to WhatsApp) is you
| can access the messages even when your phone run out of
| battery.
| avh02 wrote:
| This is the case in telegram by default when messages
| aren't E2E encrypted so they (I assume) sit on a server
| somewhere.
| ObsoleteNerd wrote:
| Another vote for Telegram here. I tried to get at least the
| core group of family/friends on Signal or Wire and to their
| credit they tried but it never stuck. They loved Telegram so
| much that we now have the entire extended family/friends on
| it.
| codemac wrote:
| Signal has improved a lot. I burnt a lot of the same thing,
| but it's finally sticking when I ask people to first install
| it within the last year or so.
| roel_v wrote:
| "Signal has gotten better" is the new "Linux on the
| desktop". When I move to a new phone with Signal, is there
| already an (easy) mechanism to take along all my messages
| from my old phone? Last time I checked, there wasn't, and
| this is a core requirement, even if most people don't quite
| realize it when they start using Signal.
| querez wrote:
| There is a mechanism that works very well and reliably.
| It involves manually copying an exported backup from the
| old phone to the new one, and entering a 16 digit (IIRC)
| passcode. Wheter you consider that easy or not depends on
| you. For me it was a 5 minute procedure
| roel_v wrote:
| Right, I used that procedure once, it's completely
| inadequate. It relies on having access to the old phone,
| knowing how to get files off it (and onto a new phone;
| both of which probably assume you know how to navigate
| the filesystem), and you basically need to follow
| documentation to do it, it's completely undiscoverable
| (maybe that last part has changed).
|
| All of which is completely unacceptable in 2021 for a
| product meant for a large audience. Messaging is integral
| to people's lives, to the point where people keep 10+
| year old phones because they have messages on them from
| people that passed away and they can't figure out how to
| move the messages across or to a new system. As much as
| it pains me to say, there just aren't any production
| quality alternatives to WhatsApp that can take over. And
| don't even get me started on Element/Matrix...
| baq wrote:
| this also highlights that somehow it's ok to not be able
| to easily extract files out of your phone. it's
| maddening.
| jbotz wrote:
| You have a point, but one should point out here that
| WhatsApp makes this easy only if you stick with the same
| type of phone... if you switch between Android and iOS
| you're completely SOL with WhatsApp. With Signal on the
| other hand you can use the (admittedly non-trivial)
| procedure mentioned in sibling in either case.
| frereubu wrote:
| Interesting that you had such a different result with
| Telegram. I'd prefer to use Signal for privacy reasons, but
| like you I burnt a lot of social capital trying to get my
| extended family to use it!
| hliyan wrote:
| I'm wondering if someone can develop a product that addresses
| the networking effect problem. I.e. a service that allows
| groups to move their member lists seamlessly between networks
| and to be able to also see at a glance, which networks (e.g.
| WhatsApp, Signal, FB Messenger, Slack) the members are on.
| Perhaps a network of network memberships?
| pharke wrote:
| Solid https://inrupt.com/solid/ ActivityPub
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub See Fediverse for
| more examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse
| intrasight wrote:
| I have used WhatsApp and Telegram and Signal. For me the
| network effects are the opposite - just driving me back to
| using text messages.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| dont use apps at all. works fine.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| If you're in Europe with a typical circle of friends, your
| advice is basically equivalent to "don't communicate with
| people, works fine".
| holler wrote:
| Yes, I've moved all my friends and family to Telegram and it's
| been great. I communicate with them daily since many months.
| Tepix wrote:
| What percentage of those messages are end-to-end encrypted?
| stiltzkin wrote:
| Only secret chats, and seems people using WhatsApp, tiktok
| or FB do not care
| bashwizard wrote:
| I hope you're fine with Telegram sharing your location data.
| detaro wrote:
| Not turning that on is pretty easy.
| bashwizard wrote:
| It's still sharing data. Sorry.
| detaro wrote:
| source? I assume you are refer to the thing that went
| around yesterday? Then no, there is a big difference
| between _the option to share data to get a feature_ (even
| though I 'd agree the feature isn't well-designed) and
| what WhatsApp is doing here.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| It's a shame the technology and usages are still moving quickly
| enough that there's no obvious standardization that'll last the
| next five years.
|
| Social technologies would benefit from some regulation along
| the lines of "you must be able to use other apps to send
| to/receive from your app" for at least a minimal feature set,
| but it would be super hard to nail down what that regulation
| should exactly be.
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| > Has anyone here had any success moving a large group of
| people onto something like Signal or Telegram? If so, do you
| have any tips?
|
| I just dropped the link in the title into all the group chats
| I'm in, said I'm headed to signal and removed myself from the
| groups.
|
| I was not the first person to do that in these groups. Will it
| cause a critical mass exodus? Idk. I won't know, I won't be
| back.
| anoncow wrote:
| WhatsApp is a masterclass in network effects. You can no longer
| decide whether or not you want to use it. Because your employer
| uses it, you have no choice but to use it. The only thing that
| will disrupt this is if security concerns make companies come
| out and explicitly ask employees not to use WhatsApp and I
| don't see that happening any time soon.
| daemin wrote:
| If your employer insists on installing and using a specific
| application on a phone, ask them for a phone to use it on.
| Don't feel the need to install it onto your _personal_
| device.
| tharne wrote:
| You should try it again now, Signal is very user friendly these
| days. I've moved most of my very non-tech-savvy family and
| friends onto it without too much drama.
| bilekas wrote:
| IMO telegram has the best feature and usability parity as
| Whatsapp..
|
| As for converting people who are not that interested, I can
| tell you from experience talking about privacy generally
| doesn't sell it.
| Valodim wrote:
| It bears repeating: Telegram is not e2e encrypted. Messages
| you write on telegram will be stored on some Russian servers
| forever.
| bilekas wrote:
| What are you talking about ? Telegram encryption is based
| on 2048-bit RSA encryption, 256-bit symmetric AES
| encryption, and Diffie-Hellman secure key exchange
|
| For end2end you can just use the secret chat function..
| https://core.telegram.org/api/end-to-end
|
| Feel free to check their source out -
| https://telegram.org/apps#source-code
|
| So I'm not sure what 'bears repeating'.
| Tepix wrote:
| The "secret chat" function should be default. Why isn't
| it? Also, it's not available at all for group chats.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| People still use facebook/instagram/gmail. If you tell them
| whatsapp is linked to facebook, it changes nothing to them...
| Funes- wrote:
| This would be the _perfect_ time for the team behind Signal to
| make registration through username available, for those who don
| 't want to give their phone number away but would otherwise make
| the switch. Think about it: competitor gets a closer grip on its
| users' privacy, while we fortify it instead.
|
| One can dream, right?
| tpoacher wrote:
| Yay! I've been trying to get friends to jump onto telegram for a
| while now. Hopefully this might do it!
| Lammy wrote:
| "How we partner with Facebook" is an amazing piece of weasel-
| wording.
| wjp3 wrote:
| Thanks for the final push I needed FB, to stop using WhatsApp.
| domano wrote:
| I have never used WhatsApp so that anyone i know either needs to
| send SMS or install Signal - only started working in the last 2
| years tho.
|
| Nowadays most people i know have signal installed alongside
| WhatsApp, i even migrated my mother.
| boredatworkme wrote:
| Can someone help and dumb this down a little bit for me so that I
| can then explain to some of my friends who couldn't care too much
| about this change in policy?
|
| For example: What should be my response to questions like: .
| "What kind of data can now be shared with FB versus what was
| shared earlier (if any)?"
|
| . "Whatsapp chats are end to end encrypted so how can my data be
| shared with FB?"
|
| . "As an individual, how different is Whatsapp sharing my data
| with FB for ad/tracking purposes versus what other networks such
| as Google do to serve ads? Let's say I'm interested in ice-cream
| and I chat with someone about it and a couple of days later, I
| get ads about ice-cream, but I choose to ignore those ads, then
| how am I impacted/affected?"
| Lammy wrote:
| > "Whatsapp chats are end to end encrypted so how can my data
| be shared with FB?"
|
| I would stress to them the difference between the encrypted
| contents of a chat the metadata ("it's data about data!") of
| that chat.
|
| Hopefully they will get it if you give an example of how just
| sending a message lets them profile you based on metadata like
| the exact time, geographic location, and recipient of the
| message, all without needing to see the contents. Encrypted
| messages sent from Truist Park at 2PM on a Sunday? Probably
| about baseball, etc etc.
|
| Probably too high-level and wordy to share with a non-tech
| crowd but this is one of my favorite blog posts on this topic,
| from the immediately-post-Snowden era:
| https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metad...
| Namari wrote:
| The article says Whatsapp will now share: *
| User phone numbers * Other people's phone numbers
| stored in address books * Profile names *
| Profile pictures and * Status message including when a
| user was last online * Diagnostic data collected from
| app logs
|
| and already was getting: Purchases
| Financial information Location Contacts
| User content Identifiers Usage data and
| Diagnostics
| castorp wrote:
| Doesn't this mean that anybody agreeing to those terms needs
| to ask permission from each and everybody in their address
| book?
|
| And if they don't, can I sue them (at least in the EU) or ask
| my contact to be removed before the agree to the terms?
| yulaow wrote:
| technically it is facebook in violation of GDPR considering
| that all the data in the addressbook is easily considered
| personal data for a commercial entity and so facebook
| should ask the permission to each owner of those numbers
| before collecting them.
| omk wrote:
| https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/contacts/about-contact-
| uplo...
|
| Based on this they do not store information of users who
| have not signed up and only store a cryptographic hash.
| The hash isn't created on the device, so the servers
| definitely get it.
| pfortuny wrote:
| There are just 10^9 phone numbers in Spain. Say 0.01
| sec/hash (which is A LOT), you have 10^8 seconds. You can
| decrypt all the hashes in 0.3 years...
|
| "Cryptographic hash" is as bullshit as "MD5 encrypted
| passwords".
| Rygian wrote:
| If I'm being optimistic, the hashes of a user's contacts
| are salted with the user's own phone number, so the space
| could be 10^18.
| daemin wrote:
| Or you know just create a rainbow table of all the phone
| numbers in the world and match the hashes against that.
| Would probably be faster.
| stiray wrote:
| Just a small detail about cryptographic hash:
|
| https://gdpr-info.eu/art-4-gdpr/
|
| "'personal data' means any information relating to an
| identified or identifiable natural person ('data
| subject'); an identifiable natural person is one who can
| be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by
| reference to an identifier such as a name, an
| identification number, location data, an online
| identifier or to one or more factors specific to the
| physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic,
| cultural or social identity of that natural person;"
|
| Cryptographic hash of phone number is still uniquely
| identifying natural person and is by GDPR still under the
| definition of personal data. The GDPR authors knew what
| they were doing - or they were lucky although also other
| parts of GDPR suggest that they had some technical think-
| tank behind it.
|
| Anyway, hashing doesn't solve anything, whatever
| "obfuscation" is used/invented, as long as information
| points to "natural person" it is considered personal
| data.
| pojzon wrote:
| Their infra is generating those encryption certificates, so
| WhatsApp can very well decode the message and store it for
| further processing.
|
| They will most likely share metadata about you with facebook to
| sell that data to push more ads into your face.
|
| They may very well sell also data to insurance companies making
| it harder for you to get insurance.
|
| Options are limited only by who would like to pay for info
| about you.
|
| Its rather a question about "How much you value your privacy?"
|
| Ps. Ppl using facebook from the go "do not care about their
| privacy" so I dont know how much more it will affect you.
| cranekam wrote:
| > Their infra is generating those encryption certificates, so
| WhatsApp can very well decode the message and store it for
| further processing.
|
| This is incorrect. The sender's device generates the key with
| which it encrypts outgoing messages. WhatsApp's infra cannot
| see the content of any messages sent.
|
| (Source: ex-WhatsApp employee)
| boredatworkme wrote:
| Appreciate your response. As a layman, if the service I'm
| using does not have access to any of the content of my
| messages, how would you (Whatsapp) be sharing my data? If
| whatsapp cannot read texts, images, location etc., then
| what gets shared with FB?
| cranekam wrote:
| As https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/privacy-policy says,
| it's things like contact, status, profile pic, name, and
| so on.
| extropy wrote:
| Not buying this. There must be a backdoor for lawful access
| or the government's would have been after WhatsApp long
| time ago.
| nly wrote:
| Encryption is useless is the remote party can silently
| rekey and be re-authenticated as legitimate silently.
|
| WhatsApp could almost certainly perform active MITM
| cesarb wrote:
| There's a configuration option you can enable which shows
| a message whenever the remote party changes their key
| (usually meaning they bought a new phone, in my limited
| experience), so it's not that silent. Yes, it's
| unfortunate that on WhatsApp this option defaults to
| disabled (to not confuse the newbies?), while on Signal
| (which uses the same protocol) this options defaults to
| enabled.
| panta wrote:
| There is no need to rekey or do anything similar. Chats
| are available locally on the device, WhatsApp may simply
| implement a side channel to access those (they could
| already have one to satisfy agencies btw)
| baq wrote:
| it doesn't matter. whatsapp client sees the plaintext
| (duh). nothing stopping the ad arm of FB to process this.
| cranekam wrote:
| Clearly. As with any encryption, at some point it needs
| to be decrypted for human consumption, and since someone
| else wrote the code/maintains to do this it's not
| impossible something naughty/distasteful will happen with
| the content. I'm just correcting the notion that the
| encryption is all orchestrated centrally and that viewing
| the messages in transit is trivial.
| cookiengineer wrote:
| The issue I have with that statement is that it cannot be
| proven. There is no source code of whatsapp, so this could
| have been changed anytime.
|
| I mean, it's certainly possible to have an administrative
| backdoor that just shares the local keys. Even when that
| wasn't the case when you worked there, and even if we
| believe that you say the truth: we still cannot be certain
| that this won't change on February 8th.
|
| I mean, whatsapp was remotely exploitable for more than 5
| years before it was discovered (just to make a point).
| cranekam wrote:
| Yes, of course this can't be proven. I'm reasonably
| confident what I stated still holds but I can't be
| certain. If that's enough of a turn off for you then your
| best bet is to not use the service.
| sufehmi wrote:
| 3 years ago, my friend, an Indian fact-checker, showed me a
| screenshot of a WhatsApp screen, showing warning from
| WhatsApp that a message contains a dangerous link
|
| This (the warning) is only possible if WhatsApp can read
| your messages
|
| I'm guessing that they read your message on the app. So
| their claim (end-to-end encryption) is indeed true and
| correct.
|
| But their app can and indeed has been reading your
| messages, for the past, at least, 3 years
|
| Which I personally don't mind, when it's done fully
| automatically (no humans involved) and only for this kind
| of uses (to warn users of dangers)
| jannes wrote:
| Link previews are generated server-side, I think.
|
| The app sends a request to a Facebook API for every link
| that you send/receive. Usually this returns the little
| image + text snippet that you see in the app, but
| obviously this could also return a message that the link
| is considered dangerous.
|
| As a site owner you can probably see a request from a
| Facebook bot when a link to your site is shared on
| WhatsApp. (not sure how long they cache this)
| bonzini wrote:
| WhatsApp (the app) can obviously read the messages. It
| can hash the links and check them the same way that
| browsers do. It doesn't have to happen server-side.
| martinko wrote:
| While true, you're being very generous.
| bonzini wrote:
| It's how Google's safe browsing API works, so it's not
| unlikely.
| gilloh wrote:
| How can you guarantee this? And how about received
| messages? How can you retrieve all your old
| messages/conversations when you install the app on a new
| device? Don't they come from WhatsApp servers? Just
| curious, not doubting that you are actually an ex-WhatsApp
| employee.
| cranekam wrote:
| > How can you guarantee this?
|
| I mean, I can't guarantee it. As others have said, it's
| not impossible that things have changed since I left or
| will change in the future. But I doubt it -- e2e
| encryption is a big selling point for WA and something
| that is dear to the company's heart.
|
| > And how about received messages?
|
| It's the same deal -- the sender encrypts the message
| with the the recipient's public key, and the recipient
| decrypts it with their private key (which was generated
| locally and never goes over the network).
|
| > How can you retrieve all your old
| messages/conversations when you install the app on a new
| device? Don't they come from WhatsApp servers?
|
| No, you can only get old messages from your old device or
| from a backup that went to the cloud somewhere (e.g.
| iCloud or Google backup). The messages on your phone are
| stored locally in a DB, so if you copy that DB to a new
| phone it'll have the new messages. WhatsApp doesn't store
| messages -- they are only present on WA infra until
| acknowledged as received by the destination.
| unlivingthing wrote:
| So it won't impact people who don't have an FB account?
| hajderr wrote:
| I'm not sure it matters. You still have to agree to the
| policy first. Whether you have an FB account at the moment
| might change for you in the future right? So FB couldn't be
| handling all those cases as well. This is a strategic move
| I think will cover all users.
| wozer wrote:
| I think everybody has a (shadow) FB account. FB collects
| your data and connects it to other data even if you never
| registered.
| unlivingthing wrote:
| How, apart from whatsapp, would it collect your data? The
| only social account(s) I have are on reddit.
| fsflover wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20606961
| boredatworkme wrote:
| Thank you for your response. I think I fully agree with the
| last line - those who do not care about privacy won't really
| be affected by this.
|
| I have a question to ask. How would this work? Even if for a
| second we assume that they're able to read all our texts
| etc., how can they curate that information with insurance
| companies? What data might the insurance companies be
| interested in? I would not (and I'm assuming a lot of people
| would not) specifically enter my age/health issues/Blood
| Pressure information on Whatsapp.
|
| > They may very well sell also data to insurance companies
| making it harder for you to get insurance.
| MaxChinni wrote:
| Let's say they record your position every 15 minutes.
| (Position can be achieved via Wi-Fi AP names, cell towers,
| GPS). Let's say you commute everyday to work on a highway
| and your average speed is 100 Km/h with sometimes a top
| speed of 150 Km/h. Let's say your position shows that
| you're every workday near a pub from 17:50 to 19:00. Let's
| say you're never seen near a gym. Let's say you're
| sometimes near a medical center specialized in prostatic
| care. [To be continued]
| permille42 wrote:
| Signal is better anyway. WhatsApp cooperates with the US
| government.
| donut2d wrote:
| I wonder how they will deal with people such as myself who use
| Whattsapp but do not have a Facebook account.
| afrcnc wrote:
| DUPLICATE: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25656993
| Etheryte wrote:
| I wouldn't really agree here. They are on the same topic, yes,
| but the Arstechnica article is actual news coverage that
| explains what's going on, as opposed to the linked page which
| is just Whatsapp's official corpospeak.
| wheresmycraisin wrote:
| Anyone know of a way to backup everything from whatsapp,
| including video and voice messages? I have 5 years of messages
| between me and my wife on whatsapp i'd like to preserve some how
| before moving off.
| asadhaider wrote:
| Seems to be possible unless you live in Germany, just follow
| this guide [0]. If in a EU country, I wonder if you could also
| submit a data subject access request (I'm not too familiar on
| GDPR).
|
| [0] https://faq.whatsapp.com/android/chats/how-to-save-your-
| chat...
| marton78 wrote:
| Why wouldn't it be possible if you live in Germany?
| AnyTimeTraveler wrote:
| I don't know. I live in Germany and the files are also
| stored in /sdcard/WhatsApp/ And also the message databases
| are under there, ready to be copied and decrypted.
|
| You can also access the unencrypted messagestore database,
| if you have root access. For me, it is located at :
| /data/data/com.whatsapp/databases/msgstore.db
| arthurmorgan wrote:
| On iOS you can't export chats anymore if you're located in
| Germany.
|
| https://ga.de/news/digitale-welt/gericht-verbietet-
| whatsapp-...
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Video and voice should simply be on the "shared storage"
| ("/sdcard/" - not an actual SD card) on Android.
|
| There should also be a copy of the messages database, and I'm
| sure there is some open source app to decrypt it somewhere.
| aste-risk wrote:
| Must have been really hard to work at Facebook. I often see
| people shouting at Facebook and tagging their employees on
| twitter left and right shaming them publicly of their employer's
| actions. But how do you leave that $$$ on the table.
| drunkpotato wrote:
| I just deleted WhatsApp rather than "agree" to their ultimatum. I
| liked the group chats, but not enough for that.
| anon_user22 wrote:
| If someone's convincing please recommend federated decentralized
| protocols such matrix or xmpp rather than e2e such as signal or
| telegram. Its easily to switch it the same fiasco happens with
| these companies
| numlock86 wrote:
| I have read the article. From my current understanding this is
| what WhatsApp/Facebook has been doing since its release. What am
| I missing?
| antpls wrote:
| At that point, I believe the strategy for Whatsapp was never to
| snoop into private conversations with other people, but to get
| all the transactions and interactions made with businesses.
| yumraj wrote:
| This is the straw that broke the camel's back, for me anyway..
|
| Just started the process of notifying my connections that I'll be
| uninstalling WhatsApp. If not Signal, then just Phone, iMessage,
| SMS and email work well..
|
| Hopefully this will drive larger adoption of Signal..
| weitzj wrote:
| There was a political cartoon from the NewYork Times or the
| NewYorker about pigs in front of a slaughterhouse eating happily
| and enjoying that the food was free. And in the background you
| could see a slaughterhouse with Facebook on its name.
|
| Does anybody have this picture ? I can't find it
| johnchristopher wrote:
| When will the market be ripe for people/average joe to buy or
| rent a block data service a la s3/minio so they can plug their
| app (calendar, photo sharing, blog, messages, etc.) to it instead
| of being forced to pay for services with their privacy ? They'd
| just pay for cloud storage that can be used by any apps using
| buckets/volumes as external storage instead of paying for dropbox
| like dumb storage.
|
| If I had money I would do a foundation thing to kickstart
| something like that.
|
| Is that a dumb idea ?
|
| edit: maybe the latency between the app and the block service
| would be too high to be reliable/tolerable.
|
| edit2: there used to be a lot of applications that relied on
| dropbox to store things but I have a feeling SSG captured the dev
| mindshare (or maybe Dropbox restricted the API).
|
| edit3: I just corrected `id` to `idea`, my brain does that when I
| am tired :D
| lisper wrote:
| Not dumb at all, just really hard. I've taken a couple of shots
| at this and been defeated by it every time.
| holografix wrote:
| How would you stop the app from retaining your date once they
| have access to it?
| johnchristopher wrote:
| You can revoke access to buckets (to stay in the S3
| comparison).
| hntcz wrote:
| No, not dumb. That's what I wrote my BSc project on.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| My friends & relatives in India are outright offended when I say
| that I don't use WhatsApp and so I cannot join their groups.
|
| Businesses here have started using WhatsApp as an alternative to
| SMS, email for sending spam to important package tracking
| information (without prior permission).
|
| But I see this as the best opportunity to convert some of my
| contacts to Signal/Email as this stays in mainstream news for a
| while(but quite sure that almost all of them have clicked 'Agree'
| to T&C banner showed on WhatsApp when they woke up morning
| without giving it a thought and I'm certain that's exactly what
| FB intended).
|
| I do not know whether to feel fear, sadness or shame on the type
| of power WhatsApp/Facebook holds only my people.
| Karupan wrote:
| In the same boat here. I _really_ want to get rid of WhatsApp,
| but almost all my contacts exclusively use it for chat and
| updates.
| rohan1024 wrote:
| The sooner they take such actions the better it is for everyone
| in the long run. Someone somewhere will come up with an
| alternative that is better than anything we have today. And sorry
| but Signal is not the pinnacle of messaging.
|
| I like what Matrix is doing but they are far away from becoming
| mainstream. Within 2-3 years a new platform will rise and it will
| fix flaws of existing messaging apps. This will then be followed
| by social media but it might take another 6-7 years to fix that
| mess.
| upofadown wrote:
| >Within 2-3 years a new platform will rise and it will fix
| flaws of existing messaging apps.
|
| And then 2-3 years after that an entirely incompatible platform
| will do the same thing...
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Or, more likely, someone will buy it and screw it up. That's
| pretty much par for the course.
| CerealFounder wrote:
| Curious to all those family power users. What would you want to
| see in the next gen WhatsApp?
| swiley wrote:
| God dammit we've had standards that work. Apple and Google are
| responsible for killing all of the decent messaging protocols
| by censoring the clients from their app stores.
|
| When smartphones came out people modified IRC with support for
| push brokers and message replay but because of app stores this
| means push brokers for community maintained clients have to be
| maintained by the individual volunteer paying (yes! paying,
| shut up about the free dev accounts they don't allow you to
| send push notifications) for the "privilege" of submitting the
| app (meaning they have low to zero availability.) The relay
| Mozilla maintains allows servers and users to choose who
| brokers push messages but Apple and Google screw over their
| users for profit and this is the result.
|
| Smartphone app stores have made IM unusable.
| themacguffinman wrote:
| This is a stretch for Android at least, Google charges a one-
| time $25 fee for a Play Store developer account and provides
| unlimited push notifications for no extra charge.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| I just installed element today (the new name for riot) It's
| interesting and may have some features like rooms that will
| build interest outside of just being an IM tool. I do miss the
| days of AIM/Jabber/Google Talk/ where everything just worked.
| Bringing that experience to phones should be the goal rather
| than jumping from service to service.
|
| My friends from Europe and Brazil are locked into WhatsApp, my
| American friends seem to prefer FB messenger. They're really
| using 2 versions of the same company's products which are
| "incompatible" at this point. Facebook could make them
| compatible with one another and with each other only OR they
| could do the socially beneficially thing and use an open
| protocol. Unless employees at FB push for this, they're likely
| to take the former route.
| petre wrote:
| Apparently the EU fine wasn't enough to quell this behaviour.
| zeruch wrote:
| Well, delete it is then.
| alexandrerond wrote:
| For people looking to switch to Signal without Google Play
| services on Android (apk installation), the best way to fix the
| websocket battery drain is this:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/ewp99j/disable_webs...
|
| Unlike Telegram, WhatsApp, Element etc. which work fine without
| Google, Signal devs have repeteadly refused to make improvements
| to the "always-awake" mode which happily eats 40% battery.
| Krasnol wrote:
| It seems to be some very specific bug as neither me nor my
| contacts seen this happen on their devices. We've been using it
| at work quite often with people having different devices. On
| mine it shows 2% battery drain atm.
| Totomi wrote:
| Ok, here it goes.
|
| I like Whatsapp, and this change seems in line with what Whatsapp
| always has been. Of course I'm always wary of advancements, ready
| to uninstall it if really bad news arrive, but in general
| Whatsapp has been respectful of its users, especially those that
| are privacy concerned.
|
| They hired a lead developer from Signal to implement E2E
| encryption, its functionality is almost completely transperent,
| which reduces the need to inspect source code to understand
| functionality. The most severe of privacy criticisms have
| amounted to "Facebook knows who you message and at what times you
| message", which is a very good position for a 2B user platform to
| be in, since it doesn't read message contents.
|
| I have tried Signal, but I cannot recommend it to family (yet),
| since I don't find what they do with metadata harmful, it's just
| a price to pay for the otherwise free app, like advertisement.
| Anyone who has recommended Signal so far sounded like an
| inflexible Stallman fundamentalist. I reserve my voice for other
| more serious incidents, if there is a successful warrant for
| message contents or if there is ad targetting based on message
| contents, then I will start sounding the horns, but for now: Meh.
| MarcellusDrum wrote:
| > its functionality is almost completely transperent, which
| reduces the need to inspect source code to understand
| functionality.
|
| Can you explain more? Without the ability to see the source
| code, how can you confirm that e2e encryption is actually being
| used correctly?
| bladelessninja2 wrote:
| I love how they give you plenty of time before ultimatum /s
| balozi wrote:
| What I don't get is this, there are real-life people working at
| these companies. What are the managers and developers at
| Facebook/Whatsapp thinking? Are there hi-fives in the hallways to
| celebrate the impending win?
|
| I have worked on many a project in my time, and I can't think of
| a single instance where we knowingly screwed over users or
| clients. Our teams' goals have always been to make the product
| better. What's going on here? I am honestly curious.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > single instance where we knowingly screwed over users or
| clients.
|
| Monetization often trumps customer's best interests. It
| certainly has at most companies where I've worked (but not
| all).
| trident5000 wrote:
| You have a private conversation with the team manager in some
| office and explain that bonuses are on the line. And then it
| gets done.
| mLuby wrote:
| Semi-intentional compartmentalization could explain it.
| Ads: we could increase revenue if we had access to WhatsApp
| data, but that's Product and Legal's call. Product:
| Ads asked us to access WhatsApp data, but we're just
| facilitating between them and Legal. Legal: Ads and
| Product asked us to change the policy to allow access to
| WhatsApp data.
|
| Nobody being willfully malicious, just not asking certain
| questions, and the gaps between departments obfuscate the whole
| thing.
| [deleted]
| throwaway888abc wrote:
| https://signal.org/en/
| anoncake wrote:
| https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...
|
| Moving to a different walled garden is not a solution.
| marricks wrote:
| Did they really do this just as the election was being certified?
| No one outside of tech will be talking about this for a while...
| peter_retief wrote:
| The sooner Facebook gets broken up the better.
| submeta wrote:
| Does anybody know how we can export our Whatsapp chats in
| Germany? It used to be possible, it's not allowed anymore. But
| any workarounds?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| On a rooted/jailbroken phone, there are apps that just dump the
| database into a readable format.
|
| Theoretically you might be able to get something out of the
| local or cloud backups, but they're encrypted so they're
| probably difficult to get a hold of. The key is stored in the
| private application data, but there must be some way to get it
| back/regenerate it because you can restore a backup without
| copying any secrets from the previous phone.
| jpangs88 wrote:
| I get frustrated by things like this, these walled gardens of
| people I know. I wish I could just switch to signal but I've
| found people would rather just not talk to me than download a new
| messenger app
|
| I've settled for just talking to the people I can convince on
| different messengers and now have ~5 messenger apps on my phone.
| godelski wrote:
| I don't have a large friend group, but got most of them to
| switch after I left Facebook. I just don't tell people I have
| WA and only use it if I'm forced to. You might have better luck
| since Signal has improved a lot in the last 6 months and there
| is a good desktop app. But you might need better friends.
| Friends that might warn you about how your username suggests
| you're a Nazi (I assume this is unintentional and just your
| birthday year)[0]
|
| [0] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=88
| teekert wrote:
| WA is so deeply ingrained in the Dutch society, we even have this
| all over the place: [0]
|
| At this point it's just a lost cause. I have some friends on
| Signal and use NextCloud talk (my own server, yay, still waiting
| for federated chat to chat to other servers), but so many
| "official" things are on WA, children's birthday parties, school
| announcements, sports related announcements, neighborhood
| announcements. We are really too dependent on WA, and you know,
| based on WA's original promises this wouldn't really be a
| problem. Now it is, although I fear I'm one of the very few that
| sees it that way.
|
| [0]
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=whatsapp+buurtpreventie&t=ffsb&iax...
| jraby3 wrote:
| Same here in Israel.
|
| Messages from daycare, zoom class info for kids, alerts, are
| all connected to WhatsApp.
|
| There is no way to avoid using it. Wish there was something I
| could do.
| teekert wrote:
| Yeah, I do hope the EU (and your government) do(es) something
| about this, I feel betrayed because WA became dominant here
| under very different terms and conditions.
|
| FB: "Yeah we are just going to buy this platform with a
| privacy focus that everybody loves and grew dependent on and
| turn it into FaceBook." I don't even understand how that is
| legal.
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| WhatsApp has such a strong network effect, that a wholesale move
| off is very difficult. I asked my immediate family to move to
| Signal and they agreed.
|
| Then came the question - can we talk to people on whatsapp using
| signal because friends, aunts, uncles, cousins who live
| international all live on whatsapp. Moving your network, their
| network and their networks network becomes quite the task.
| [deleted]
| throwbacktictac wrote:
| Naively it seems like the problem that will make progress at
| both ends with the right spark. As I image it, soon enough
| someone else will have already convinced part of your network
| to make the move.
|
| People, in general, don't have a qualm about installing another
| app when it's recommended by someone they trust.
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| Hopefully, it is however a slow process. In India, whatsapp
| is so dominant, I cant imagine what it would take for them to
| move to anything else
| ummonk wrote:
| While the network effects are there, I do think messaging
| networks are less durable than social media networks, because
| you can take your contact list with you across networks.
| darau1 wrote:
| Uninstalled. Signal is better.
| a0-prw wrote:
| I use Signal to chat with my family and friends. I use sms or an
| in-house service to communicate with colleagues. I only use
| WhatsApp with my gf. I don't have fb or Instagram. What effect
| does this policy change have on me? Obviously, fb will receive
| some data on me and my communications with my gf, connecting me
| to her (extensive) network on fb, but how worried should I be ?
| mtrycz2 wrote:
| You should be worried for your gf, probably. And all the other
| millions of non technical users.
| generalizations wrote:
| Everyone is comparing signal vs. telegram, but what about
| element? Far as I can tell, that might actually be secure.
|
| https://element.io/
| intricatedetail wrote:
| No messenger is secure. You never know if the code that is
| being run is the same as reviewed. If you want true privacy,
| then you need to encrypt messages yourself (with e.g. PGP)
| 29083011397778 wrote:
| Wouldn't building (& hosting) the server, building the
| client, and communicating only with accounts using your
| server be just as good?
|
| Note that this isn't just theoretical - there are governments
| using Matrix, but not necessarily federating with other
| instances.
| generalizations wrote:
| Ok, fair enough. I overstated it. I'm just wondering why it's
| not being discussed here.
| 7v3x3n3sem9vv wrote:
| Signal messenger uses reproducible builds. You can compare
| the source code to the app that's published to the app store
| to confirm that they're being honest.
|
| I don't know if any other competitors who do the same. As
| Signal messages are end-to-end encrypted, Even if their
| servers were compromised, your messages would still be
| secure. As they use a rotating key, unlike manually using
| PGP, even if one of the keys was intercepted, they would not
| be able to decrypt any of your other messages. Using PGP, if
| someone steals your private key, all your messages are now
| vulnerable.
|
| https://signal.org/blog/reproducible-android/
| krick wrote:
| Is this Riot rebranded? Huh, it seems I'm out of the loop.
|
| Yeah, Matrix is great. I was probably among the first people to
| install Riot, but the grim reality is nobody (well, one geek-
| friend of mine and his wife) uses Matrix. Look, even I was
| surprised when you mentioned "Element": thought it must be some
| new messenger I didn't hear about...
|
| But I'd surely rather like people to promote Element here, not
| Signal.
| akvadrako wrote:
| To give an idea, I think Matrix (and hence Element) borrowed
| the e2e design from Signal. So if they did it right it should
| be secure.
|
| I demoed it recently as a Slack alternative and it's not very
| user friendly. Our groups ended up just using Signal.
| ssivark wrote:
| I'm curious in what way you find Matrix/Element not user
| friendly. (Since I know people who would claim the opposite)
| iknowstuff wrote:
| 1. Passphrases, additional to passwords, should not exist.
| Mainstream users don't know the difference. Matrix needs
| something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Remote_
| Password_protoco....
|
| 2. Technical lingo like "verify other session" and some
| buggy emoji shenanigans confuse people. The only passable
| device linking, based on scanning a QR code, is between
| Element Desktop and Element Mobile, but...
|
| 3. Element on iOS is absolutely awful. The worst interface
| I've ever seen. Extremely busy and convoluted. Rows of
| horizontally scrollable icons, duplicated as lists? Chat
| views where spacing is all off? It doesn't work for small
| group chats and doesn't work for large public chatrooms.
|
| 4. Element on iOS won't play GIFs. Element on
| Chrome/Electron only uploads the first frame of a pasted
| GIF. This was actually a deal breaker for my social circle.
|
| Frankly, just compare the user experience of Keybase and
| Element. Keybase got it right.
| thekyle wrote:
| I found the encryption really cumbersome. Like I just
| downloaded the app and its asking me to authorize my
| account from another Matrix client that I've previously
| signed into or I won't be able to read encrypted messages
| people send me. But I'm pretty sure I uninstalled those
| other clients so idk what to do there.
|
| Also I've previously had the Android app crash and throw
| Java stack traces, but that was an older version.
| ffpip wrote:
| authorize my account from another Matrix client that I've
| previously signed into or I won't be able to read
| encrypted messages people send me
|
| That's how e2ee works. You have to send all the old
| messages to other new client on your other device.
| nutanc wrote:
| Everyone here seems to be mentioning how they want to move but
| cannot move because of the network effects.
|
| Even for me, my kids school sends updates on WhatsApp. Bank also
| sends its updates on WhatsApp etc. But I have avoided using
| WhatsApp for these purposes. And so far I have survived. Because
| almost all businesses don't rely exclusively on WhatsApp. Atleast
| in my case. They send emails, SMS messages etc. It's not as clean
| as WhatsApp. But everything has its pros and cons.
|
| If we really want to move, then I think we can move. It will be a
| little harder to start with. But then something better will
| hopefully come across. Tech has always filled gaps which come up.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| What's weird is that I don't know anyone who uses it. This is
| because (a) I'm an American and (b) nearly everyone I know uses
| an iPhone, so we all use Apple's own messaging tool instead.
|
| I know some crypto fans who really try to push for folks to use
| Signal, but there's too much inertia. WhatsApp isn't really on
| the radar.
|
| It's wild to read how much of a monopoly it enjoys elsewhere.
| vzaliva wrote:
| Signal
| pkamb wrote:
| The part that creeps me out the most is WhatsApp's aggressiveness
| towards getting your Contacts. Other apps _want_ them but
| WhatsApp hardly works without the permission.
|
| Why hasn't Apple introduced a private/segmented Contacts
| permission like they have Photos, Location, etc.?
| twsted wrote:
| My question, too.
| eps wrote:
| This has been a very long time due.
|
| An ability to give untrustworthy software an access to a
| sandboxed blank copy of Contacts would've been _very_ useful.
|
| As a side note, Telegram is the same as WhatsApp. You can't
| start a chat on a fresh install unless you give it an access to
| the contacts. There's no way to manually add in-app contacts.
| Given how "pro-privacy" they are supposed to be, this was
| rather disconcerting to see.
| patall wrote:
| But you can start at new chat in WhatsApp via
| https://api.whatsapp.com/send?phone=XXXXXXX
|
| Does not work for me in Firefox, but in Chrome on Android, I
| can start a new chat without access to the contacts. I agree
| that it is weird though!
| julenx wrote:
| Easier to remember: https://wa.me/<number>
|
| Where `<number>` contains the international prefix without
| the `+` sign. Has worked for me in Firefox and everywhere
| else I've tried. This is a fb-owned domain btw.
| kome wrote:
| "There's no way to manually add in-app contacts."
|
| False, I do it ALL the time.
| eps wrote:
| Here's a screencap - https://vimeo.com/497911640
|
| First prompt is when tapping the plus sign at the top.
| pvtmert wrote:
| You can, just deny the request and add contacts in Telegram.
| At least in android, I denied contact list and manually
| adding relevant ones to telegram.
| huhtenberg wrote:
| That's not possible in the iOS version. Tapping on + pops
| up a request to grant Contacts access.
| samoa42 wrote:
| one can add new contacts to telegram via the desktop app
| grandchild wrote:
| FWIW: I've been using whatsapp without access to my contacts
| with the help of this little app: "Open in Whatsapp"
|
| https://github.com/subhamtyagi/openinwa
|
| You can enter a number in that app and it will launch a
| conversation with them in whatsapp. I think it makes use of the
| API mentioned in sibling comments.
| timvisee wrote:
| In fact they grab your whole contact list, and according to the
| updated policy, they share it with the other Facebook
| Companies. So even if you refuse to use the app, it's still
| very likely that your contact information will end up on their
| servers because you're friends are probably using the app.
| [deleted]
| draw_down wrote:
| This is good, people should be forced to make these choices
| explicitly. And it's Apple that is forcing the matter.
| croes wrote:
| And what do those who do not use Facebook or WhatsApp but are in
| the contacts of those who do? Facebook grants itself the right to
| collect data from users whose rights are held by third parties.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| I just added a status to my Whatsapp, telling friends and family
| to "leave Whatsapp and join Signal.org".
|
| None of my friends can see it (I checked for two close friends).
|
| Can one of you guys try the same and confirm Whatsapp does not
| block such status?
| pmlnr wrote:
| Works for my friends me, though I didn't out URL (.org) in the
| status.
| Cyber_squad wrote:
| Don't blame the tiger for its claw.
|
| I mean, we should help our friends to migrate to new solutions.
| If we don't we lose.
| srfvtgb wrote:
| A lot of people mention Telegram, as far as I can tell, it's a
| worse Signal. What advantages does it have over Signal?
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| Depending on your perspective, Signal is actually a worse
| Telegram. Telegram has the best UX and feature set ouf of all
| messaging apps, and privacy does not outweigh convenience for
| the vast majority of people.
| sdfhbdf wrote:
| I'm still confused as to why Telegram doesn't have message
| reactions which every other platform has. I understand that
| some peoeple feel like it's not needed but if they don't want
| they wouldn't have to use and in my workflow when talking in
| groups is to use them extensively and replying with stickers
| is a terrible experience.
| toper-centage wrote:
| Signal is good for privacy and that's about it. Telegram has
| voice calls, videos calls, stickers and easy sticker creation,
| super convenient in-line gif/pic/video search, video and voice
| messages, and you can add people without sharing your phone
| number...
| dublinben wrote:
| Signal has all of those features except the final one, which
| is of debatable value.
| _ink_ wrote:
| I think the UI is better. Encryption is worse. But I like how
| they structured their data centers. They have sprinkled them
| into different countries and they claim that servers from
| different jurisdictions are necessary to access the data. So if
| an agency wants to access it, they have to get warrants from
| different countries. With all the war on encryption going on,
| e.g. forcing companies to include backdoors, I think this is
| the way to go.
| bigiain wrote:
| > They have sprinkled them into different countries and they
| claim that servers from different jurisdictions are necessary
| to access the data. So if an agency wants to access it, they
| have to get warrants from different countries.
|
| That's a neat trick, but not as neat as Signal's "sure,
| here's all the data we have - the time and ip address of
| their last use."
|
| (I'm sure a bunch of the "better UX, UI, and features" people
| like in Telegram rely on them storing more data on their
| servers, so that comes down to a privacy/convenience
| tradeoff, which as others have pointed out almost always
| comes down on the convenience side for 99.99% of people...)
| 7v3x3n3sem9vv wrote:
| Close! Signal only keeps the date a number registered and
| the last day it contacted their servers.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/10/fbi-demands-
| sign...
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Is there a way to sandbox android applications?
| graposaymaname wrote:
| We all saw this coming, and it's most unfortunate that the
| network effects simply make us all share our data with them.
|
| But doesn't this violate GDPR? Correct me if I'm wrong but I
| thought asking the user to share data or leave service was
| illegal under it.
|
| Also the same under iOS 14, again I have almost zero knowledge
| regarding the app store policies but I thought it had the same
| condition that an app should be functional without the user
| accepting data sharing policies.
| himujjal wrote:
| 3 years of me and my girlfriend using signal. no problem
| whatsoever
|
| lol. whatsapp
| Nwil wrote:
| :-) On this page, at this moment, 149 times the word "WhatsApp"
| and 142 times "Signal". I will help a Signal -
| Signal,Signal,Signal,Signal,Signal,Signal,Signal. :-)
| sbt wrote:
| This should not be legal.
| tolbish wrote:
| Signal users: How is quality of multi-person video calls? If it's
| as good, I wonder why it's still a beta feature.
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| The quality is good not great. If you are going to compared to
| Duo or Facetime, its not there yet. Ill say thats its not a
| show stopper though
| hyko wrote:
| FB owned = FB. Why is that so hard to understand?
| lwhi wrote:
| FB: If we're not allowed to track you across the web, we'll use
| your data captured via our properties to make more money from you
| via targetted advertising.
|
| Users: whatever.
| seesawtron wrote:
| fun fact: they also collect data from apps they don't own but
| which use Facebook SDK. eg. Opera, Duolingo, Kayak and tons of
| others. So deleting Facebook app and Facebook account doesn't
| do much as you think it's does.
| trashburger wrote:
| Good thing Adaway blocks Facebook hosts on a system level so
| I don't have to worry about the Facebook SDK so long as I
| keep my hosts list updated.
| teddyh wrote:
| Host list blocking only works as long as the apps _use_
| your host list. Very soon, every app which has something to
| hide will use DoT to the DoT servers of its own company to
| look up every host name.
| croes wrote:
| This will then be interesting for the lawsuit in Germany.
| wirthjason wrote:
| I mistakenly pressed "yes" to this. Is there anything I can do?
| Can I revoke it?
| icu wrote:
| It's time for me to push everyone I know onto Signal and
| uninstall WhatsApp. I don't trust Facebook at all and this was
| the final straw for me.
| soupson wrote:
| This is some mafia shit. They're holding users data hostage
| behind a click-through acceptance of their altered terms. You can
| either pray they don't alter the deal further, or get the fuck
| out, abandoning your chat history and social connections.
| blackcats wrote:
| Mafia is more ethical
| f430 wrote:
| They are fucking gangsters thats what!
|
| Tricked people into giving up info they trade like commodities
| so they can buy more useless crap in life.
|
| Fortunately, it is generally expected Harris/Biden
| administration will come down hard on these companies.
|
| then again they are wall street people so we will have to see
| if there's a recession (The simpsons predicted a global
| recession after Trump administration)
| vinay_ys wrote:
| I don't give access to my contacts to any app. And I don't give
| any access permissions to Signal. Signal must make it easy to
| invite friends without giving access to contacts. A simple Copy
| invite message with a mobile install link would be great - so
| that I can paste it into whatever groups I'm on and as my status
| message.
| bowaggoner wrote:
| I respect that perspective, but did you know that Signal uses a
| private protocol so that your contacts are never sent to their
| servers?
|
| https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/
| narrationbox wrote:
| A while back I wrote about this
|
| https://medium.com/@kloudtrader/reducing-whatsapp-digital-fo...
|
| Not sure if it still applies to the latest version of Android and
| WhatsApp but it might help. However it only mitigates certain
| real-time tracking and contact discovery, not to mention
| switching profiles is somewhat of a hassle.
| arrty88 wrote:
| Hello telegram!
| Zelphyr wrote:
| It has been said that companies that build rely too heavily on
| the public, free API's of another service are doomed when that
| service decides to monetize those API's. See, for example, API
| users of Google Maps.
|
| I think we are now at the point where this applies to
| individuals. If a person or group of people rely too heavily on a
| single free service then they're going to feel pain when that
| service finally decides to monetize.
|
| There are no free lunches. All these "free" products out there
| that seem great have Venture Capital investors waiting until the
| day that the service reaches a critical mass and they can flip
| the cash-generating switch.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Profit/monetization doesn't have to be bad. There's nothing
| wrong with money being exchanged for a service and both sides
| are satisfied. The problem is when that monetization is based
| on something else than money (such as personal data) or that
| the company abuses their monopoly position to force people into
| an unfair deal.
|
| The solution isn't to say "profit = bad", it's to break up
| monopolies or force interoperability and forbid certain forms
| of "payment" (such as exploiting and reselling personal data)
| that are deemed nefarious to society.
| xwdv wrote:
| There is a free lunch, it just doesn't last forever.
|
| Use a service until it's useful, then be prepared to leave when
| you no longer agree to its terms. The average user will go
| through many social networks and apps throughout their life.
| tobib wrote:
| That's why I'm still sceptical of Signal. It's free as well,
| paid for by donations but still. At the end of the day I'm not
| the one paying directly for the service I'm using.
| 7v3x3n3sem9vv wrote:
| Signal is "owned" by a non-profit. They can't be sold to a
| for profit, they learned their lessons from WhatsApp.
|
| Lastly, Signal doesn't collect/store any of your data on
| their infrastructure other than a few hashes required for
| operation. WhatsApp/facebook on the other hand collect, and
| likely keep, forever, at much metadata about you as possible.
| The only way to pay for this free storage is to stay more
| data so they can target you for advertising dollars.
|
| This doesn't guarantee that Signal will live forever, but at
| the very least they've learned from previous mistakes and
| have taken actions to address them.
| madhadron wrote:
| Signal also writes the encryption that WhatsApp and Duo
| use.
| mroche wrote:
| I was confused at first: Google Duo, not Cisco Duo. I'd
| completely forgotten about Google Duo.
| webmobdev wrote:
| Where is Signal's owner non-profit located? Different
| countries have different laws regarding the status of a
| corporations profit or non-profit label.
| ffpip wrote:
| US.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Foundation
| jorvi wrote:
| Damn. I really like Signal and it's still a cut above
| most, but even they must realize the US is a pretty poor
| place for such an organization compared to, say, Germany
| or Switzerland?
| webmobdev wrote:
| That's what I was afraid of - in the US, non-profits can
| be converted to for-profit. So here, Signals non-profit
| status for its owner shouldn't be relevant to us.
|
| https://www.upcounsel.com/converting-non-profit-to-for-
| profi...
| thayne wrote:
| Signal is also open source, so if they do somehow become
| for-profit, it can always be forked.
| est31 wrote:
| You would only be able to fork the client, not the
| network. Signal doesn't want forks or third party
| rebuilds e.g. from F-Droid to connect to their main
| network.
|
| Most people use these apps for the network. The app
| without the network is useless, but any fork would
| initially be in this situation.
| thayne wrote:
| > You would only be able to fork the client
|
| The signal server is also open source. The absence of
| federation does mean you would also need to get all of
| your contacts to move to a different service as well, but
| it is better than a proprietary system. I do wish Signal
| was more open to federation and/or alternative clients
| though.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| I know the circumstances are different, but what almost
| happened to .org is going to haunt me for some time.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Other people who run on donations: Public Radio, The Red
| Cross, all government services, all religions. It's fine to
| be skeptical of _how_ they use their donations, but don 't be
| skeptical just because that's their funding model.
| aftbit wrote:
| Taxes to pay for government services are more like
| protection money than donations IMHO. If I were to stop
| paying, some angry people with guns would eventually come
| to my door to take me away.
| Maken wrote:
| It's more like a subscription fee. They kick you out of
| society if you stop paying.
| SllX wrote:
| Protection money is pretty accurate actually. Instead of
| paying salaries for Armies and the City Guard, it's law
| enforcement. Well, Armies too.
|
| Not the nicest way to put it but they put in Yeoman's[1]
| work and earn it.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeoman
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| No, it's not accurate at all.
|
| "Protection money" means somebody is illegally forcing
| you to pay for something that you don't want or need,
| solely to enrich themselves. But it's not illegal if it's
| literally the foundation of the society.
|
| Democracy is the most expensive system of government. It
| has to be paid for or it doesn't work. It's paid for with
| taxes. It's not protection money, it's fuel for a life
| support system that you and everyone else is hooked up
| to.
| SllX wrote:
| In this case taxes are paying for the protection of a
| democratic society, which you can fairly reasonably call
| protection money.
|
| I mean was it legal when the local Baron came and levied
| a tax on your wheat? Under the King's laws, or maybe it
| was just tradition, but if the alternative is you're
| killed and your land is taken and given to someone more
| loyal, then you just had a tax levied upon you and the
| payment was your life.
|
| Similarly, merchants which snuck into cities rather than
| paying the tax at the gates were not entitled to
| protections from whoever was the guarantor of laws, a
| city guard or the like.
|
| So what's going to happen if you don't pay your taxes?
| Turns out the IRS, the States and the equivalents in
| other countries have _legal_ means of taking what you own
| for what you owe. We can discuss the tradeoffs on this,
| but in practice it's not overly different from a Duke or
| a King or a mobster. What's different is the process, the
| expectancy of it, and the legality.
|
| At the end of the day, what we're paying for is the
| protection of our police, fire departments, Armies and
| Navies.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| The protection you get isn't a racket, it's a system that
| enables you and others to live in a society. If you don't
| want to live in a society, best of luck to you.
| SllX wrote:
| Taxes are not donations.
|
| Your example of religions is also suspect. To be blunt we
| perceive it that way in places and times where established
| Churches are legally independent and separate from the
| government. It's not always and often isn't true, or at
| least isn't the case by default in some places.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_tax
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithe
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zakat
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jizya
|
| Compare and contrast with Alms, the more charitable less
| compulsory concept:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alms
|
| Just one more reason to love separation of Church and State
| and the _prohibition_ on Congress on making laws respecting
| an establishment of religion.
| wheybags wrote:
| Donate! Then you are.
| InvertedRhodium wrote:
| If they take donations in order to fund it, doesn't that give
| you the option of paying for the service directly?
| tobib wrote:
| In a way, except that there is no link between my usage and
| a payment, do you know what I mean? If I paid even $1 a
| month, I could sleep well knowing they're promising me X in
| exchange for Y. With a donation it just feels like I'm
| rewarding them for their high level promises/values. I
| don't know, maybe I'm overthinking it.
| sombremesa wrote:
| > All these "free" products out there that seem great have
| Venture Capital investors
|
| Not all of them. Some, like unroll.me, blatantly tell you they
| sell your data - and people still give them access to their
| entire E-mail inbox.
| ptero wrote:
| There are different models claiming free stuff.
|
| One is a google-style lock into an ecosystem of free apps that
| a company can monetize at any time. Stay away if possible: the
| users will be milked sooner or later.
|
| The other is openstreetmap-style set of free data that anyone
| can download anytime, plus some apps (maybe free, maybe not)
| using it for some function. I see no problem with it as the
| lock-in is highly unlikely because the main feature (say, map
| data) is always available. My 2c.
| hbosch wrote:
| Didn't WhatsApp used to be monetized by default? Something like
| $1/year?
| vinay_ys wrote:
| This isn't about free of fees vs not. It is about changing
| privacy policy drastically in an era when people do actually
| care about privacy.
| Normal_gaussian wrote:
| Its worth remembering that whatsapp used to have an annual
| charge, and it grew successfully with that. The charge was only
| removed once FB bought them.
|
| Personally I don't know anyone that started using whatsapp
| after the fb purchase, so they were all happy to pay for their
| use of a messaging app.
| throwaway77_a wrote:
| Did they have that ever on iOS? I've never seen it.
| rpcwork wrote:
| Been an iPhone prisoner/beaten-wife/lover since 2010.
| Whatsapp charged $1 per year for update. Happy to pay that
| in exchange for knowing that my familyand network
| information and more importantly info about my kids won't
| be sold for pieces million times a minute on the digital ad
| auction markets.
| roflchoppa3 wrote:
| yes they did
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| On iOS there was a one-time purchase fee. I recall there
| theoretically also being an annual charge, but IME this was
| always waived.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| This is what I remember, tho I guess it's possible they
| changed the terms for new users. But I bought it in late
| 2009, IIRC and it was either $0.99 or $2.99.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| IIRC they charged for the app download on ios, and on
| android the initial download was free, but with a promise
| that they would start charging an annual fee soon. But that
| never happened. They kept extending the deadline and then
| got bought out.
| Macha wrote:
| I have to say that prior to being free of charge, it wasn't
| nearly so popular in most markets. Viber was king in my
| country and individuals still used SMS outside a "messaging
| of last resort" use case it has become.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| That's not entirely true. They did charge something tiny to
| use the app (I think it was ~$2/year) but in many countries
| (outside the US where they were much more popular) they
| didn't block users who didn't pay. If you didn't want to see
| annoying reminders you would just pay and get rid of it. Many
| people I know never paid.
| minusSeven wrote:
| They didn't monetize it because in countries like India if
| you were to monetize it most users would stop using the
| app. This I guess is the alternative. Thing is there is no
| reason to believe others apps won't do the same in the
| future.
| amingilani wrote:
| I can confirm this. No one in my circles ever paid and the
| banner never went away.
| grishka wrote:
| For me it simply displayed "the next year of service is on
| us" once a year, every year. Paying for WhatsApp was
| something of an urban legend.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| I paid.. almost nobody had WhatsApp
| letitbeirie wrote:
| The modern day WinRAR
| piyush_soni wrote:
| I had paid for at least one year (just $1), may be two
| (don't remember exactly). I would be glad to pay more,
| but Facebook played a big game and now we're all stuck
| with it because at least in India WhatsApp is almost a
| necessity.
| grishka wrote:
| Thankfully in Russia it is not. Some people prefer it for
| some reason but there's no hard requirement to have it to
| be a part of society. I haven't even bothered to set it
| up on my new phone I bought a month ago and there was no
| discomfort resulting from that. Though I do still need to
| download my data and delete my account so people won't
| even try messaging me there.
| piyush_soni wrote:
| Great for you! Here everyone (including the carpenter,
| plumber, bank/finance people and more) almost expects you
| to have whatsapp. Even some of the biggest businesses are
| on Whatsapp offering product/order updates, customer
| service and more. Not to mention every friend of yours
| would constantly pester you to be on it. I guess one
| _could_ live without it, but it will be pretty
| uncomfortable and you 'll lose touch with almost all of
| your friends and relatives.
| grishka wrote:
| Here 99% of my messaging with real people is covered by
| VKontakte and Telegram. I can't even fathom using
| WhatsApp for any kind of serious communication because of
| how inconvenient and unreliable it is. "Can't download
| media, please ask them to send again", my ass. What kind
| of engineering does even lead to this?! And the fact that
| I have to use my phone while sitting in front of a
| computer is a non-starter. The web version still uses the
| phone and occasionally wipes itself completely so you
| have to set it up again.
| idlecool wrote:
| i paid for whatsapp back in 2012. it was a paid app on
| the app store. it wasn't much - $1, and everyone had to
| pay for it to download. later they made it a free app. i
| am more than happy to pay for a messaging app for myself
| and my close family, and i dont like the idea of sharing
| the data with fb. there needs to be a paid alternative.
| grishka wrote:
| I now remember it being a paid download on iOS but free
| on Android, and all my smartphones since the dawn of the
| duopoly ran Android, so...
| tonyztan wrote:
| > there needs to be a paid alternative.
|
| Just use Signal. It's free, open source, and end-to-end
| encrypted.
|
| https://signal.org/
| CDSlice wrote:
| On the other hand, you will have an absolute pain trying
| to transfer messages to another device. To move from one
| android device to another you have to manually make a
| database backup (hope you didn't lose your old phone!)
| and copy it over to a new phone. Moving from an iPhone to
| another iPhone is slightly better since you just have to
| have both iPhones and then the app can sync the data
| across. However if you try to move from Android to iOS or
| vice versa, you are absolutely screwed. There is no way
| to get your data transferred to your new device and there
| is no way to get your data out of signal, even the
| database backup the Android app has doesn't include
| everything. Say what you want about WhatsApp but at least
| thanks to GDPR my data isn't permanently trapped in one
| app forever with no way to get it out.
| tonyztan wrote:
| That's a good point. I haven't really thought about
| transferring messages since I use Disappearing Messages
| [1] for almost all conversations.
|
| [1] https://support.signal.org/hc/en-
| us/articles/360007320771-Se...
| wolco2 wrote:
| Beware building against a paid api as the rates/rules will
| change under you and you will be more stuck compared to a
| public api.
|
| I wouldn't trust any api you don't control, don't have a solid
| contract (without the changable terms) or isn't owned by a
| nonprofit.
|
| The free ones will hurt you but you expect it. The paid ones
| hurt more because you often build a business around an
| ecosystem that eats you up.
| the_arun wrote:
| I agree there is no free lunch. But for that I don't want to
| sell everything & stand naked. Instead Whatsapp should
| introduce features on top of their platform - like Payments and
| make money out of that. Or add a throttle on number of messages
| people send per day or something. No free lunch is not an
| excuse for stealing data.
| Zelphyr wrote:
| I believe you may have misunderstood my post. I'm not
| excusing Facebook's actions around their users' privacy (or
| any of their crooked actions for that matter)
|
| I'm trying to encourage people to remember that this is what
| these companies do when we use their services for free. They
| seem to think they are entitled to our private data and they
| are beginning to respond harshly when we try to keep what is
| rightly ours to ourselves.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| What if we users decided to organize and have more bargaining
| power over how these apps function?
| sdevonoes wrote:
| Damm, now I have to stop using WhatsApp. I'll probably lose 40%
| of my contacts or so, but I believe it's worth it. Sad days we
| live in.
| dheera wrote:
| Yeah so WeChat banned me for an hour for violating the ToS, and
| it wasn't clear what I violated.
|
| I use LineageOS for privacy reasons, and intercept various things
| I consider to be privacy violations.
|
| I very much disagree with these ways of operating, for systems
| that monopolize human-to-human communication.
| sfinaed wrote:
| What do people here think of Element.io (with the default
| matrix.org server)?
| soupson wrote:
| The information you put in parenthesis immediately rules it out
| for 99% of users. I can count on one hand the number of my
| family members who have any concept for what that information
| means.
| blacklight wrote:
| I love Telegram because of the wide set of features, because of
| their bot API and because I can easily use it on any client I
| want - including Bitlbee. And I like Signal because of its built-
| in security, although the lack of an API, easy integration into
| other clients, automation and ease of use from multiple devices
| prevent me from using it more. But I guess that this is a trade-
| off to be accepted for having strong encryption and messages
| stored only on the device.
|
| Let's keep in mind however that these are advanced use cases, and
| that for 99% of the users these are just apps supposed to deliver
| text and media from A to B. In 2021 it's not hard to build an app
| like these, even with E2E encryption and 2FA. Social lock-in
| obviously plays a role, but I'm really appalled by the scarcity
| of alternatives that enables companies like Facebook to bully us
| into reading our private messages for advertising purpose and
| easily get away with it.
| [deleted]
| malinens wrote:
| I got some popup from whatsapp didnt read it and clicked back. It
| was probably this message and I do not get this popup anymore.
| Looks like some dark pattern. I did not accept any new changes...
| DiederikvandenB wrote:
| Does this also apply to European customers, given GDPR?
| k_sze wrote:
| There are no customers. If you're not paying for it, you're not
| a customer: you're the product.
|
| Whatever WhatsApp/Facebook do to "take care" of the "customers"
| is just like pig farmers taking care of pigs.
| [deleted]
| blue_box wrote:
| Seems like, no. On their EU Privacy Policy, it says:
|
| "Today, Facebook does not use your WhatsApp account information
| to improve your Facebook product experiences or provide you
| more relevant Facebook ad experiences on Facebook."
| mro_name wrote:
| prbly they're not using it to 'improve', but to e.g. worsen?
| That statement would be legally true. lol.
| hyperdimension wrote:
| That "Today," hook sure sounds rather ominous to me.
|
| "Today, I've not murdered you yet! Look at that
| accomplishment I've made!"
| utf_8x wrote:
| European user here - I got the notification today so... I guess
| it does?
| TrianguloY wrote:
| I also got the notification, but it's strange because
| WhatsApp in Europe is from WhatsApp Ireland Limited, and
| WhatsApp outside is from WhatsApp LLC. They are different
| companies with different legal requirements. I've seen some
| news stating that these new changes apply only to WhatsApp
| LLC, but the notification seem to say otherwise.
|
| Someone else with more info could explain better?
| rusk wrote:
| This was the very question I have. Presumably given this
| ultimatum they would pull out of the EU market? That's great
| that solves the problem of getting my friends and family onto
| something else!
| dikaio wrote:
| I don't understand the problem. Use Signal.
| fouric wrote:
| As many, _many_ other people have stated here - beyond just
| burning social capital by forcing your other friends and family
| to use Signal (which isn 't even federated), a lot of social,
| community, _and commercial_ things are coordinated exclusively
| through WhatsApp.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25669600
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25673859
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25669072
| FabHK wrote:
| Anyone have any opinion why Wire didn't take of? E2E, good
| functionality (chat, group chat, video chat, voice chat, GIF
| images emojis yadda yadda yadda), multi-device, clients for all
| major platforms (eg for the iPad, unlike WhatsApp), open source,
| phone number or email as identifier, audited, Swiss/EU servers,
| no profiling, no ads...
|
| Can't find any downside, really - except that few people are on
| it.
| thekyle wrote:
| Seems to cost around $5 per month according to their website.
| It's already a tough sell when getting someone to switch to
| another free chat app.
| croes wrote:
| That's Wire Pro for teams, Wire Personal is free.
| jariel wrote:
| This is not nice, but remember they are merely doing what Google
| does, in the sense that all of their properties are inexorably
| and deeply linked.
|
| The only surprise is that this was not done sooner.
|
| WhatsApp is somewhat more essential for a lot of people, and
| contains more sensitive information, so this is not good.
|
| At least with FB and Insta, you can just keep rubbish information
| stored in there.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Maybe governments should support SMS to be free. (also force
| operators to ban spam so it is usable).
| svckr wrote:
| That's odd. I did not receive any notification yet? Is the
| privacy policy country specific?
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| Im in the US and received it 2 days ago. Im the only one in the
| family and amongst my friends to have gotten it
| simonswords82 wrote:
| I've not had it either. Perhaps it's being rolled out over time
| in the run up to 8 Feb switchover?
| arendtio wrote:
| The core issue seems to be, that companies want to profit from
| the information they can extract from communication and
| governments don't want to create laws, to make end-to-end
| encryption mandatory and information extraction illegal, as their
| own law enforcement depends on it.
|
| So the company with the deepest pockets controls our daily
| communication channels and as consumers we feel powerless due to
| the network effect.
|
| One way to overcome this would be to make it mandatory that
| communication services must allow federation. Sure, it would not
| be a perfect solution, but it would be a lot better than the
| current situation and should be _acceptable_ by all parties
| involved.
| airstrike wrote:
| I'll just leave this here
|
| https://epic.org/privacy/internet/ftc/whatsapp/
| VadimPR wrote:
| European resident here - ended up deleting WhatsApp and asking
| contacts to switch to Signal/Telegram. Quite a few people were
| happy to make the move and some were happy for the push.
| Razengan wrote:
| I guess the most valuable data WhatsApp leeches from you is your
| contacts graph.
|
| Wish Apple would let us choose which contacts to give specific
| apps access to, like they did for photos.
|
| In the meantime, you can try minimizing what WhatsApp sees about
| you by turning off access to contacts, using the desktop or web
| app, and just talking to people via
|
| https://wa.me/{phoneNumber}
| icefo wrote:
| Didn't the eu explicitly forbid this ? I wonder how their lawyer
| found a loophole. Or did they did the math and the fine is
| cheaper than the gains ?
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I've been wondering if users should organize or unionize to get
| more rights on the platforms we use. What do you all think about
| something like this in this situation?
| trulyrandom wrote:
| Maybe these privacy policy changes are not super scary yet
| (honestly, it's difficult to even read the thing since its
| littered with legalese traps that confuse me). And at least end-
| to-end encryption still seems to be on the table, but where are
| they headed? WhatsApp is so easy to use that most people will
| just click "Agree" and trade their privacy for convenience.
|
| Messaging in the Netherlands almost universally runs on WhatsApp
| these days. Nobody uses text messages anymore, understandably,
| but somehow we all ended up on a platform run by Facebook.
| "Whatsappen" (messaging on Whatsapp) and "appje" (short for
| WhatsApp message) are even official words now. Need to contact a
| friend? Send an appje. Need support from a company? Send an
| appje. Need to send a message to your team at work? Send an appje
| in the group chat.
|
| Has anyone managed to get their contacts to switch to Signal? I
| can't even get tech-savvy people to switch, since they always
| seem to find some minor annoyance that makes them instantly
| dismiss the app and go back to WhatsApp.
| submeta wrote:
| I am in the EU, and this is what I have been presented with:
|
| ,, By tapping Agree, you accept the new terms, which take effect
| on February 8, 2021. After this date, you'll need to accept the
| new terms to continue using WhatsApp. You can also visit the Help
| Center if you would prefer to delete your account and would like
| more information. To learn more about how WhatsApp processes your
| data, read our updated _privacy policy_ " (with an Agree button
| underneath).
|
| I could close the window. But there is a hard deadline
| apparently: Feb 8th.
|
| F* you Facebook. I'd rather stop using Whatsapp altogether.
|
| Edit:
|
| Will start using Signal app, and for the transition period I'll
| keep an old smartphone with a throwaway Sim card and WhatsApp
| installed on it to keep updates from absolutely necessary groups
| I need to be part of.
| dessant wrote:
| Our quest to fully convert to Signal has hit a major wall,
| Android tablets are not supported as linked devices.
|
| Supporting tablets would allow us to chat and send files across
| devices, without resorting to apps like Messenger.
| skinkestek wrote:
| Depending on your exact needs either Telegram or (preferably
| IMO) Matrix might be a solution.
|
| (Yes, I think this is correct: For anyone who are currently
| on WhatsApp or anything Facebook for that matter even
| Telegram is a huge improvement in most ways.)
| rcxdude wrote:
| Telegram is not better than WhatsApp in the very important
| aspect that it is not end-to-end encrypted. You can balance
| up the risks of facebook inserting malicious code into
| their client against the risks of your data being
| accessable at rest on Telegram's servers, but it's not at
| all clear Telegram is in a better spot there.
| dessant wrote:
| I get your point, but moving people to Signal has been an
| accomplishment on its own, you get to say "we should move
| to this new private app" only so many times, before your
| friends and family grab their torches.
| raziel2p wrote:
| If you want people to be privacy minded this is what you
| have to prepare them for, though. Signal could get bought
| out by a privacy-hostile company next year, or they could
| go out of business.
| skinkestek wrote:
| Or get a visit from the NSA.
| MayeulC wrote:
| The good thing is that matrix can be bridged to
| Signal[1], to allow for a smoother transition period.
|
| This is also true with Whatsapp[2], but against their
| terms of service, so you risk getting banned, and built
| on reverse-engineering, plus you need an android VM of
| some sort.
|
| I've been personally moving my family to Signal, since
| that provides the best UX and easier transition from
| Whatsapp. Once I'm comfortable enough with it, we'll
| likely transition to matrix.
|
| What Matrix is missing is in my view:
|
| - Client with simple UI, polished UX, and not just a
| smoking pot of features: FluffyChat[3] is mostly there.
|
| - Server of which I can guarantee the uptime. Dendrite
| should lower the resource usage for a ~5-100 accounts
| server, and decentralised identities[4] would allow
| falling back to another server (such as a friend's).
|
| We're mostly there, so I'm starting to prepare the
| switch, starting with my more technical friends, by
| setting a bridge up. Hopefully we can finally break that
| dependency on phone numbers (ideally, domain names as
| well with [4]) and move on to bey-based IDs.
|
| [1] https://github.com/tulir/mautrix-signal
|
| [1] Older bridge, unmaintained:
| https://github.com/matrix-hacks/matrix-puppet-signal
|
| [2]https://matrix.org/docs/guides/whatsapp-bridging-
| mautrix-wha...
|
| [3] https://web.fluffychat.im/en/
|
| [4] https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-
| doc/blob/neilalexander/...
| herbst wrote:
| Well if you just remove the app and let them know where
| they can find you. They basically have no choice.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Can you run the web interface to signal in the tablet's web
| browser? I thought basically no one used android tablets
| anyway
| dessant wrote:
| Signal has no web client.
|
| > I thought basically no one used android tablets anyway
|
| Tens of millions of Android tablets are sold every quarter.
| wuschel wrote:
| It was always a clear business transaction: acess to a
| messenging service for access to meta data (and now message
| data).
|
| I wonder how Out of curiosity:
|
| Does anyone know how the new Whatsapp TOS differ from the Gmail
| TOS in regard to user data and privacy. How does the Facebook
| group use data differently than, say Facebook or Microsoft?
| Closi wrote:
| > It was always a clear business transaction: acess to a
| messenging service for access to meta data (and now message
| data).
|
| Nah it wasn't, I paid for WhatsApp originally and then there
| was a subscription model for a while.
|
| I much prefer both those models, Facebook is just greedy.
| 0x10c0fe11ce wrote:
| So what should self sentient person do, just lie down and
| accept the erosions of our blood won freedoms? No thanks. I
| have right now all my company talking to thousands of
| customers explaining this mess to them and helping those who
| need to switch to Signal. So yeah, fuck you FB!
| lrvick wrote:
| Signal is no better. You fell into one marketing trap with
| WhatsApp and have now fallen for another.
|
| Signal is another private entity with complete control of
| the servers and end client binaries. The fact they happen
| to open source the code is kind of moot since no services
| are allowed to write alternative implementations, no one
| can run their own servers or prove what code is running on
| Signals servers, nor can anyone even distribute
| reproducibly built binaries from said source code for
| accountability (e.g. f-droid).
|
| There are so many better options. I suggest Element/Matrix
| which can even bridge to WhatsApp and Signal as needed
| thanks to community contributed bridges.
| wuschel wrote:
| Thank you for the constructive answer.
|
| I thought Signal was open source, and the distributed
| binaries matched the source, and that is was allowed to
| run your own servers. Are the servers even open source?
|
| Are there lirerature regarding the technical/conceptional
| bits Element/Matrix? What is the tradeoff there?
| lmm wrote:
| > I thought Signal was open source, and the distributed
| binaries matched the source
|
| This is sort of true. The source is published and you can
| build your own binary. But given that you can't
| distribute Signal outside of official stores and can't
| pin the version in those official stores (unless you turn
| off updates on your phone entirely), it's not actually
| practical to run an audited version, yet alone to make
| your own changes to the code.
|
| > and that is was allowed to run your own servers. Are
| the servers even open source?
|
| EDIT: apparently there is now (purported) server source
| available, not that that means much when there's no way
| to even know which code a given server is running, yet
| alone run a server with different code. They claim that
| their E2E encryption means control of their servers
| doesn't matter, but their protocol analyses doesn't
| actually think about what an attacker might be able to do
| at the server level, IME.
|
| > Are there lirerature regarding the
| technical/conceptional bits Element/Matrix? What is the
| tradeoff there?
|
| It uses either the same ratchet protocol as Signal or a
| very similar one. E2E for group chats is more complicated
| but I don't think you're giving up anything.
| 90ctemp wrote:
| > servers are closed-source. Th
|
| They are open source. Please see github.
| lrvick wrote:
| I largely agree with you but I don't want to see
| misinformation spread even when it supports my view.
|
| The signal server source code is open source now in
| theory, you are just not permitted to run your own server
| and have it join the Signal network. We have to take
| their word for it that they are running the code they
| publish.
| lrvick wrote:
| I started a high level doc a couple years ago to compare
| the major tradeoffs in most popular messengers here:
|
| https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-UlA4-tslROBDS9Iq
| Hal...
|
| We also only assume the published Signal binaries match
| the published source code. Moxie and team have exclusive
| control of the signing keys and Moxie said he will fight
| any third parties like F-droid doing from-source signed
| binaries outside the Google/apple ecosystems in spite of
| the accountability and removed SPOF it would offer.
|
| If you choose to use a non Google/Apple platform or a
| freedom-respecting architecture like RISC-V or OpenPOWER
| you don't get to be on the Signal network.
|
| This eliminates me from being able to use Signal. Talked
| to moxie at length about this but in the end he
| repeatedly admits he has no problem cutting off the few
| to enforce his vision for the many. He also frequently
| implies he sees himself as the only entity worthy of
| running the world's communications systems.
|
| He is a smart guy and means well, but he is naive.
| Benevolent dictators are always replaced by less
| benevolent ones eventually. There is nothing stopping
| what happened to WhatsApp happening to Signal. You also
| have to trust the pinky swear offered by the Signal
| Foundation that they won't dump the keys from their SGX
| enclaves using any of a myriad of design flaws, and that
| they, their ISP, datacenters, and any three letter orgs
| tapping them will all throw away all the TVP/IP level
| metadata that centrally flows to their systems.
|
| With Matrix OTOH, if those that host a given set of
| binaries/servers go evil or we simply want control of our
| metadata for sensitive channels, we can just use one of
| the alternative independent clients or a fork, switch to
| our own server or one run in a country or by an entity we
| trust more. We also still will be able to reach our
| social graph, just like switching an email provider.
|
| Democratic control is messy, but I will take it over a
| benevolent dictator any day.
|
| As for documentation, matrix.org documents the API and
| design choices of Matrix extensively and they welcome
| people making alternative clients and bridges to other
| networks because they believe the only safe and
| sustainable network services are open ones.
| fsflover wrote:
| You should consider publishing your table here instead:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_cross-
| platform_i...
| agilob wrote:
| Element is really slow on mobile, Signal and WA show my
| list of conversations in fewer than 5 seconds. Element
| needs ~10 seconds just to load UI, then 10 more seconds
| to sync list of active conversations, then I enter into a
| conversation and it needs between 2 seconds and 2 days to
| synchronize e2e keys. I can literally leave the
| conversation open, phone in charger for night and it
| still can't sync message. How do I explain to my parents
| that their message from 2 days ago "call me when you're
| free" didn't arrive because Element couldn't read it?
| They changed name 3 times already, changing APP ID,
| forcing me to reinstall it on all devices, update all my
| bookmarks in browser, having to sync all keys between all
| devices, not only on my devices, but also my family
| members who were using it. Their initial-setup of the app
| is really bad experience. Sometime I can NOT have two
| devices online at the same time to login and send message
| from new third device. It's cool on browser, I had
| nothing bad experience on mobile + web.
|
| Signal is simply best because it works as SMS client AND
| encrypted messages client. Best UI/UX, one app to rule
| them all, consistent behaviour, not owned by FAAMG.
| 0x10c0fe11ce wrote:
| Thanks for your insights, I'll definitely look into
| Element/Mattix. I didn't know Signal was just another
| scheme to collect private data. But I always knew that
| WhatsApp == FB yet I couldn't do much due to network
| effects. Decentralizing the web has never been so
| important as now.
| tao_oat wrote:
| > I didn't know Signal was just another scheme to collect
| private data
|
| I think that's quite a misstatement, but it is indeed a
| centralized service.
| lrvick wrote:
| I don't think they -intentionally- exist to harvest user
| data. They just create a situation where they can be
| taken over by an entity that wishes to easily at any
| point, or maybe they are already tapped by an entity that
| has dumped their SGX keys and/or is tapping their network
| traffic to bulk harvest the metadata they helpfully
| centralize.
|
| The founder of VK had good intentions and was willing to
| protect his users too. The Russian government replaced
| him with someone more ethically flexible.
|
| The foundsrs of WhatsApp clearly never intended it to go
| in the direction it did post acquisition, but it was not
| their call.
|
| Gathering all users to a single choke point on a single
| client on a single server infra is irresponsible and
| unsustainable. We have been here before.
| evgen wrote:
| Signal is not another scheme to collect private data and
| anyone who makes such a claim has their own agenda to
| push (as you can see from the other comments in this
| thread made by this person.) Do a bit more research, get
| a wide variety of opinions, and then decide which factors
| are most important to you.
| Closi wrote:
| It's the same as WhatsApp in some extent - always
| promised that they wouldn't give up your data while they
| gained traction and then get acquired by Facebook and get
| forced to.
| evgen wrote:
| No, it is not the same. Signal is a registered 501.3(c)
| non-profit with a public board and cannot just decide to
| sell themselves and your metadata at some future point.
| Signal is also making ongoing improvements to protocols
| and apps to limit the amount of metadata that must be
| collected or that can be usefully held.
| bserge wrote:
| Anybody interested in SIM cards?
|
| UK/IE/RO/MD/UA/RU/etc - cheap and fast delivery :D
| madeofpalk wrote:
| > Will start using Signal app
|
| I can't do this because _everyone else I know_ uses Whatsapp.
| MayeulC wrote:
| Well, do you know whether they use Signal as well? You might
| be surprised.
|
| Whatsapp helpfully gives you a transition period during which
| you can try out both ;)
| foolmeonce wrote:
| Perhaps people should be filling their throw away simcards with
| random people from the phone book.
|
| I am mostly using Signal and will let my WhatsApp expire.
|
| I also think matrix is great and would recommend setting up an
| account by installing element. I think growth in matrix will
| more fully undermine FB's position as well as Slack/etc.
| rusk wrote:
| As I understand it even with click thru agreement like this it
| is still illegal in the EU. Could be an interesting case on the
| way... I believe that WhatsApp only real option in this case is
| to stop serving the EU, which I feel as an EU residents could
| only be a good thing!
| Number157 wrote:
| You could try lodging a report:
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-
| protection/refo...
| elmo2you wrote:
| I believe so too.
|
| In addition, I vaguely remember something about the
| acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook to be only approved under
| condition that exactly this kind of data sharing would not
| happen.
|
| Although I have my doubts about it happening soon, because
| the immediate impact it would have on real everyday life
| could by rather disastrous initially (something Facebook no
| doubt is aware of), the EU should probably declare/certify
| Facebook as a rogue/criminal organization. I just can't see
| it any other way, with Facebook's blatant disregard for
| anything but its own greedy interests.
|
| If Facebook keeps pushing their "luck" like this, it should
| simply have all its assets on EU soil frozen. If eventually
| rules a criminal organization, confiscated too. It would be
| very sad and unfortunate for any EU citizens working for the
| company, who no doubt have no say in Facebook's criminal
| enterprise. But the current status quo is becoming completely
| unacceptable.
|
| History has plenty of lessons, about criminal organizations
| rising to (hard to defeat levels of) power. In many cases
| more than anything because both societies and
| governments/authorities failed to respond appropriately in
| time, when they still had a fair chance containing those
| (with far less effort).
|
| All that is even without opening the can of worms that is the
| access US government agencies have to all of Facebook's data.
| smueller1234 wrote:
| Probably relevant: if I go to the terms/privacy policy via
| settings, I am greeted by the following preamble.
|
| "If you don't live in the European Region, WhatsApp LLC
| provides WhatsApp to you under this Terms of Service and
| Privacy Policy."
| eznzt wrote:
| It would be a good thing to lose a chat app that works very
| well and has E2E by default?
| jcalve wrote:
| Yes, it would force people to use better alternatives such
| as Signal or Telegram.
| krageon wrote:
| Signal is run by someone who hates repeatable builds and
| open platforms. Telegram is to the russian government
| what whatsapp is to the US government.
|
| That is to say, both options are bad. Of course it is
| conceptually better to spread your information over many
| separate information silos so that your data is harder to
| correlate. That should not be the bar we aspire to
| though.
| HoolaBoola wrote:
| I don't think it's the Russian government you should be
| concerned about when using Telegram. Sure, TG is far from
| a secure platform, but the Russians have spent
| considerable effort trying to shut it down so out of all
| the possibilities, I'd say TG being in Russian hands is
| among the smallest.
| avaika wrote:
| Ah. That's why Russian government was trying to block
| Telegram for over two years. Good to know.
| rusk wrote:
| They could have just been doing that to lend it
| legitimacy ... psyops is something they're very big into
| these days
| skinkestek wrote:
| I've heard that before and the idea is reasonable but I
| must say if they've actually pulled of that stunt then it
| is amazing because I've seen nothing to suggest so
| despite being aware of the possibility for years.
| rusk wrote:
| I'd say it's pretty much their MO these days
| skinkestek wrote:
| You mean directing people were they want by pretending
| they don't want you to while not taking action against
| those who do?
|
| If so, do you have other notable examples or is it
| insider information? ;-)
| rusk wrote:
| I think it's pretty well known ... have a look into this
| guy https://www.google.ie/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/a
| rticle/...
|
| I know you're not engaging in good faith but I'm adding
| this more for the benefit of onlookers
| skinkestek wrote:
| > I know you're not engaging in good faith but I'm adding
| this more for the benefit of onlookers
|
| That was uncalled for. Please adjust your troll-detector
| and I'll adjust my wittyness dispenser ;-)
|
| I am serious even when I'm joking, but I have never heard
| anyone saying that in full seriousness and also it feels
| like we should have known something: even the Russian
| secret service isn't perfect, in fact they've done some
| really big mistakes the last few years (in addition to
| their deliberate "mistakes" that they seemingly do to
| show off.)
| rorykoehler wrote:
| >Telegram is to the russian government what whatsapp is
| to the US government.
|
| Do you have a source for that. Telegram is built by the
| VKontakt guys who Putin famously fucked over.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| All of these apps seem to hate open platforms and third
| party clients; Signal just as much as WhatsApp. I
| wouldn't even mind using WhatsApp if I could just open a
| browser window on any modern computer and log on like I
| can with Twitter. But no, I need to have a smartphone
| with either Android or IOS. They all want that magic
| unique personal identifier that is the mobile phone
| number to prevent you from having more than one persona,
| and they all want their closed apps as the sole way of
| using their service.
|
| Of course, that requirement is exactly how they implement
| the user lock-in, so it's not going anywhere until
| legislation forces them to open up.
| vorticalbox wrote:
| Signal is actually open source but I agree with the
| sentiment.
|
| Services now just want some person info they can link to
| you and that actually scares me a little.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| You're right about Signal having an open source client of
| course. It's a closed platform because of the 'no-forks-
| allowed' stipulations.
| eznzt wrote:
| If you need to _force_ people to use alternatives it 's
| because they are not much better to begin with.
|
| I've used the Signal app and it's a bug fest. Telegram is
| not even encrypted by default and there is no option for
| encrypted groups.
| GraemeMeyer wrote:
| > If you need to force people to use alternatives it's
| because they are not much better to begin with.
|
| This isn't necessarily true - that's basically the
| problem with monopolies and the point of anti-trust. The
| network effect really can entrench an inferior product.
| Spivak wrote:
| That's not a useful definition of better though.
| WhatsApp, Messenger, etc. are better because they're
| reliable and the people I want to talk to use them.
|
| MMS messages are hot garbage but they're still better
| than a lot of alternatives because everyone with a phone
| can receive them.
| skinkestek wrote:
| > Telegram is not even encrypted by default and there is
| no option for encrypted groups.
|
| Friendly reminder that encryption is more than
| E2E-encryption despite what certain people on HN thinks.
|
| Telegram is encrypted point-to-point by default. Same as
| banks, modern mail etc.
|
| Can we stop spreading technical misinformation now,
| please? There's plenty of other issues with Telegram and
| if we stop crying wolf over the neighbors grand danois
| people might actually believe us when there is an actual
| wolf.
| josefx wrote:
| Main reason I use whats app is because everyone else I
| deal with uses whats app, not because it has specific
| features. I could probably list a different chat app and
| social networking site for every time I switched a school
| and when I started to study.
| rusk wrote:
| I do personally believe that for all its faults WhatsApp
| is the best. It's a pity about that but I guess FB have
| to pay all those great developers somehow. It's up to
| regulation to set the boundaries for what's acceptable in
| business so let's see what happens.
| josefx wrote:
| > It's a pity about that but I guess FB have to pay all
| those great developers somehow.
|
| They could just run it as a paid service again? They had
| a minimal annual charge before the Facebook acquisition
| and probably could have raised that, instead Facebook
| made it "free" which should have been a warning sign of
| things to come.
| hadrien01 wrote:
| One of the reasons the founders left was that FB wanted
| to put ads and track users, and didn't even want to try
| to make a Business paid version like WhatsApp proposed.
| turkeywelder wrote:
| that'll never happen - WhatsApp is almost WeChat for
| Europe, it's ubiquitous and the network effect is so
| strong you'll really struggle to get masses of people to
| switch away fom it.
|
| 99% of people outside of the HN bubble will just look at
| the dialog, click OK and carry on as normal.
| rusk wrote:
| If WhatsApp can't be legally compliant then they simply
| can't provide the service. It's up to them.
| submeta wrote:
| Instead of surrendering we - technically aware people -
| should think about possibilities to make them respect
| privacy or think about ways to change the situation.
| Spivak wrote:
| Yes but not clicking through the shrink-wrap agreement
| isn't a real way to do it. Legislation that requires
| people be able to say no to data collection without loss
| of service would go a long way.
| StreamBright wrote:
| I have messaged a bunch of my EU friends with this
| article. Most of them were shocked.
| technocratius wrote:
| I did the same. Mixed reactions, some shocked, some shrug
| and move on. And my friends are academically educated and
| relatively conscious of this issue I believe. Probably
| not the most representative sample...
| StreamBright wrote:
| I think this level ignorance is pretty common today.
| fsflover wrote:
| > E2E by default
|
| Only if you trust Facebook with their proprietary software.
| tomp wrote:
| Who cares if it's "technically illegal" if there's no fines
| for it. I seriously doubt that the EU will grow teeth anytime
| soon (but I hope to be surprised!).
| FalconSensei wrote:
| In practice, everything that doesn't have a punishment is
| legal
| hh3k0 wrote:
| Google/Alphabet has received more than 8 billion Euro in
| fines by the EU. I wouldn't generally call them toothless.
| llampx wrote:
| What's the alternative? Has the FTC, FCC or any other US
| agency taken any action against the American big tech
| companies?
|
| The US sees FAANG as its babies and will protect them at
| all costs. Its up to the rest of the world to rein them in.
| rusk wrote:
| It's not the EU you need to worry about it's the courts ...
| check out the whole Max Schrems Facebook thing and the
| Apple Tax stuff is yet ongoing ...
| corty wrote:
| Yes, but both are examples of the EU not actually wanting
| to do the right thing, even if the courts say so. Privacy
| shield was shot down by Schrems in court, only to be
| replaced by the EU mumbling about "standard contract
| clauses, just do the same as before". No billions in
| penalties in sight.
|
| Same for the Apple (and others') taxes in Ireland: While
| the Irish have been told by courts and the rest of Europe
| to collect the taxes they are owed, they just refuse to
| do so.
| rusk wrote:
| No you're out of date, the standard contract clauses
| thing was blown out of the water. It's a big problem for
| Facebook, not sure where it's at now.
|
| Also your understanding of the Apple case is a little out
| of whack too. There's a lot of subtlety to it, but
| basically the court ruled in Apple's favour on a
| technicality and there is a revised appeal pending.
| [deleted]
| lrvick wrote:
| So you are going to move from one centralized, walled garden,
| privacy hostile platform that hard requires Google/Apple
| ecosystems to get signed updates... to another with identical
| drawbacks.
|
| I suggest something that lets you use any client/platform you
| want, uses the same crypto primitives, and lets you choose what
| server/country your data is hosted in and change your mind any
| time, e.g Matrix.
|
| How many times do centralized services like VK, WhatsApp,
| Instagram, Apple, etc need to get co-opted into enforcing the
| will of private entities or governments before we learn our
| lesson?
|
| The only network services this won't become true of at some
| point in the future are those with decentralized clients and
| servers obeying a common documented protocol.
| chalst wrote:
| I don't like Signal's stance on forks (which is that they are
| allowed but may not use the official Signal network) but it
| hardly has identical drawbacks. Signal is open source, can be
| downloaded as an official APK and can be run on LineageOS
| without Google Play (notifications do require some emulation
| of Play Services calls, but that can be provided using
| MicroG).
| dessant wrote:
| > forks ... may not use the official Signal network
|
| Is it technically prevented or just frowned upon? The
| former would be strange, because fixing a bug in your own
| private fork would also exclude you from the network.
| csunbird wrote:
| I actually do not find this unreasonable, maintaining and
| providing backwards support everyone's custom version
| with their own quirks would be a big technical burden.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| Then no support should be provided for these forks.
| Caveat emptor unless you use the official client.
| lrvick wrote:
| Moxie openly admits he centralized because it is easier
| and that decentralizing is too hard. We should all just
| give up and pick the least bad centralized service.
|
| With that thinking we would all be using AOL.
|
| Making a robust flexible protocol that can support a
| bunch of different client and service implementations is
| hard, but that is how we ended up avoiding email and web
| browsing being controlled by a single entity.
|
| Matrix is solving the hard problem of providing the core
| functionality of tools like Slack and Whatsapp without
| sacrificing user freedom or asking you to trust any one
| entity.
|
| This is what ethical engineering looks like, and I don't
| mind tolerating occasional growing pains in exchange for
| freedom.
| dessant wrote:
| Allowing modding and forks does not mean you have to
| provide support for them.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Exactly this. You don't have to prohibit homosexuality
| just because you don't want to deal with adding support
| to your database of married citizens / prohibit forks
| because you don't want to support them.
|
| The argument makes no sense. I can't decide if Moxie is a
| double agent with street cred or honestly trying to do
| good here.
| lrvick wrote:
| I am generally a pretty decent read of people and in my
| observations and interactions with him I genuinely
| believe he believes a benevolent dictator building a
| centralized system is the only way to bring non-profit-
| motivated secure messaging to the masses, and that if one
| accepts this seemingly irrefutable truth, then the best
| candidate for the job is himself.
|
| He is charismatic, highly intelligent, and lives by his
| own moral compass, rejecting FOSS ethos and silicon
| valley capitalist ethos alike.
|
| This makes him especially dangerous.
| chalst wrote:
| There are forks of the Signal client that do use the OWS
| servers [1], but IIUC they are in violation of the OWS
| TOS. Certainly moxie has threatened to block forked
| clients, which is why F-droid won't host any of these
| forks [2].
|
| [1]: https://github.com/tw-hx/Signal-Android
|
| [2]: https://forum.f-droid.org/t/we-can-include-signal-
| in-f-droid...
| lrvick wrote:
| Moxie highly discourages using the APK because it means
| turning on untrusted sources which is highly unsafe and
| bypasses signature verification.
|
| It is one BGP attack or compromised CDN admin way from
| compromising the masses.
|
| This is one of the few points I agree with moxie on.
|
| The only safe way to install software on an Android device
| requires you bootstrap trust via a system supplied package
| manager that enforces signature verification.
|
| Lineage grabs unsigned binary blobs from a separate account
| with little accountability ( https://GitHub.com/themuppets
| ) to limit the blast radius of illegally distributing them
| and does not ship a package manager at all.
|
| They expect degoogled users to do disable system signature
| verification to use an alternative app store like F-droid.
| Lineage is great if you want to turn an old device into a
| game system or something, but it should not be used on a
| device you need to be able to trust.
|
| The only Google-free option to have a signed system-
| verified app supply chain on Android is use a ROM that
| bundles F-droid as a system trusted app manager like
| CalyxOS, RattlesnakeOS, or my projects, aosp-build, and
| #!os.
|
| While F-Droid is far from perfect it is the only
| alternative path and Moxie refuses to allow apps to be
| distributed there because he openly admits he wants the
| usage metrics that come from Google/Apple distribution.
|
| In effect, you either use Apple/Google ecosystems to run
| verified binaries, or compile yourself every week or two.
| est31 wrote:
| > bypasses signature verification.
|
| APKs do not bypass signature verification. Android still
| requires all apks to be signed, and only installs updates
| to apks that were signed by the same original key.
|
| As for BGP attacks, the apk is distributed using TLS, so
| it needs more than that. That being said, CDN hacks are
| definitely an issue. But so is someone hacking their play
| store account or Google play itself.
| lrvick wrote:
| Semantics, but worth clarifying.
|
| You have to turn on untrusted sources to sideload an APK.
| It will verify a signature. The problem is the OS has no
| anchor to know if that signature is by the key of the
| party you expect, or that of a malicious adversary. Once
| you pin the wrong key it is like getting a bad HTTPs cert
| on first connection. All bets are off moving forward.
| est31 wrote:
| The OS has no anchor when you obtain it from the play
| store either. Google play can absolutely send you a
| hacked app with a different signing key if they want to.
| Signatures play no role in the first installation, they
| only play a role in subsequent installations.
|
| If you have downloaded the apk using http, you can still
| verify the signature before installing through other
| means, e.g. by comparing it to your friend's installed
| APK, using multiple ways to download the apk, etc. Can
| you do this with Google play?
| lrvick wrote:
| As much as I loathe Google I do have a fairly high
| expectation that the HSM rooted key pinning infra of
| Google Play itself is less vulnerable to MITM than the
| standalone signing key embedded in an APK hosted on a CDN
| somewhere.
|
| You also can directly download APKs from Google Play
| using Aurora Store and compare them to the standalone APK
| in theory, though both points of verification are against
| the same entity so it only rules out MITM on a CDN etc.
|
| Problem is, who has time to do this for every single
| update? How many would even do it for the initial
| install? Most technical sysadmins don't even verify ssh
| host fingerprints unless automated CA infra does it for
| them.
|
| Even if someone does do this religiously, in practice I
| suspect they will put off valuable security patches until
| they can manually verify every new binary corresponds
| with the published source code to rule out supply chain
| attacks etc.
|
| If two totally independent entities compiled and
| published signed binaries and their hashes matched (when
| signatures are stripped) then there is some automated
| consensus there are currently no obvious supply chain
| attacks in play to protect users at large who don't have
| the time or experience to compile and verify against the
| published apk by hand or manually compare fingerprints.
| F-droid could keep the Signal Foundation honest if they
| let them but instead they say "trust us, or compile your
| own binaries" as if no middle ground exists.
|
| Meanwhile I can hand my wife a phone with F-Droid and
| Matrix and know she can update reasonably safely without
| any manual key verification steps by me or her. Even when
| the signing key of matrix.org on Google Play gets
| compromised the blast radius does not extend to F-droid.
|
| The more reputable independent package managers building,
| signing, and distributing protocol compatible binaries
| the better. Makes it impractical for even a sophisticated
| adversary to gain control. Also lets users to have the
| freedom to choose an easy automated install)update path
| for apps that respects their privacy by not requiring
| proprietary Google services.
| est31 wrote:
| > who has time to do this for every single update?
|
| Again, you only have to do this for the first install.
| After that, the local OS takes over and rejects any apk
| signed with a different key. It's a TOFU system.
| lrvick wrote:
| Fair. My SSH host key example stands.
|
| Systems that expect humans to be key pinning anchors are
| always a bad plan.
| tremon wrote:
| _Moxie highly discourages using the APK because it means
| turning on untrusted sources which is highly unsafe and
| bypasses signature verification_
|
| That's nice, but why should Moxie decide whether the
| Google Play Store is a trusted source for me?
| lrvick wrote:
| Right. They offer one option with signature verification
| and low privacy (Play store), and one option with higher
| privacy but low security (YOLO apk).
|
| If neither of these work for you, you are not wanted on
| the Signal network.
| chalst wrote:
| Directly installing APKs by hand is something that is
| only for people who know what they are doing. However,
| providing the APK for download is something that is
| helpful for 3rd party package managers, which can verify
| the hash.
| MYEUHD wrote:
| >and Moxie refuses to allow apps to be distributed there
| because he openly admits he wants the usage metrics that
| come from Google/Apple distribution.
|
| So he admits he cares about usage metrics more than
| privacy. which makes trusting signal a bit hard
| kekebo wrote:
| Another key difference would be the business model. Signal
| being a non-profit[0] does not provide any guarantees for
| the app to not become 'hostile' in the future, but any such
| development motivated by personal profits would at least
| require a change of organization type, which I assume
| wouldn't go unnoticed.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Foundation
| lrvick wrote:
| It was well noticed when WhatsApp changed hands to
| Facebook, and yet the vast majority of users didn't move
| to anything else because of network effects.
|
| Once users are in an ecosystem it takes years to convince
| them to change and only after they hit a high discomfort
| tipping point.
|
| If Signal ran short on funding and got bought by Google
| or Facebook all the tracking would kick in and most users
| would stay.
|
| We must stop herding people into walled gardens. It is
| unethical and always backfires.
| Aachen wrote:
| "hardly has drawbacks" My notes on Signal contain the
| following:
|
| + It usually just works
|
| + Reasonable desktop experience (needs to re-link once a
| month or so, but otherwise independent and not terrible
| UX), good mobile experience
|
| - Metadata handled by Amazon
|
| - Phone number is a hard requirement, and changing your
| phone number means re-connecting to everyone
|
| - Funding comes from Facebook from what I recall, and even
| with large amounts of their $100M invested, their expenses
| are 8 times larger than their income.
|
| + At least it's a foundation and their finances are not a
| black box!
|
| ~ With a build from an untrusted third party, you can make
| it work on Androids where Google Play Services are
| intentionally firewalled off.
|
| ~ No audit of the clients. The protocol, sure, but most
| bugs aren't introduced on a protocol level.
|
| These are only things they _could_ solve, i.e. that others
| do better. That their contact discovery solution (where you
| upload your phone book) is broken isn 't a downside because
| nobody else has that figured out either.
| krageon wrote:
| The author is a toxic dictator who hates the idea of ceding
| power so that they can have a constructive and open
| protocol for everyone. That means the app should never be
| used, by anyone. If you're going to use software like this,
| you may as well stay with whatsapp - at least that has a
| lot of users.
| chalst wrote:
| There is nothing wrong with the protocol, the client
| software or the server software; the problem is entirely
| with the OWS server TOS.
| krageon wrote:
| How would we know? The signal app as most people
| understand it cannot be built in a reproducible manner.
| This means that most people will be using something that
| may as well be compromised. The author does not care. It
| doesn't matter what the source code behind it is, as an
| _entity_ signal is hostile to everything a good messaging
| app should be.
| chalst wrote:
| The Java classes making up the application proper have
| had reproducible builds since 2016 [1]. The Play Services
| Signal relies on don't, but there are open source
| alternatives.
|
| [1]: https://signal.org/blog/reproducible-android/
| 72deluxe wrote:
| I see mention of the toxic dictator stuff and non-
| reproducible builds mentioned through this thread - do
| you have info on that you can point me to? I am asking
| because a guy at work wanted me to install Signal as
| voice call quality on Duo was appallingly bad. Thanks in
| advance.
| kekebo wrote:
| I can only guess but it may relate to Moxie's at times
| somewhat brash behavior in Github issues and an ongoing
| debate over centralized vs decentralized protocols (with
| him advocating the former). He gave a talk addressing the
| (de-)centralization topic at the Chaos Communications
| Congress in 2019:
|
| 36C3 - The ecosystem is moving |
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj3YFprqAr8
| Aachen wrote:
| Matrix is riddled with bugs. While I agree with you that
| signal isn't all that great (they do some really good stuff
| and then make some really weird trade-offs), I've recently
| compared Signal, Wire, Threema, Jami, Briar, Element/Matrix,
| and Keybase.
|
| The most mature app is Signal. It has the best usability to
| privacy trade-off.
|
| Threema is the better choice if you don't mind not having a
| usable desktop client. For me that's a total deal breaker. It
| costs a one-time 5 bucks and it's totally worth that, if only
| it had so much as a usable web client (you need to open your
| phone and navigate two menus to enable the web client every
| time your phone changes WiFi or anything).
|
| Wire is the better choice if you can sacrifice a tiny bit of
| usability for better privacy. It's sluggish is all, and (like
| Signal and most other services) uses AWS. Full disclosure: I
| was involved in a paid audit of Wire so I know more about the
| encryption protocol than I do about the other clients'.
|
| Element/Matrix is the better choice if you'd rather make a
| trade-off towards privacy. Presumably the clients will
| mature, and between two years ago and one year ago they've
| made good progress. It's going less fast today but I still
| see things getting slowly better, and the decentralization
| works very well and fairly easy to setup.
|
| If all you really want is a better privacy policy and want to
| ensure people stick around and don't uninstall it, Telegram
| is by far the usability winner and has a large network effect
| already. But it's a trade-off with the devil because there is
| zero encryption. They could ransom or sell our chat logs any
| time.
|
| Briar and Jami have limitations that make it unusable for
| general purposes use with your mom. Facebook and Google's
| messengers I didn't look at for obvious reasons. Keybase was
| never end to end encrypted to begin with and now Zoom bought
| them so they'll probably shut down soon (also, bugs).
|
| Rocket.chat seems only aimed at business users.
|
| You can also do OTR over any platform you like, and I still
| have to try this overlay encryption system on Android (I
| forgot its name).
|
| Pick your poison...
| teekert wrote:
| For a family that are all on the same server, Nextcloud
| Talk is also nice and "relatively easy" to set up (and 0
| effort when you already use Nextcloud). I am still
| desperately waiting on Talk being able to use the
| federation features of Nextcloud (so you can chat to users
| on other servers). That would increase my usage a lot, my
| parents are on another server (which admittedly also runs
| from my basement) and I have colleagues with their own
| server...
|
| I do use Signal and Telegram with some friends, I really
| find the difference between WA and Signal to be small.
| Telegram though is a lot nicer as a platform, it has some
| channels I'm part of and the desktop client is much better.
| But this comes with privacy/security trade-offs as
| mentioned in this thread.
|
| I also use Element.io for some channels and groups. I find
| it surprisingly nice. I may set up a server myself soon.
| Aachen wrote:
| As someone who doesn't use WhatsApp, thanks for
| mentioning WA and Signal are not very different and that
| Telegram has better UX. That matches what I thought, but
| I didn't know and I was a bit worried what I'd be signing
| my family up for when asking them to switch away from
| Telegram.
| teekert wrote:
| Yeah, Signal used to handle changing phones pretty poorly
| but that is sort of solved now (you can store your groups
| and phonebook in the cloud behind a pin). Other than that
| it is really nice. The desktop client is arguably better
| than WA's web solution, although I have run into non-
| syncing messages, but, you can use the desktop client
| with your phone off, which is a major + imho.
|
| Honestly, Signal is just super high quality when you take
| into account how privacy focused it is, I could easily
| replace WA with Signal, apart from "the network effect".
| Aachen wrote:
| > you can use the desktop client with your phone off,
| which is a major + imho
|
| Indeed, if it has to go through my phone it's nigh
| unusable in my opinion. Wire and Element/Matrix handle
| this properly since they don't depend on a phone number
| in the first place (so no need to tie it to your phone),
| only Signal and Threema are somewhat of a pain in this
| regard since you need to link it, and only Threema
| absolutely requires your phone to be online all the time.
| MayeulC wrote:
| I can recommend the FluffyChat Matrix client, it's quite
| pleasant to use, although still not perfect :)
|
| https://fluffychat.im/
| tao_oat wrote:
| > Wire is the better choice if you can sacrifice a tiny bit
| of usability for better privacy.
|
| Do you mean better privacy than Signal? I was under the
| impression that Signal was significantly ahead of Wire in
| this regard with features like private groups and private
| contact discovery.
| lrvick wrote:
| Private contact discovery and other metadata protection
| claims are largely security theatre. SGX is entirely
| broken and those with physical (and sometimes even
| remote) access can dump keys at any time.
|
| They pinky swear they always patch and never dump keys
| when they have the chance though.
| Aachen wrote:
| It's a security theater not only because someone broke
| it, but also because you can always just look at which
| IPs talk to which IPs. Even Tor has issues with
| preventing traffic analysis, except with Signal you can
| observe (or trust) a single party (instead of the guard
| and exit nodes) to get the data.
|
| It's more of a trust thing than something you can
| technically solve while still having features like real-
| time calling. Hence Facebook being objectionable despite
| having encryption.
| Aachen wrote:
| They're both hosted on USA-based services, they both have
| proper encryption on the client and apply it also to
| calls and video calls. There is no significant difference
| to me in terms of privacy.
|
| Usability is slightly different, yes, and you might also
| trust Signal more because they do better PR (they say
| outright that they're from the USA and get money from
| Facebook, while Wire has devs in Berlin and claims to be
| a German company, while taking money from USA
| investors... which imo comes down to the same thing), or
| you might trust Wire more because they were actually
| audited at all.
| lrvick wrote:
| Signal will by design likely be more stable than Matrix in
| the short term because it is a centralized dictatorship.
|
| China can move fast for this reason too.
|
| You have to decide if the long term consequences of a fast
| moving dictatorship are worth giving up the freedom of a
| sometimes messy democracy.
|
| The internet is too important to herd all our services into
| control of dictators, no matter how benevolent.
|
| We survived the dialup days for all the UX hell of many
| providers without giving AOL exclusive control in spite of
| them having the best UX.
|
| I hope we can do the same with something as critically
| important as worldwide internet communications, but the
| marketing of dictators and their ability to move quickly is
| sometimes too hard to resist until it all backfires
| spectacularly.
| Aachen wrote:
| That's what they want you to believe for some reason.
| Moxie went so far as to talk in the biggest hall at the
| last chaos communication congress about how important it
| is that we don't use decentralized services and clients.
|
| I'm not buying it. Look at Matrix and tell me it's
| holding them back.
|
| What's holding them back, perhaps, is not having a
| shitton of money in the bank like Signal, and they're
| actively supportive of decentralization which costs
| developer resources. Signal (or Matrix, for that matter)
| _could_ not spend dev time on decentralization and just
| let the open source community do its thing. But that 's
| not what Signal is doing, they're instead actively
| hostile towards it.
|
| Or look at Telegram, they have an open network and third
| party clients. There also are unofficial clients that
| some people use. But what does the 99% use? The official
| clients. Signal's argument is that people might use
| insecure, unofficial clients. In practice, that's not
| what your average mom will do. (And it's not as if the
| official Signal app was audited either.)
|
| I'm also not buying the "China can move faster" thing.
| They can be more oppressive without consequences, but is
| that really better? Does that "centralized dictatorship"
| allow them to be "more stable"? It's easy to say, and
| easy to see how indeed an oppressive government's decree
| can change things from one day to the next, but on that
| scale I think you need to consider more things than I am
| qualified to do before you can really say whether that is
| a superior system in a given situation.
|
| I guess we conclude the same thing in the end, though, as
| you say "The internet is too important to herd all our
| services into control of dictators, no matter how
| benevolent."
| traceroute66 wrote:
| >> I was involved in a paid audit of Wire so I know more
| about the encryption protocol than I do about the other
| clients
|
| Seeing as you mentioned Threema in the same post, I think I
| ought to step in here.
|
| The encryption protocol for Threema is open source, using
| standard algorithms, not something they invented.
|
| You, like I did for $my_org, can write your own software to
| send messages to devices running Threema using the Threema
| API.
|
| Message contents are, of course, encrypted before
| submission to the API. Threema provide a number of SDKs to
| help you, but you are under no obligation to use it, you
| can write your own API submission client from scratch.
|
| P.S. Not saying Wire is bad here. Wire is good. I use it
| alongside Threema myself for $other_uses. But I'm saying
| don't write off Threema under a false understanding that
| their encryption protocols are closed source.
| Aachen wrote:
| That's a good point. Threema using standard libsodium
| cryptoboxes makes this easier to reimplement than these
| Axolotl-like protocols. Still, Wire has a bot API so you
| don't need to reinvent the wheel to integrate in a chat.
| Not sure that's any harder than using libsodium.
|
| Afaik Signal doesn't have an API or SDK, there only seem
| to be third party implementations for bots.
| dagurp wrote:
| Why is Telegram not on your list?
| detaro wrote:
| it is?
| Aachen wrote:
| I should maybe have put it in the list on top. I
| initially listed only the encrypted messengers, but later
| decided to add a paragraph about Telegram anyway.
| Aachen wrote:
| They lie about encryption. They call themselves an
| encrypted messenger when they're not, at least not in the
| way that people expect nowadays. I volunteered for their
| support team a few years ago but was rejected because the
| first test question was about their encryption and I
| refused to lie (I said regular chats are encrypted but
| only to the server, i.e. that Telegram can read your
| messages which was true then and is still true today, and
| that you need to use secret chats for encryption.)
|
| I ended up adding a paragraph about it anyhow but that's
| why, when starting to write the post, I didn't add
| Telegram to the list. There is also rocket.chat further
| down that I didn't mention on top, fwiw.
| jamaicahest wrote:
| > The only network services this won't become true of at some
| point in the future are those with decentralized clients and
| servers obeying a common documented protocol.
|
| You mean like SMS?
| lrvick wrote:
| I didn't say all decentralized services are good. Just that
| decentralization is a prerequisite for something to avoid
| complete control by a single party long term.
|
| A better example would be HTTP/HTML/JS. Sure it is not
| perfect and protocol updates are hard and slow due to
| endless implementations but we got a working decentralized
| internet out of the deal that is very hard for any single
| party to take over now, so I call that worth it over a
| single party enforcing proprietary protocols like AOL
| having a total monopoly.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| > I suggest something that lets you use any client/platform
| you want
|
| I lost about half of my contacts when migrating to Signal, do
| you really think I can make them install some random app that
| may or may not work?
|
| They already complain that Signal isn't as polished as
| Whatsapp.
| lrvick wrote:
| Those that won't respect your ethics are not your friends.
|
| I lost many of my contacts moving to Matrix but earned a
| lot of new high value ones that share my worldview to
| continue building a decentralized censorship resistant
| internet.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| > Those that won't respect your ethics are not your
| friends.
|
| Yeah right. I am not RMS, with lock-downs, curfews,
| social distancing etc I'm already isolated enough so I'm
| not losing my remaining contacts for some moral high-
| ground.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| > Those that won't respect your ethics are not your
| friends.
|
| This is kind of an unreasonable, one sided, stance. You
| exact everyone to simply follow you and your preferences
| with no regard for their preferences. Maybe you not
| respecting them and their worldview makes you the bad
| friend, not the other way around.
|
| > I lost many of my contacts moving to Matrix but earned
| a lot of new high value ones that share my worldview
|
| I don't know if isolating yourself from anyone that
| doesn't' think and act the exact same way is a good
| thing.
| lrvick wrote:
| If someone believe something is legitimately toxic to
| themselves or society, like being around smoke, consuming
| certain substances, eating meat, using walled garden
| internet services etc... They should not be peer
| pressured into giving up those views.
|
| I for one avoid Google products for personal
| communications. A lot of long term friends decided they
| only want to socialize online with Google products fully
| knowing it excludes me, in spite of easily accessible
| alternatives like Matrix and Jitsi.
|
| They are not using Google products because it makes the
| world better, they are using it because they don't like
| change, and changing to maintain a friendship with me was
| not worth trying to use less privacy hostile
| communication mediums.
|
| Fair enough.
|
| I for one would not exclusively socialize at a Brazilian
| steakhouse if I had a vegan friend in a given social
| circle.
|
| I will go to great lengths to accommodate people that are
| acting on authentic ethical convictions but if someone is
| only doing something that conflicts with my ethical
| convictions because they can't be bothered to try
| something new, then they obviously don't value me, and
| I'll invest more time with people who do.
|
| You should live your convictions and find people that
| either share them, or at least respect you enough to
| accommodate them.
|
| I don't expect others to think or act like me, but I
| would expect that my legitimate desire to maintain
| privacy in personal communication to be respected by
| anyone worth my time.
|
| Plenty of friends that don't share my views put up with
| using some open tools to keep in touch with me. I
| likewise accommodate some of their preferences that don't
| make any sense to me. Everyone has a mix of deal breakers
| and things they can be flexible on in any type of human
| relationship.
| lrvick wrote:
| I would also add that Matrix, unlike any of the other
| networks discussed, offers the ability to bridge to all
| other networks being discussed so if you so desire you
| can have your open network cake and communicate with
| people on walled garden networks too.
|
| Not worth the trouble for me and I don't even want to
| have accounts in these platforms or let them collect my
| conversations, but the path at least exists.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > I suggest something that lets you use any client/platform
| you want, uses the same crypto primitives, and lets you
| choose what server/country your data is hosted in and change
| your mind any time, e.g Matrix.
|
| I'll bite.
|
| Who's paying for my johnchristopher@whatever.tld and for the
| data (avatar pictures, transfered files, chat logs)
| associated with it ?
|
| Will the Matrix foundation let me use their services forever
| and for free ?
|
| Will there be discussion on HN in ten years about getting
| your own custom domain and own federated server ? For one
| account only ? Like we have for mail regularly ?
| lrvick wrote:
| You can think of it like email.
|
| Maybe you started on AOL and later realized AOL is
| terrible. You could export your address book and move to a
| client/server you trust more and notify all your contacts
| from the new location.
|
| This is the same story on Matrix and what I mean when I say
| it is a freedom respecting decentralized service.
|
| You are also free to run your own DNS to a dedicated EMS
| instance then later point to your own self hosted server
| later much like the freedom you have using your own domain
| and MX records on Google Apps allowing you to later move to
| a new email provider without having to update your social
| graph to change your address.
|
| On Signal, there is no such option. You use their clients
| and servers forever, or GTFO.
| raziel2p wrote:
| Following the e-mail analogy: Inevitably, there will be
| contacts of yours who didn't get or read your
| notification, or contacts of yours who aren't in your
| contacts list.
| lrvick wrote:
| True. It is up to you to point your own domain day one
| with either email or matrix if you wish to avoid this
| discomfort.
|
| Signal offers no such choice.
|
| Even if you don't do this, you can still reach contacts
| on the old server and middle through.
|
| If you switch from walled garden to walled garden like
| WhatsApp to signal there is no migration path at all.
| MayeulC wrote:
| As I wrote in another comment, portable identities are a
| matrix spec change I'm quite excited about:
| https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-
| doc/blob/neilalexander/...
|
| Start on a server, but your real identity is attached to
| a cryptographic key, not an e-mail-like identifier. That
| would allow you to move around, and maybe one day get rid
| of domain names altogether (using something like
| yggdrasil or tor to host and connect servers, for
| instance).
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > Maybe you started on AOL and later realized AOL is
| terrible. You could export your address book and move to
| a client/server you trust more and notify all your
| contacts from the new location.
|
| The whole point is in avoiding starting with an AOL like
| service. So far only big matrix provider are reliable and
| performant enough to be usable. This is @gmail.com all
| over again but with @matrix.org tld.
|
| Except you won't be able to carry your messages from a
| tld to another when you decide to rely on another domain
| name (your own or someone else's).
|
| How long before Matrix foundation send messages telling
| users they are going to delete their rooms and messages
| if they don't log in once a year ? Or that they are now
| restricted your account to matrix.org rooms to "save
| operating costs" ?
|
| The whole tech stack is free but operating costs are not.
| majewsky wrote:
| > So far only big matrix provider are reliable and
| performant enough to be usable.
|
| I've been running a Matrix homeserver on a 1/1 VM for
| years without any issues. There is no downside to
| choosing a small server, you can still federate with
| everyone else. That's the entire point.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Same here. Except joining rooms on federated instance
| need something beefier than my $5/month VPS SSD. And much
| more storage for data (pet peeve of mine: 4K avatars pics
| that are not resized and stored as is on my end of the
| federation).
| Tepix wrote:
| > So you are going to move from one centralized, walled
| garden, privacy hostile platform that hard requires
| Google/Apple ecosystems to get signed updates... to another
| with identical drawbacks.
|
| Ideally we'd have a polished, decentralized app. Signal is a
| compromise. I don't think the drawbacks are identical:
|
| Facebook's business model depends on violatings the privacy
| of the users. The Signal Foundation has no such need.
|
| The client is open source. I see no reason to call Signal
| "privacy hostile".
| lrvick wrote:
| * There is no OS verified path to install Signal or updates
| without being in Google/Apple proprietary ecosystems and
| submitting some usage metrics to them.
|
| * You can't use signal on minority market share platforms
| even if they offer higher assurances of freedom, privacy,
| and security (RISC-V, OpenPOWER, etc.)
|
| * Getting a phone number requires KYC in over 200 countries
| and carriers will happily sell you out as extensively
| documented and demonstrated by journalists buying owner
| info and GPS coordinates for any given phone numbers. Any
| service that hard requires a phone number is not
| prioritizing privacy.
|
| * All metadata and TCP/IP metadata flows to a SPOF where
| signal employees, the ISP, or another entity inline could
| use network heuristics to deanonymize users, of dump the
| weak keys in SGX and get actual contact lists directly.
|
| * If you want to use a privacy respecting signature
| verifying app store solution like F-Droid you are SOL.
| Moxie threatened to fight F-Droid or any other parties
| compiling/signing binaries from source code or doing forks
| or alternative implementations. He wishes to have complete
| control and the ability to rapidly push updates to all
| users quickly, be they benign or malicious. If someone
| coerces the signing key out of them, all signal
| conversations globally could be decrypted likely before
| anyone noticed.
|
| I call all of this behaviour very privacy hostile.
| Published source code is moot if you are not allowed to use
| it or empower third parties like f-droid to hold it
| accountable.
| rvwaveren wrote:
| In the EU, there are different terms that you should agree to:
| https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/updates/terms-of-service-eea
|
| As far as I understand, because of GDPR, the sharing of data
| between Facebook companies is limited. This is different from
| the US terms.
| hkt wrote:
| May I recommend Delta Chat?
|
| It's an email client (with clever, seamless encryption based on
| gpg) with a WhatsApp style interface. There's a desktop client
| too.
|
| I've only ever managed to get one person to use it, but
| goodness it'd be nice to get rid of WhatsApp.
|
| Edit: URL https://delta.chat/
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Note that gpg provides worse security from an encryption
| standpoint than signal/WhatsApp
| hkt wrote:
| Care to explain?
| mnw21cam wrote:
| No perfect forward security. It's a feature, not a bug.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| It doesn't feel like a feature to me. And neither does
| the lack of deniability. They both feel like things that
| leak information that doesn't need to be leaked.
| h_anna_h wrote:
| whatsapp and signal have forward secrecy, so if your
| private key is leaked it means that past conversations
| can't be decrypted. In reality it does not offer a lot of
| protection if you don't disable keeping logs (because
| losing your phone and malware are the only realistic ways
| of your private key being leaked). In addition the way
| that they have forward secrecy implemented it means that
| you have to decrypt every message posted in groupchats
| while you were offline sequently until the last one,
| which can take hours in an active (even if small) group
| if you are gone for a week. The other thing is that both
| of these apps to my knowledge do not warn you if a new
| key is added (I might be wrong here) so an active
| attacker can pretty much nullify the encryption, this is
| not an issue with openpgp.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| To add to this: the point of the disappearing messages in
| signal is to enhance the value of the forward secrecy by
| not having the record of the messages (so long as both
| devices are using correct clients and no one is
| screenshotting messages.
|
| The other feature is deniability: having an encrypted
| message and it's decryption doesn't give you any more
| information than a screenshot of the message in signal.
| There isn't a way for the encrypted message to prove that
| it was legitimate as the previous keys are revealed in a
| way that means anyone sniffing the traffic could make a
| message encrypted with that key.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Frankly, I don't even care if it uses end-to-end encryption
| at all if it's encrypted to my own server.
|
| Of course, email goes _between_ servers and then you
| definitely want to ensure the encryption is solid (it often
| isn 't, so PGP is definitely good). I'm just saying that
| Wire/Signal/Threema/etc. having better encryption is in my
| opinion only important when you use
| Wire's/Signal's/Threema's servers. If you can _and do_ host
| your own, especially if you host it at home, then in
| practice there is no difference.
|
| Since most people don't do that, Signal/Wire/Threema/Matrix
| are of course the better options than PGP+email, but
| PGP+email is still an improvement over the status quo.
| irateswami wrote:
| Other shoe, meet floor.
| solnyshok wrote:
| ouch. first I thought that it is about FBI, then realized it is
| about Facebook. They should merge sometime in future, anyway.
| bigiain wrote:
| Some argue this has already happened...
| oli5679 wrote:
| The founder of Whatsapp
|
| (1) claims that Facebook promised Whatsapp would not be
| monetised, and that Facebook and and Whatsapp's data would not be
| combined. This information was also provided to European
| antitrust regulators
|
| (2) missed out on $850 stock option grants vesting by quitting
| early over disputes with Facebook about monetisation strategy
|
| (3) promoted #deletefacebook on Whatsapp following the Cambridge
| Anlalytica scandal
|
| (4) Donated $50m to the non-for-profit alternative, Signal.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Acton
| PestoDiRucola wrote:
| I mean, according to his Wikipedia page he's worth $2.85B so
| he's not really hurting.
| ericmay wrote:
| Sure but still at least he is standing on his principles
| here.
| headsupftw wrote:
| $850MM relative to $2.85B is still a lot of money.
| samfisher83 wrote:
| Why did he think Mark wanted to pay 19 billion for whatsapp? To
| not make any money.
| Lammy wrote:
| WhatsApp was an existential threat to Facebook in every
| country besides the US. They had the data to prove it,
| obtained from real users via FB's Onavo VPN service. Facebook
| Messenger 3.0 was to WhatsApp as Google+ was to Facebook (the
| product), and when the usage numbers weren't going the right
| way they gave up and bought them out before the gulf got even
| wider.
|
| Textual messaging is a low-data-use (accessible to the
| cheapest phones with the smallest data packages) entrypoint
| to capture a person's social network so you can have other
| opportunities to capture them again and again with other
| services in the future. Facebook saw India as an especially
| huge burgeoning market at that time (hence Internet-dot-org /
| Free Basics), and afaik WhatsApp is ubiquitous there.
| annadane wrote:
| Does it never occur to them to say "Maybe the reason we're
| under attack is people want more privacy and control"? Not
| double down and take away people's options?
| tharne wrote:
| Zuckerberg is a Utopian. Like all Utopians he sees any
| disagreement as the other party being too stupid to see
| what's good for them, so they only rational answer is to
| force them to do "what's best".
| annadane wrote:
| I might say 'sociopath', but who's counting
| Lammy wrote:
| What's "best" isn't anybody's fault when you're data
| driven! Just don't think too hard about who chooses what
| data to collect and how to measure it :)
| mr_toad wrote:
| That's probably what every dictator and autocrat in the
| history of humanity has ever thought.
| joshspankit wrote:
| Maybe he thought he was one of the only ones to "get through"
| to Mark, and that Mark's verbal agreements meant something
| croes wrote:
| (1) was claimed by the founder of Oculus too. They are either
| naive or Facebook simply lies.
| teekert wrote:
| Hmm, this Dutch website says the effect for EU citizens will not
| be so big. [0]
|
| https://tweakers.net/nieuws/176412/whatsapp-verplicht-datade...
| mancerayder wrote:
| I'll take the second option.
|
| Signal works pretty well for anyone who isn't my family.
| WA wrote:
| I mean, it's annoying, but I'm at the point where I wonder if it
| does matter at all. I don't let WhatsApp access my contacts or
| photos. I tried very hard for a long time to not give Facebook my
| phone number. But if any of my contacts agrees to this, my phone
| number is given to Facebook (without my consent). So, what are my
| options really? Delete my account? And then what? My number will
| be given to them anyways.
| chalst wrote:
| I don't have a big problem with Facebook having _my_ number, or
| knowing who 95% of the people are who have me in their
| contacts. But it is important to me that the contents of my
| contacts database is private so that I can be trusted by the
| other 5%.
| annadane wrote:
| Is Mark Zuckerberg legitimately a sociopath? Does he get off on
| lying to people?
| [deleted]
| reimertz wrote:
| We need to kill the idea that user growth is a replacement for a
| honest and legit business model.
|
| This is not just a founders problem - investors are equally
| compliant since they keep on throwing their money as long as they
| see that sweet exponential curve.
|
| Once they get tired of seeing their money being lit on fire; they
| give the founders one option; monetize what you have or shut
| down.
|
| Since users are now used to your service being free, the only
| thing you can do is to look at what you have; User data.
|
| At first, you just sell this info to your "trusted" partners
| because you want to be able to sleep at night, but as the revenue
| keeps on growing, your investors realize you have a money
| printing machine at your hands.
|
| At this point you you've lost your compass and forgot why you
| even founded the thing, being stuck at a big table discussing
| with investors and lawyers how to find loopholes in the new
| iteration of the GDPR laws, ending the meeting with deciding to
| funnel a big chunk of cash to lobby the law out of existence.
|
| At this point, everybody looses except from the stock owners. Or
| maybe you find it hard to sleep at night, because even thought
| you now have infinite amounts of cash, you lost a part of
| yourself that day when you threw your entire user base under the
| bus.
| suyash wrote:
| Yes the problem is 'adverstiting based business model' when
| companies seem to offer 'free services' when in reality they
| always plan to harvest and sell private data to advertisers.
| This is what is happening now with WhatsApp and FB so I'm not
| shocked, it was about time.
|
| What we need more urgently is better open source alternatives
| that allow us to port out of this wall garden apps easily, that
| is only way I can see my contacts and data from WhatsApp and
| other apps migrating out.
| touchpadder wrote:
| Time to stop using LizardWare and only use Telegram and Signal. A
| few years ago these were pretty exotic but now most people have
| them.
| raister wrote:
| Doesn't Telegram had massive security issues in the past? Are
| you sure those are the only options?
| 8fingerlouie wrote:
| I have 2 contacts on Signal and 4 on Telegram, and don't even
| have WhatsApp installed.
|
| I'm puzzled where Denmark went "wrong". I see other EU users say
| that WhatsApp is absolutely dominant in their countries, and yet
| everybody i know uses iMessage, which may not be surprising if
| you look at graphs like this https://gs.statcounter.com/os-
| market-share/mobile/denmark
|
| For "social circles", coordinating sports activites and more,
| people use Facebook or Facebook Messenger, which is just as bad
| as WhatsApp.
|
| Schools here use Microsoft Teams for remote teaching classes, and
| Office365 for schoolwork, and there's not a single Google account
| to be found anywhere. O365 may be just as bad, but the contract
| is negotiated on a government level, and bound by the GDPR and
| other local laws, so i assume my kids personal data are
| relatively secure.
| anupamchugh wrote:
| Such a sham that WhatsApp's privacy policy page still says:
|
| We joined Facebook in 2014. WhatsApp is now part of the Facebook
| family of companies. Our Privacy Policy explains how we work
| together to improve our services and offerings, like fighting
| spam across apps, making product suggestions, and showing
| relevant offers and ads on Facebook. Nothing you share on
| WhatsApp, including your messages, photos, and account
| information, will be shared onto Facebook or any of our other
| family of apps for others to see, and nothing you post on those
| apps will be shared on WhatsApp for others to see.
|
| This is hypocrisy!!
|
| Edit: The word "onto" in the privacy policy is so dubious. They
| said we aren't sharing anything onto Facebook. Probably it didn't
| mean they weren't snooping our data.
| extropy wrote:
| IMO it reads they will not be sharing any WhatsApp messages on
| your Facebook profile publicly (for others to see).
|
| But says it will be used (shared) internally to target ads and
| product suggestions.
|
| Very weasely indeed.
| eecc wrote:
| Many comments are about how people would love to jump ship and
| switch to whatever other service.
|
| Well, there's an IM service already deployed to all mobile
| systems and it's called SMS.
|
| All that's needed is some sanity in the pricing, some
| modernization of support for multimedia and cross-device
| sharing/archiving.
|
| This whole industry exists for 1 sole reason: telco ineptitude
| graposaymaname wrote:
| Well, is it encrypted?
| Ayesh wrote:
| Answering the likely rhetorical question: No.
| abandonliberty wrote:
| There really isn't (in SMS)
|
| > Message delivery is "best effort", so there are no guarantees
| that a message will actually be delivered to its recipient, but
| delay or complete loss of a message is uncommon, typically
| affecting less than 5 percent of messages
|
| Maybe 5g will fix something, I'm not current on the spec.
| gregjw wrote:
| Adios!
| pmlnr wrote:
| HN, I linked this yesterday -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25656842. Good thing it got
| completely ignored.
| [deleted]
| jacquesm wrote:
| And that's why I never joined WhatsApp, and still use SMS.
| kulesh wrote:
| Ok. I've stopped.
| utf_8x wrote:
| Once again - Signal[0] as an alternative. It's fully Open-Source
| (including the backend) and their crypto is public and
| independently verified[1][2][3]...
|
| [0] https://signal.org/en/
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)#Encryption_p...
|
| [2] https://threatpost.com/signal-audit-reveals-protocol-
| cryptog...
|
| [3] https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/1013.pdf [PDF]
| sagivo wrote:
| How is it compared to telegram?
| input_sh wrote:
| Telegram is only end-to-end encrypted in a feature called
| secret chats. Groups and channels and individual chats are
| not end-to-end encrypted.
|
| In other words, Telegram doesn't even deserve to be in the
| same conversation. Even if it had the best encryption out
| there (however you define that), that wouldn't mean anything
| when it's not used in like 98% of the cases (percentage
| pulled out of my ass).
|
| It's like comparing Signal to Facebook's Messenger, and I'd
| still say Messenger over Telegram because at least it uses
| Signal's protocol under the hood (I believe the feature is
| called hidden conversations) instead of inventing its own
| thing and ignoring the expert opinions.
| frereubu wrote:
| One thing to note about Telegram's secret chats is that
| they're device-specific. That is, if you start a
| conversation on your phone, you can't pick up that
| conversation on your laptop:
| https://telegram.org/faq#secret-chats
| Siira wrote:
| Telegram not having e2e by default is a feature; It allows
| great multi-device usage.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Good point. I use irc more than any other IM and nobody
| ever complained about lack of e2e there. When the usecase
| is more about meeting new people it doesn't apply as
| much.
| input_sh wrote:
| What kind of multi-device issues do Signal and WhatsApp
| have exactly?
|
| Granted I've never used WhatsApp, but I've been using
| Signal for like 5 years now on my phone and on my laptop
| with absolutely no issues.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Signal none, WhatsApp still cannot be used without being
| activated on a smartphone/tablet, and cannot be activated
| on more than one mobile device.
| Siira wrote:
| I don't think you can even use the same Signal account on
| two different iOS devices, much less desktop. Their
| desktop apps just link to the phone's app.
|
| WhatsApp is a total joke, it loses media (IIRC this
| includes audio messages as well) people send you after a
| very short time even when you use it on a single device,
| so talking about multi-device usage is completely out of
| the overton window.
| franga2000 wrote:
| Seriously? Both only have crappy web apps that you
| basically tunnel messages through your phone (at least
| that's what I remember) and are tied to a specific mobile
| device with entire companies being built around the
| apparently extremely complicated task of moving WhatsApp
| messages around.
|
| Meanwhile, the Telegram desktop client is at feature-
| parity with the phone app with both running entirely
| independently on as many devices as you want.
| 7v3x3n3sem9vv wrote:
| Signal messages are not routed through your phone. Reach
| has it's own independent queue and the phone can be off
| and you'll still receive messages on the desktop client.
|
| I would also state that it is unfair to compare an app
| that doesn't have to worry about your privacy and solving
| real engineering problems vs basically making a web app
| that can easily sync your data because it's all stored on
| someone else's computer.
|
| If that's the level of privacy you're setting you may as
| well use email for communicating. It's federated, it's
| easy to use, and everybody has one.
|
| All that said, I do agree the Signal desktop app needs
| some work, but they'll get there eventually, and in the
| meantime I don't have to wonder if any of my data will be
| leaked to anyone outside of my intended recipient.
| Jare wrote:
| WhatsApp does not have multi-device, so technically it
| has no issues with it.
|
| (for any sensible definition of multi-device)
| _flux wrote:
| Well, matrix can to multi-device usage great and has E2E,
| so I don't see why that would be a hard requirement or
| even any kind of requirement.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| Because at least according to the Threema devs, doing e2e
| multi device in a secure and anonymous way is not
| trivial.[1] Maybe matrix solved that problem, maybe they
| don't care...
|
| [1] https://threema.ch/en/blog/posts/md-architectural-
| overview-i...
| _flux wrote:
| I guess it depends what you need and what is "secure and
| anonymous". Matrix probably leaks a ton of metadata.
|
| In practice it works by each device having their own
| encryption key and then those devices are bound together
| with a cross signing key, so your peer can robustly
| identify all your devices at once (and the list of
| devices can change as long as they are bound by the cross
| signing key). Certainly the server is able to correlate
| device ids (and thus keys) and IPs.
|
| The way threema does it sounds a bit how room encryption
| works in Matrix amond multiple clients.
| utf_8x wrote:
| IMO it works just as well and unlike Telegram it's actually
| credible... The telegram crypto is an absolute disaster and
| they have been pretty shady and defensive when asked about it
| in the past. Not to mention the back-end is closed-source.
| Also, the desktop clients still don't support encryption,
| many years after it's been first requested.
| domano wrote:
| Do you have some links regarding their disastrous
| encryption? The security guys i know speak highly of
| telegram and AFAIK it has been open sourced recently, but i
| am open to new information.
| utf_8x wrote:
| The Telegram backend is still closed-source as far as I
| know. The problem with their crypto is that nobody really
| knows if it's secure or not because it's closed and
| unverified.
|
| Ever heard the first rule of encryption? "Never roll your
| own crypto". Well they broke the rule and they won't let
| anyone check if the crypto is secure or not.
|
| Not to mention encryption is off by default and your
| plaintext messages are stored on their servers...
| blehn wrote:
| Cite some sources. They clearly do not store your
| messages in plaintext on their servers
|
| https://telegram.org/privacy#3-3-your-messages
| https://telegram.org/privacy#4-1-storing-data
| fsflover wrote:
| > in plaintext
|
| They have the encryption key, so the difference is not
| huge.
| blehn wrote:
| Stored on different servers in different jurisdictions,
| right? Sure it's not ideal if you want maximum security
| of your data, but it _is_ a huge difference from simply
| storing plain text.
| domano wrote:
| I do apologize, i had Threema in my mind and mixed them
| up.
| j-james wrote:
| Telegram's MTProto 2.0 encryption protocol was recently
| proved correct, but I haven't seen any peer review or
| discussion on the paper yet.
|
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.03141
| krick wrote:
| Hardly comparable in terms of usability. But then, WhatsApp
| isn't that good compared to Telegram either. In fact, I
| wouldn't use WhatsApp at all if various communities wouldn't
| host there group-chats I belong to. So I don't think
| usability has that much to do with your ability to switch.
| And supposed "security" has almost nothing to do with it
| whatsoever.
|
| So I personally don't even know if I'll keep fighting for my
| privacy and stuff or if I'm going to give up now. I don't
| want to, but I honestly don't imagine how on Feb08 I will be
| telling people who aren't my close friends or co-workers, but
| communication with whom is really valuable to me, that I
| refuse to join any WhatsApp group chats anymore, so they will
| have to notify me about anything important (important to me,
| in he first place!) personally via SMS, Telegram, email,
| whatever. Especially now, when people are forced to
| communicate remotely and stuff gets cancelled/renewed/delayed
| because of another round of idiotic government regulations,
| so if I'll fall out of these communities, I'm pretty much
| left in the vacuum and won't know about anything that
| happens.
| seniorivn wrote:
| not as good in terms of UI/ux but compared to pgp emails much
| simplier ps telegram is no more secure than Whatsapp unless u
| use secret chats
| hiq wrote:
| Better security, worse UX.
| kemenaran wrote:
| IMHO, Signal main advantage is that you can sell it to your
| parents and friends like "WhatsApp, but safe".
|
| It tries to have feature-parity to WhatsApp; looks the same,
| works the same. All this while researching innovations on
| cryptography that doesn't compromise user experience too
| much.
|
| In my experience, doing exactly what WhatsApp does (but
| safer) makes it an easy sell to people around me.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| True, though Signal annoyingly wants the user to also
| enable it as SMS app. From my own experience with relatives
| this can lead to a lot of confusion among non-technical
| users, for example when they try to send a picture to a
| contact and it fails because that contact does not use
| Signal. From what I've seen Signal does not clearly show a
| difference between those two groups.
|
| Other than that it's definitely a great alternative.
| colordrops wrote:
| Telegram has had several security and privacy issues in the
| past. It also stores your messages unencrypted on their
| server by default.
| seesawtron wrote:
| Social life is impossible without the mainstream technology.
| Sure you can find alternatives but if no one uses it other than
| you, you end up being sidelined. The technology gets enforced
| and leaves one with no choice but to accept it or be a red
| flag.
|
| Shouldn't it be possible to delete your whatsapp chat and
| contacts data regularly from the cloud? Eg. one could delete
| the whatsapp account, clear data on cloud and make a new
| account again. Having more control over your data stored by
| Facebook would give more power to the users of enforced by the
| government.
| kleiba wrote:
| _Social life is impossible without the mainstream
| technology._
|
| I've never owned a cell phone nor ever had a social media
| account in my life. Sure, it gets me the occasional eye roll
| but trust me, my social life is just fine.
|
| Caveat: old person speaking.
| [deleted]
| seesawtron wrote:
| yeah depends on which stage of life you are living in.
| Sadly doesn't work for everybody but doesn't hurt to give
| it a try if someone wants to.
| kleiba wrote:
| It's not so much the stage of life, it's that these
| technologies have become the de facto standard way of
| interacting in today's younger part of the population.
|
| In other words: even though cell phones and social media
| were around when I was younger, they didn't play the
| central role they do today, so presumably it was much
| easier for me to do without them and still have a normal
| social life than it would be today.
|
| Here's a sad thought experiment though: if you can only
| remain an active part of your circle of friends if you
| use the same technology as they do, what does that say
| about the depth of that friendship?
| est31 wrote:
| > Caveat: old person speaking.
|
| There you have it. Class of 1950 uses letters to organize
| itself. Class of 2000 uses e-mail. Class of 2010 uses
| Facebook. Class of 2020 uses Tiktok or idk snapchat.
|
| And this issue isn't just about your class, it also
| includes any peer group of any kind. For me as a 20s
| something, the choice is quite binary.
|
| Nowadays you can't even participate in free software
| communities without using proprietary services. Many free
| software projects have discords instead of community run
| matrix or IRC instances.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Network effects are real. Financially independent adults
| can choose their friends among a large pool of candidates.
| Kids, broke college students, and those generally less well
| off may have fewer options.
| Zelphyr wrote:
| The flaw in that way of thinking is that kids, broke
| college students, and those generally less well off had
| no social life or network before social media.
| MakersF wrote:
| True, but that was because no one had social media. Now
| that a big majority of people have it and interact over
| it, if you don't have it the chances of being
| marginalized are higher.
|
| When everyone was using SMSes to chat, how did the kid
| that did not have a phone felt? And people were social
| before phones existes too.
|
| I think that being outside of the main mean of
| communication is going to have an impact on your social
| life, independently of what the medium is
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| I have never had a social media account (younger person
| here) and it has gotten me many eye rolls too, but I've
| never cared. However, whatsapp is different, everyone
| always treated it like internet texting where I'm from. I
| call my friends when I want to hear them and properly talk
| to them, but many things such as planning trips and talking
| about things that interest all of us are just way better
| done over some sort of text medium over longer periods of
| time.
| backWardz00 wrote:
| Your mistake is believing those apps are for socializing.
|
| They're for aggregate metrics and attention collecting on the
| part of the company.
|
| I do not have a Facebook empire, Twitter, TikTok or other
| social media presence.
|
| I email academics I can't visit.
|
| I group text friends and family to make plans, and use the
| calendar built into my phone to remind myself of those
| events.
| lwhi wrote:
| A lot of people do use social media as their main method of
| socialising, especially during this pandemic.
| kace91 wrote:
| In many countries, WhatsApp equals texting, period. No one
| will use sms, among other things because they're not free
| (~20 cents per message, character limited, no multimedia).
|
| The reality is that WhatsApp is a requirement for social
| life. Any solution that doesn't start from that point lacks
| any practicality.
| backWardz00 wrote:
| HTTPs works with email, email works over data networks.
|
| I get social inertia is a thing.
|
| Somehow I've blown it off and life still works.
|
| Summarizing it as "life begins and ends with WhatsApp"
| seems just as ridiculous to me.
|
| Acquiesce and nothing changes.
|
| Turn and face the strange.
| julienb_sea wrote:
| Or realize the overwhelming majority have no interest in
| limiting their communication and social network due to
| "privacy concerns", and already have both a Facebook and
| Whatsapp account that are connected and sharing data. You
| can do this if you want, but don't preach it as if most
| people should care.
| lwhi wrote:
| Most people in the UK use WhatsApp .. the fact that we
| have WhatsApp groups means Facebook can make this
| ultimatum with fairly good confidence we'll stomach it.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Somehow I've blown it off and life still works.
|
| If you're not in one of those countries, then I don't
| think you can speak for what a social life there is.
|
| If I tell people they can only contact me via snail mail
| or in person (i.e. not have a phone at all), would you
| find it surprising that I will have a lot less of a
| social life?
|
| Even 15 years ago I knew people in countries who had a
| difficult social life because they refused to use SMS -
| this was before the era of smart phones.
|
| > HTTPs works with email, email works over data networks.
|
| A _lot_ of younger folks do not use email except for
| signing up for stuff and official work. When I left
| university a _decade_ ago, many incoming freshmen were
| quite upset at the requirement to use email.
|
| You can always have _some_ social life, but in certain
| locales and circles, whether you use these apps or not
| will affect what type of social life you 'll have.
|
| > Acquiesce and nothing changes.
|
| Sorry, but these types of statements are usually of
| little value, and only _sound_ good. I could easily
| write:
|
| Resist and nothing changes.
|
| And it will likely be as true (and similarly lacking in
| entropy) as yours.
| seesawtron wrote:
| It strongly depends on what state of life you are
| currently at. If you are a 20 something individual and
| have to build a new life in a new city, being out of the
| "social apps" gives you next to no opportunities to build
| social connections.
|
| If you are already well connected with your peers and
| friends and your social life doesn't depend on finding
| and exploring via the "social apps" sure you have the
| freedom to disconnect virtually and still remain
| connected socially.
| mlboss wrote:
| Everybody has different scenarios. How many of your
| friend/family members can reach out to you using phone.
|
| All my family members live in a different country and
| there is no good medium for communication than whatsapp.
| backWardz00 wrote:
| https://protonmail.com/
|
| Spike on iOS is a client that wraps email in a chat like
| UI if the people are free to chat real time. Not sure if
| it's on Android.
|
| There a numerous video chat sites not connected to Zoom,
| or FB properties
|
| whereby, etc
|
| I gave my family an ultimatum and being the tech savvy
| one they jumped to Signal
|
| Social inertia is a thing conceptually, but it's not
| gravity. It can be bent any which way
| thekyle wrote:
| On Android there is an app called Delta Chat which is
| similar.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > I gave my family an ultimatum and being the tech savvy
| one they jumped to Signal
|
| Not all families respond well to ultimatums.
| InvertedRhodium wrote:
| On that note, if my family isn't willing to install
| another application and spend 5 minutes wrapping their
| head around how to use it - well, I guess I just
| accurately defined the value of our relationship.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > well, I guess I just accurately defined the value of
| our relationship.
|
| While that is true, what you have not accurately
| determined is why that value is low, and how much of that
| is your doing vs theirs.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| From their point of view it may appear you value your
| communication preferences more than the relationship
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Thats fine. You can just accept that facebook is
| essential to the social life of your country, that the
| facebook eula is defacto legislation that you just obey.
| On the other hand, Signal works. My friends and I use it
| every day. We have not surendered, nor shall we.
| mr_toad wrote:
| > Social life is impossible without the mainstream
| technology.
|
| If people won't go to the trouble of using an alternate way
| of getting in touch with you then they're not really your
| friends.
| foozocbar wrote:
| If seesawtron won't go to the trouble of using WhatsApp (an
| alternate way than Signal) of getting in touch with his
| friends, is seesawtron really their friend?
| doc_gunthrop wrote:
| It's more like:
|
| If people won't go to the trouble of using _your preferred
| method_ of getting in touch with you then _you don 't have
| enough social clout_.
| danieldk wrote:
| Whatsapp is used (at least here in the EU) for a lot more
| than staying in touch with your friends. E.g. having a
| young kid, it's used for: the class' group, arranging
| playdates, etc. Not using Whatsapp makes it much harder to
| arrange your social life and that of your kids.
|
| Then there are also many organizations/companies that use
| Whatsapp to set appointments, for chat support, etc.
|
| In many EU countries Whatsapp is pretty much replaced SMS.
| Only a small minority of folks have Signal or Telegram.
| iMessage is probably the only other thing that shows as a
| blip on the radar, but only a portion of the population has
| iDevices.
|
| I agree that this is a bad situation, but WhatsApp became
| popular when it was still independent and their profit
| model was charging 1 Euro per year (which was much cheaper
| than SMS). Now abandoning Whatsapp is difficult due to
| network effects.
| isatty wrote:
| This is such a bullshit HN comment. I don't like
| WhatsApp/FB either but critical mass is important.
| remexre wrote:
| Signal's not like... "tech for tech people." It's very much
| usable for nontechnical family members, etc.
| fitblipper wrote:
| While I agree with this 90% of the way, their backup,
| restore, and phone changing process is very much "tech for
| tech people".
|
| I've had the joy of trying to explain to my elderly dad why
| his text message history is lost because he chose Signal as
| the default sms system, didn't make a backup, didn't sync
| that backup to the cloud or manually copy it to the new
| phone, and didn't write down the very long decryption code.
| thekyle wrote:
| I really don't understand why Signal doesn't just keep a
| encrypted backup in Google Drive/iCloud. This seems like
| such a solved problem and yet they instead invented their
| own Bluetooth sync thing for iOS and manually copying
| files around for Android.
| taki wrote:
| Agreed. I understand they are reticent to allow backups
| for security reasons - but they're treating their users
| like idiots by doing this. Some people will have threat
| models where the ability to retain/export messages is
| worth the risk this may introduce. Let people make their
| own decisions.
| climb_stealth wrote:
| I'm hoping it will get there eventually. The backup
| mechanism on Android has improved a fair bit from what it
| was at the start. It used to be that you had to have the
| backup file in the correct magic path before starting
| Signal for the first time. Now at least there is a dialog
| and you can pick the file whenever.
|
| The usability issues for non-tech people have been
| getting less and less in the past years which is keeping
| my hopes up.
| NolF wrote:
| You can't go from iOS to android with WhatsApp without
| paid applications... definitely not friendly
| InvertedRhodium wrote:
| Convenience vs Security - Pretty much any change made at
| the behest of convenience is at the expense of security.
| Honestly, once every 2 years having to move some files
| around...well, if that's the barrier that people aren't
| willing to push past, then we're pretty much screwed from
| the start.
| jorangreef wrote:
| > Sure you can find alternatives but if no one uses it other
| than you, you end up being sidelined.
|
| Make it happen.
|
| Be the change you want to see.
| Evidlo wrote:
| That's just moving from one silo to another though. Users of
| centralized services don't have much recourse when the company
| pulls the rug out from under them.
| frereubu wrote:
| Can you clarify what you mean by a "silo"? Do you mean once
| you start using Signal you're stuck in Signal, and you can't
| export all your messages into another app?
| andrewchambers wrote:
| If the backend is open source then there is recourse.
| Merman_Mike wrote:
| .
| phepranto wrote:
| https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Is there a readymade docker install ?
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| There's no point installing it as you can't use it. It's
| just provided for transparency. Not to run a home server
| like with matrix.
| utf_8x wrote:
| Yes it is: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server
|
| Telegram's backend is closed-source.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| Yeah, but your instance can't communicate with other
| Signal server instances, so it's pointless.
| tharkun__ wrote:
| No it's not pointless. It might just be pointless for the
| "socializing with random people" use case.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| Yes it is, because you can't join two servers at the same
| time. You run your own server, I run mine and we can't
| communicate until one of us decides to drop our whole
| network and join the other server.
| utf_8x wrote:
| True but you have to consider the app needs to be user
| friendly to see any real adoption...
|
| Don't get me wrong, I love Riot (or whatever it's called
| these days) but it's just not user-friendly for your average
| Joe...
| frombody wrote:
| Honestly if they just picked a different emoji collection,
| I would be happy.
| aairey wrote:
| Pssh ... kids these days.
| Arainach wrote:
| Users want centralized services. Syncing across devices and
| shared history are mandatory features, and are basically
| impossible to do well in distributed models.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| I have never lost a matrix message (but I am fed up with
| e2e warning and new session weird insecure messages) but I
| have come to the conclusion than Signal isn't reliable
| since it sometimes lose messages. It's no-no.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yeah the e2e is way too complex in matrix. They really
| need to work on the UX and make it more like WA and
| Signal. The way it is now even a crypto geek like me gets
| annoyed and that means the mainstream will never touch
| it.
| st1x7 wrote:
| The problem isn't silos, it's lack of privacy. Signal solves
| that problem.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| Signal isn't 100% private: you need a phone number, and you
| can't use on a computer unless you install the app on the
| phone first.
| mr_toad wrote:
| It's not anonymous, but anonymity isn't equivalent to
| privacy.
| baxtr wrote:
| I have started to migrate from WhatsApp to iMessage with
| Apple and Signal with Android users. At least not a single
| silo...
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| https://matrix.org
| m-p-3 wrote:
| And what's nice is the multitude of clients you can use,
| from rather feature-complete (official app) to relatively
| user-friendly (ex: Pattle)
|
| https://matrix.org/clients/
|
| And unlike Signal, you can host your own server (Synapse)
| instance and be truely independent with the ability to join
| the federated network.
| nkingsy wrote:
| Isn't the problem profit motive? Wikipedia is a foundation,
| so it works the same way it always has. We need this for more
| basic services like messaging and identity
| stabbles wrote:
| You can donate to Signal too. What has to happen until
| people realize they should be willing to pay a little money
| for a service?
|
| We've actually witnessed that people _are_ willing to pay
| for streaming services like Spotify and Netflix after a
| long time of illegal torrents. How can we spread this
| sentiment towards services like email and chat too?
| franga2000 wrote:
| > How can we spread this sentiment towards services like
| email and chat too?
|
| We can't, because those two things are in direct
| opposition. Piracy was less convenient and offered fewer
| features that people wanted, so they moved to platforms
| that were more convenient. The current giants (Gmail,
| Facebook, WhatsApp...) are more convenient than their
| alternatives (generic email, Mastodon, Signal...) and so
| the pressure is not to move, but in fact to stay.
|
| In general, the pressure is always
| decentralised->centralised, which is exactly what
| torrents->Netflix was. Even if we had infinite funds to
| offer people distributed services for free forever, we
| would still need to make them more convenient than their
| current centralised ones - if on top of not being more
| convenient, we also want to charge them, I see no reason
| why the average person would ever want to switch.
| nkingsy wrote:
| Paid still needs to answer to shareholders
| ubercow13 wrote:
| People _were_ willing to pay for WhatsApp. It _was_
| exactly that simple, honest, high quality independent
| _paid_ chat app you are alluding to, back in 2010 or so.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Iirc, it was 1EUR, and maybe it was even only on iOS.
|
| I remember vaguely getting convinced by a friend, "you
| just payed [200,300,idk]EUR for that new phone, can't pay
| one euro for this one app?"
| [deleted]
| e_y_ wrote:
| I think part of the problem is the network effect. Social
| networks want to maximize the number of users so that
| anyone can connect to you on Facebook, Twitter, etc. The
| lowest barrier to entry is free, and that usually means
| ad supported (and personalized ads for the most revenue).
|
| Maybe there's some space for a freemium model (IIRC one
| of the questions asked during the Facebook hearing was
| whether they could add a paid ad-free option) but so far
| that hasn't happened.
| KorematsuFred wrote:
| The motives could be many. While Wikipedia is a so called
| non-profit foundation it has its one biases and various
| groups use it to push various agendas including political
| agendas.
| bawolff wrote:
| The foundation is (mostly) not responsible for content
| moderation though. They mostly do software development.
| howlgarnish wrote:
| But this is all transparent thanks to edit logs, and
| there are plenty of tireless editors patrolling to revert
| excessive agenda pushing.
| m-chrzan wrote:
| I've always thought the solution should be an open
| federated IM standard, like email but for conversations
| rather than correspondence. If that were the widely adopted
| solution, you'd end up with large free providers that work
| perfectly fine for most regular users (like gmail), paid
| services that fully respect your privacy, and the more
| technical folks would be free to host their own servers.
|
| I guess Matrix is doing this, but unfortunately, the way
| history has played out, centralized IM had first mover
| advantage by a huge margin and that's what people are used
| to now - that a messenger is an application on your phone
| that you can only use to contact other users of that same
| application.
| afandian wrote:
| Last time I tried to use it it on my android didn't work
| without google play services. And they really bury the apk
| download, which means it's useless(or heavily discouraged) for
| people without a google account.
|
| (Edit: this is rather a negative comment but its out of
| frustration -- I want to use it!)
| utf_8x wrote:
| The APK is really not that hard to find...
| https://signal.org/android/apk/
|
| That page also states "Advanced users with special needs can
| download the Signal APK directly. Most users should not do
| this under normal circumstances." which IMO is a very good
| point. Downloading random APKs from the internet is rarely a
| good idea...
| afandian wrote:
| Yeah you can search for it but it's not obvious from the
| site. I just think it's a shame that it's touted as open
| source but they don't appear to have given much thought to
| the open source demographic. It's not on f-droid.
| klyrs wrote:
| It's always been the first hit when I search for "signal
| apk" from ddg, bing or google
| spiznnx wrote:
| They have given it thought, and have purposely decided
| not to distribute it through f-droid [0]. Yes you have to
| search for it, but if you are savvy enough to use un-
| googled android, you will be likely able to find it.
|
| 0. https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-
| Android/issues/9044#issu...
| swiley wrote:
| Stop promoting services with no federation, they'll just end up
| in the same spot 10 years from now.
|
| EDIT: To the people downvoting this: I said the same thing a
| long time ago about whatsapp before Facebook bought them.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Facebook messenger and Google hangouts actually had
| federation. So even that doesn't mean a lot.
|
| However I'd also promote federation-first services like
| Matrix. Only issue with Matrix is the e2e being so clumsy IMO
| franga2000 wrote:
| Getting people off of WhatsApp onto Signal means taking power
| away from a closed platform that makes billions from
| manipulating its users, which is already a win. Signal is not
| only not that, but is in fact a completely open non-profit
| project, so it's basically impossible for it to turn into
| that.
|
| Even moving from Fb to Telegram is an improvement in almost
| all respects and it's sure as hell a lot easier to do than
| going straight to Matrix/Riot/whatever it is these days.
| Don't be a purist and let people have their compromises, lest
| you end up like the "GNU/" part in front of "Linux".
| mhd wrote:
| I don't read a lot about it on HN, but at least the threema
| client[0] is open-source, too, and the servers are in
| Switzerland.
|
| [0]: https://threema.ch/en/open-source
| nalekberov wrote:
| "Open source" is sold to the people as "you have the most
| control", but in reality once your data reaches their end,
| you have no idea what is deal with it. Open source
| centralized solution does not an will not solve the problem.
| They can not.
| nowzarifarhad wrote:
| That's a dumb move from facebook unless they are planning to buy
| every other chat applications and ask their users to share their
| data with Facebook. I'm amazed that they are asking for it and
| not doing it already.
| [deleted]
| BatteryMountain wrote:
| Facebook and by extension Whatsapp needs to be regulated.
|
| Also, I'd be happy to pay for Whatsapp but then they need to
| isolate themselves from Facebook/third parties and slow down with
| the feature creep. It works great for what it is. If they mutate
| the thing further, it's going to become a gross/convuluted app
| that tries to cater to all use cases.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Zuckerberg while waiting to see if FTC would clear the deal: "We
| are absolutely not going to change plans around WhatsApp and the
| way it uses user data. WhatsApp is going to operate completely
| autonomously,"
|
| >https://www.latimes.com/business/la-xpm-2014-feb-24-la-fi-tn...
|
| >The WhatsApp acquisition has raised concerns among some users
| that WhatsApp would become, well, more like Facebook. Zuckerberg
| took the opportunity to quiet those concerns, saying WhatsApp
| would continue to operate independently from Facebook.
|
| >"We are absolutely not going to change plans around WhatsApp and
| the way it uses user data. WhatsApp is going to operate
| completely autonomously," Zuckerberg said. "They might use people
| and infrastructure to grow, but the vision is to keep the service
| exactly the same. They do not keep the content you send, and
| we're not going to change that."
| jonplackett wrote:
| They're clearly ever so worried about these anti-trust suits
| then...
| hajderr wrote:
| New apps on the rise!
| amelius wrote:
| Our parents invented the transistor, radar, computers, operating
| systems, telecommunications, ...
|
| We invented social media.
| Swaglord333 wrote:
| What would the smart alternative to WA be? Telegram? Line? How
| can I continue using the WA without giving Facebook sth to work
| with?
|
| Please bear with me if this doesn't belong here. Normally I
| wouldn't dare posting on HN (don't want it to become mainstream
| and have idiots like me gush out their opinions) but I really
| dunno who else to ask this.
| 7v3x3n3sem9vv wrote:
| Agree with the other guy suggesting Signal. It's basically
| WhatsApp, owned by non-profit so that it can't be sold to a
| for-profit. They've been subpoenaed and the only data they
| could provide for a user was the phone number that was
| registered, the first day that number registered and the most
| recent day the phone number contacted their servers.
|
| I would suggest reading through their blog posts if you're
| curious about all the work they're putting into ensuring that
| they collect as little data about their users as possible. they
| truly are innovating in a field where nobody else seems to care
| about ensuring privacy first.
|
| This does come at a cost to how quickly user-facing features
| arrive compared to their competitors, but this is because they
| think through where you may leak data and engineer a way around
| it before allowing a feature to go through. That said, at this
| point it's pretty much at feature parity with WhatsApp, so
| moving over to it would be a great time to do so.
| chrisballinger wrote:
| Signal: https://signal.org/
| personlurking wrote:
| So, the part below is new, or not new? And what is "user content"
| exactly? All messages, images and audio?
|
| _______
|
| >WhatsApp, according to the App Store, reserves the right to
| collect:
|
| Purchases
|
| Financial information
|
| Location
|
| Contacts
|
| User content
|
| Identifiers
|
| Usage data and
|
| Diagnostics
| croes wrote:
| Yes
| hajderr wrote:
| What happened to Telegram?
| rutthenut wrote:
| A colleague shared this (Apr 2020) link about Signal .vs.
| WhatsApp, which may be more important in light of this change.
|
| https://www.wired.co.uk/article/signal-vs-whatsapp
| gideon13 wrote:
| Congress simply needs to mandate interconnect capability to other
| platforms, like they did with the Bell Telephone Company. Poof
| problem solved.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interconnection#United_States
| rvanmil wrote:
| Market share of WhatsApp in The Netherlands is somewhere around
| 90%. It is time for the government to step in here because the
| free market will not be able to fix this.
| Tactic wrote:
| Facebook has also recently started to require a Facebook account
| to use Oculus VR. It appears they are starting to crack down on
| the services they have acquired. I assume this more hardline
| approach of "give us your data or get out" will continue with any
| other current or future services created or purchased.
| silasdavis wrote:
| As others have mentioned increasingly small businesses (like my
| outdoor exercise class) and loose communities (like my child's
| school year parent's group) rely on WhatsApp. persuading these
| loose connections to move away from WhatsApp for one's own
| benefit is almost impossible.
|
| Sacrificing access to these social amenities on the altar of
| incremental privacy invasion and power transfer to an
| unaccountable basically malign organisation is hard to stomach.
| And rather inconsequential taken in isolation.
|
| What technical and legislative means might be effective in
| limiting the network effect around group chats? For example
| requiring in law that groups be accessible to an open federated
| hub and spoke messaging protocol to allow messages to flow from
| syndicated groups established on other systems (like matrix or
| signal or whatever) to WhatsApp groups.
|
| What technical and legal prior art is there here? I would be
| interested to hear some ideas.
| Hermel wrote:
| It might be enough to use many different messaging apps in
| parallel. This enabled competition and a smooth transition
| between them. For example, I tend to slowly move from WhatsApp
| to Telegram as more new groups I join are created in Telegram
| while old groups in WhatsApp tend to get abandoned. Also, I
| often access these groups through opera via their API and not
| the native apps. This is a natural development in a market
| where people use multiple apps in parallel: aggregators emerge
| and with that, the power shifts to them. That's a good thing as
| it makes it easier to transition from one solution to the
| other.
|
| What could be done legally to help this development is
| requiring services to offer open APIs to reduce the lock-in.
| edeion wrote:
| Having different apps is probably a step forward indeed. But
| (as far as I understand) just having WhatsApp installed on my
| phone allows them to keep an eye on my contact list. That
| sounds quite despicable to me.
| AntiqueFig wrote:
| Isn't Signal better than Telegram?
| FalconSensei wrote:
| Better in which terms? UX/Usability? Privacy/anonymity?
| Reliability? Reliability on never losing contacts/data?
| User-proof? As in: non-tech people will have it working
| well without tinkering, and they will not lose their data
| because they didn't to X procedure?
| jannes wrote:
| Which Opera API are you talking about?
|
| Isn't it just a wrapper for https://web.whatsapp.com/ ? I
| wouldn't call that an "API"
| paulnechifor wrote:
| I guess that's part of the plan, give it for free and make it
| indispensable and then reap the rewards. Feels like a drug
| operation. :(
| 542354234235 wrote:
| I feel like the internet, and the digital activities that
| happen on it, are this generation's railroads, power, and
| telecommunications in the 18th and 19th century. They started
| as wild free-for-alls and evolved into regulated and stable
| markets with consumer protections, standardization, right to
| access, etc., usually after corrupt and unethical monopolies
| got out of hand and showed the importance of the service as a
| basic utility needed for a functioning country, and the need to
| protect it.
| herbst wrote:
| If i would join your group only to realize i would get no infos
| without an whatsapp acc i would not come back.
| jannes wrote:
| That's easy to say when you live in a country where it's not
| a social norm (I assume you do)
| rpastuszak wrote:
| Signal and Telegram seem to be the most commonly mentioned
| alternatives here. Which one do you prefer and why?
| KorematsuFred wrote:
| Prefer Telegram. My p2p communication is minimal and I manage
| dozens of groups with thousands of members. Telegram not only
| handles this but provides a lot of tools to manage groups
| effectively.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Signal. Open source, non-profit, very good privacy defaults.
| Telegram seems even worse than whatsapp to be honest because
| they don't even have encryption on by default.
| AndriyKunitsyn wrote:
| Telegram always has encryption, just no end-to-end encryption
| by default. This is a privacy/convenience trade-off. When
| chatting about groceries/memes/latest Netflix releases, you
| don't really need E2EE that much, and chats without E2EE are
| synced to all devices in Telegram, including a fully-
| supported desktop app.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I'm willing to bet you money that virtually nobody adjusts
| their privacy settings based on topic of conversation,
| especially not non-tech people which is almost all users. I
| don't think I've ever seen anyone chat with their
| girlfriend and go "hey, grocery talk over, switch to e2ee
| now". Defaults matter and I'm certain almost no telegram
| conversations use e2ee as a consequence, with private info
| or otherwise. It's important to have it as a default and to
| tell people why they should use an app that does.
| wruza wrote:
| It's also important to have an option to turn it off, to
| benefit from mass-grouping (whatsapp limits groups to 256
| users, lurking or not), chat history (new group
| participants can't scroll up in whatsapp) and easy
| continuity (phone/pc job use case). Also it is not clear
| if whatsapp implements the same: -
| forward secrecy - self-destruction - forced
| destruction
|
| as telegram does. E.g. whatsapp seems to only have an
| option for 7 day self-destruction, which may be too long
| for some use cases, and no instant destruction. Neither
| of two are superior privacy-wise all things considered,
| but stating that always-on e2ee is a most important thing
| is probably naive. And then you have tg bots,
| ui/keyboards, stickers, etc which for a regular user
| outweigh the security area entirely.
|
| Also your virtual bet is lost because every time my
| circle discusses 'hot' topics in telegram (company
| issues, lawyer/audit-related chats, recreational drug
| use, etc), we go secret and warn users who do otherwise.
| We can't check whether that is common or not, because
| those who _have_ to be 'secret' may resist to admit this
| activity.
| bigiain wrote:
| I get this argument, but for me, needing to moderate
| conversations "chatting about groceries/memes/latest
| Netflix releases," to make sure they don't edge into
| discussions I'd _really_ rather have E2E encrypted is
| something I just _know_ will go wrong for some of the
| participants in chat sooner or later. _That's_ a
| convenience tradeoff in favour of E2E by default for me.
| (But yeah, not for most people...)
| post_break wrote:
| Telegram because it works across all my devices and so far has
| been adopted by friends. Closest to iMessage for any non Apple
| device for me.
| darau1 wrote:
| I would prefer signal, but I use Telegram. Everyone I talk to
| likes the feature set, so Signal would seem like a step
| backward.
| anoncake wrote:
| Signal is just another walled garden, making it a no-go for me.
| itsnot2020 wrote:
| Out of interest, what do you use instead?
| bigiain wrote:
| Signal, because I have more trust in Moxie that the Telegram
| team.
|
| I have not used Telegram though, so that's not a preference
| based on usability, just on trust.
| krick wrote:
| I prefer Element, but apparently it's not popular enough even
| among HN users, so don't even hope. Signal is popular among the
| HN users, because it was hyped for a long time by tech-
| journalists as a pinnacle of secure messaging, but as an app
| it's even worse than WhatsApp. And not very popular outside of
| HN. Telegram is very popular in Russia&neighbours and only
| mildly popular in Europe, even less so in USA. Arguably the
| best of 3 in terms of usability, HN users don't like it because
| it has some non-standard e2e encryption, which is not enabled
| by default in private chats.
|
| Also, FYI, Telegram is going to introduce some paid features
| soon, but it's not completely clear what they'll be. There just
| was some talking about that's it about the time they are going
| to monetize it, but I'm not sure if they announced what exactly
| becomes paid and what doesn't.
| andrewinardeer wrote:
| Sessions is my go to for privacy related messaging. It's a fork
| of Signal with data pushed over a decentralised network.
| thekyle wrote:
| I personally use Signal, but I think Session is great for the
| crowd that wants "Signal but without the phone number".
| ratsforhorses wrote:
| Dumb question, I assume this means you have to disinstall
| whatsapp if you don't want Fb to have access to stuff on your
| phone... but is there a way to freeze and save all those
| conversations on whatsapp so I can go back later to search for
| specific stuff, memes, photos, links
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://faq.whatsapp.com/android/chats/how-to-save-your-chat...
| domano wrote:
| I consciously refuse WhatsApp and live with the consequences -
| but people are coming around slowly or maybe my social circle is
| small enough to avoid the aforementioned inertia.
|
| Usually people have it installed alongside WhatsApp, i am the
| only one without it i think.
| SebastianKra wrote:
| Their privacy policy is full of tricks and clever wording to
| confuse you, and stop you from revoking your consent to data
| processing. (...which they likely have, because you were already
| using the service before GDPR went into effect)
|
| https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/privacy-policy-eea
|
| I especially like how their email template asks you to fill out a
| bunch of unnecessary fields and implies that the request might be
| denied if you don't.
|
| I think most WhatsApp users would just give up at that point.
|
| I think both of these adresses work: - DPO-
| inquiries@support.whatsapp.com -
| Objection.eu@support.whatsapp.com
|
| However, I don't really know how to best formulate such a
| request.
|
| (By the way, the server might refuse to receive you mail, if they
| don't recognize your domain.)
| jdmg94 wrote:
| I can't believe I pard for whatsapp back in the day when it was a
| paid app on the app store
| 01acheru wrote:
| I finally deleted WhatsApp, even if here in Europe it's the
| ubiquitous messaging application and maybe things will be a
| little complicated at first. I should've done this long ago, the
| same day it was bought by Facebook.
|
| Anyway we have so many ways to communicate with one another that
| if someone wants to reach me he can, probably it will be less a
| big deal than what most of us think.
|
| If all of your tech savvy friends disappear from WhatsApp in a
| matter of a couple of weeks maybe some other people might
| follow... I kind of hope in a domino effect right now, let's see
| how it plays out!
| muzani wrote:
| "As part of the Facebook family of companies, WhatsApp receives
| information from, and shares information with, this family of
| companies. We may use the information we receive from them, and
| they may use the information we share with them, to help operate,
| provide, improve, understand, customize, support, and market our
| Services and their offerings. This includes helping improve
| infrastructure and delivery systems, understanding how our
| Services or theirs are used, securing systems, and fighting spam,
| abuse, or infringement activities. Facebook and the other
| companies in the Facebook family also may use information from us
| to improve your experiences within their services such as making
| product suggestions (for example, of friends or connections, or
| of interesting content) and showing relevant offers and ads.
| However, your WhatsApp messages will not be shared onto Facebook
| for others to see. In fact, Facebook will not use your WhatsApp
| messages for any purpose other than to assist us in operating and
| providing our Services."
|
| Definition of Services: "all of our apps, services, features,
| software, and website (together, "Services") unless specified
| otherwise."
|
| Ads are the bulk of Facebook's "Services" but it's remarkable how
| they avoid saying it.
| ipsum2 wrote:
| huh? it's listed: "and showing relevant offers and ads"
| jraph wrote:
| Sure but the fate of WhatsApp messages is unclear for me just
| by reading this excerpt. Do they use them for ads?
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| Yes they (would)do.
| muzani wrote:
| Oh, you're right. It took quite a bit of digging around to
| get to this part, and I seem to have accidentally copied the
| part I was looking for, though I searched for
| "advertisements".
| malinens wrote:
| Looks like end to end encryption feature is bullshit marketing
| trick if they for example process my message before my device
| encrypts it to send it to other devices...
| Lammy wrote:
| The encryption is also stripped when you back up your
| WhatsApp messages to Google Drive, along with a sweetheart
| zero-tier deal with Google to remove any possible downside
| that might make somebody think twice:
| https://faq.whatsapp.com/android/chats/about-google-drive-
| ba...
|
| > WhatsApp backups no longer count against your Google Drive
| storage quota.
|
| > Media and messages you back up aren't protected by WhatsApp
| end-to-end encryption while in Google Drive.
| bostik wrote:
| Well, let's be fair. The threat model for end-to-end
| encryption assumes that endpoint devices or the software
| itself used for communication are not compromised. Or
| subverted.
|
| It's common knowledge that group chats are not E2E - there is
| one encryption context from a user to the servers, and
| another context from the server to each member of the group
| chat. Bog standard transport layer security, in other words.
|
| However, even if you never used group chats and had E2E on
| with all your contacts, the traffic analysis ("metadata use")
| is enough to build associations and clusters. FB doesn't need
| to know the message contents (although they make use of them
| when available). You have frequent chats with people who play
| certain kinds of sports? Fine, for marketing purposes you'll
| be grouped with people who like those sports. Or if majority
| of your friends have pets - guess which cohorts you end up as
| well.
|
| Oh, and if I remember correctly, WA definitely processes your
| messages locally before sending them: it uses a list of image
| hashes to prevent sending eg. child exploitation material
| onwards.
| Erlich_Bachman wrote:
| The sentiment of your message almost makes it looks like
| you are trying to say Whatsapp is no worse at E2E than the
| others?
|
| This is not the case. Signal for example has open source
| which allows to verify that it does not use the message
| texts for commercial purposes so we can with good reason
| assume that the messages are at least E2E encrypted
| properly within the app and at least Signal servers.
|
| Yes, of course if you have root access to the device
| itself, or otherwise hack it, you can compromise any
| messenger. But that's not even in the same league as having
| basically a message spying built-in, turned on, always on,
| inside your damn messenger app itself.
|
| Whatsapp calling their app "E2E" in their marketing is a
| spit in the direction of the users that have the technical
| knowledge to understand how it really works. It is
| inaccurate in all the ways that matter. It is accurate only
| in one technical way that is completely irrelevant in the
| real world, just put there so they could use the phrase in
| the marketing while not caring about the true intent behind
| E2E.
| bostik wrote:
| > * The sentiment of your message almost makes it looks
| like you are trying to say Whatsapp is no worse at E2E
| than the others?*
|
| That was not my intention.
|
| I'm trying to say that E2E implies a very specific threat
| model, and that WhatsApp are in fact in position to
| subvert theirs in pretty straightforward ways. Their
| group messages have never been E2E, which means that if
| they were to force a client update where all
| communications are always group chats and UI hid this
| fact, the users would be none the wiser. They could also
| use their client-side content filtering to build keyword
| histograms and upload those periodically to their
| servers, without breaking their E2E.
|
| In fact, I was trying to point out that they do not
| necessarily need to inspect or store message contents.
| WhatsApp is owned by a marketing analytics giant. With
| all the noise about E2E and metadata, people forget (or
| ignore) that traditionally intelligence about
| communications has been primarily about traffic analysis
| ("metadata"). Tapping into the communications has been of
| course a valuable goal, but knowing the communication
| patterns, frequencies, memberships and direction/timing
| of communications within groups has been enough to build
| valuable intelligence.
|
| Sure. Access to content allows to do keyword and
| semantic/NLP based targeting. But the aggregation of
| marketing cohorts and their various relationships is
| likely a much more valuable asset. These relationships
| are also known as the social graph. And E2E, as
| implemented in WhatsApp, does not protect against it.
| They know who you communicated with, when, and where you
| were at the time.
|
| Signal on the other hand have done a lot of work to
| enable not only E2E protected, but also properly
| untrackable group communications.
|
| > _But that 's not even in the same league as having
| basically a message spying built-in, turned on, always
| on, inside your damn messenger app itself._
|
| You hit the nail on the head. If you can't trust the
| client, practically any and all E2E promises are
| worthless. We agree on this one.
|
| You also touch upon a wider problem across the messaging
| technology space. The term end-to-end-encryption has been
| hijacked as a high-value keyword by every snakeoil
| salesman. It confers a high level of trust, precisely
| because when implemented correctly, it provides
| guaranteed message content confidentiality. But even in
| this thread, we see that the term E2E is routinely used
| to imply even higher standard: that of anonymous
| communication.
|
| Anonymity, confidentiality and integrity are all aspects
| of communications security. End-to-end can guarantee the
| last two, assuming the endpoints remain secure or at
| least trusted. Getting the first one included is going to
| require a lot of hard work, and in case of WhatsApp,
| would go directly against their owner's motives.
| throw_me_2020 wrote:
| If WA did things like silently degrading/removing E2EE,
| wouldn't it be discoverable by an independent security
| researcher?
|
| WA seems large enough that the security community would
| put in that effort periodically.
| bostik wrote:
| Well, yes. Obviously. One would hope.
|
| But if they were to do so, it could be done so that there
| likely wouldn't be anything in the visible application or
| its behaviour to highlight the change to a regular user.
| Unless you somehow see that the key ratcheting is in use
| and can confirm the two-sided key state out of band with
| your peer, you can't tell without disassembling the
| client.
|
| However, this feels like derailing quite far from the
| original topic. The contract and assumption of E2E
| protection unavoidably relies on trusting the client(s)
| and the devices they run on.
| fsflover wrote:
| > I'm trying to say that E2E implies a very specific
| threat model, and that WhatsApp are in fact in position
| to subvert theirs in pretty straightforward ways.
|
| I disagree. For me, E2E implies that the company itself
| cannot read my messages. It's not true for Whatsapp, but
| it's true for Signal/Matrix.
| Atariman wrote:
| As a privacy concerned European, there's only one viable
| alternative: https://threema.ch/en/
|
| It's open source and very secure:
| https://www.securemessagingapps.com/
| 7v3x3n3sem9vv wrote:
| I'm curious if you've looked into Signal and if you think it's
| a viable alternative to Threema? Specifically considering
| Signal is fully open source (client and servers), uses
| reproducible builds which allows you to verify that the source
| matches the app you're running, and is owned by a non-profit
| which can't be sold to a for-profit company.
| Atariman wrote:
| Signal is still US-based, so I'm not interested.
| 533474 wrote:
| spelling mistakes on the landing page
| Atariman wrote:
| Not every company is from an English speaking country, so
| spelling mistakes are happening.
|
| You're welcome to send them an email to with the fixes
| instead of grumble here.
| dbetteridge wrote:
| 'pay once, chat forever'
|
| I don't see how thats tenable with anything that requires a
| hosted server to relay information.
|
| Someone will need to pay for it going forward and if the users
| money runs out, what then?
| kar1181 wrote:
| It's harder for US folks to understand just how much of a
| monopoly WhatsApp has in Europe and the UK.
|
| Pretty much all of our school and local community communication
| happens via WhatsApp. I'd change to Signal or Telegram in a
| heartbeat, but the inertia is so great it's not possible.
|
| It pains me to say, but we're getting to the point where
| companies like Twitter, Facebook and Google need to be treated
| like utilities or something so that such moves as these can be
| scrutinised and controlled more effectively as Facebook could
| pretty much (within current law) introduce whatever policy they
| like and users would be faced with the option of accepting or
| being cut off from their local community.
|
| Given the pandemic and the UK lockdown, this is not tolerable.
| sireat wrote:
| I can cut out WhatsApp from professional use no problem.
|
| There is no way to cut WhatsApp from casual/family use in
| Europe.
|
| Schools, kindergartens, mechanics, contractors, plumbers
| everyone uses it.
|
| The problem is that WhatsApp is the easiest method to share
| photos on mobile.
|
| If you do not have WhatsApp your plumber can not send you a
| picture of pipes they fixed. How do you work around that?
|
| Other parents are using WhatsApp for organizing out of school
| activities. Again, there is no way to go full Stallman here...
| mrweasel wrote:
| It's a little more nuanced than that. I don't question that
| WhatsApp is huge, in some countries and social circles, but
| it's by no means dominating across Europe.
|
| Personally I'm not really sure who's using WhatsApp, I know two
| or three WhatsApp users. They all use it because they have
| friends other countries, mostly the middle east.
|
| If RCS actually becomes a thing, then I don't see much of a
| future for apps like WhatsApp.
| Tepix wrote:
| > If RCS actually becomes a thing
|
| I have no reason to believe it will ever take off: It's been
| dead in the water since 2012 or even earlier. It doesn't
| support end-to-end encryption. Carriers would like to charge
| for it.
| monkeydust wrote:
| As UK resident I fully echo this situation.
|
| I have Telegram and Signal installed and was chatting with
| friends above moving over (finally) but its painful especially
| right now.
|
| With right amount of incentive, force and numbers - tipping
| point could be reached but I cant see it happening in the
| current situation.
|
| With my cynical hat on I imagine FB know this and timed this
| policy change accordingly.
| aeyes wrote:
| Not just Europe + UK, LATAM is all WhatsApp.
|
| Net neutrality not existing helps WhatsApp and other services
| here, one cell provider for example offers 1 year unlimited
| WhatsApp+Facebook including voice and video calls for a total
| (not monthly!) cost of 3USD on a prepaid chip. So you can't
| call, you can't write SMS, you can't use the internet but you
| can use WhatsApp for almost no cost. If you are on a budget
| this is a no brainer, for comparison - 5GB full internet access
| on the same chip is around 5$.
|
| How are you going to break such a monopoly supported by
| providers? At this point it is something all providers do so if
| one starts offering it all other providers have a competitive
| advantage because everybody is already using WhatsApp. I am not
| sure if Facebook pays these providers, my guess is not - they
| are pushed into this by their competitors.
|
| Net neutrality is very important to not let this happen.
| Similar deals exist for other popular services: Instagram,
| Youtube, TikTok, Spotify, Snapchat, Twitter, Netflix to name a
| few
| hyko wrote:
| _faced with the option of accepting or being cut off from their
| local community._
|
| It's a deal!
| Timpy wrote:
| When I lived in Russia my doctor messaged me via WhatsApp. I'm
| American so I was a little culture shocked, I don't know if
| this is standard procedure or anything but it illustrates how
| ubiquitous WhatsApp is.
|
| I'm so anti-Facebook now that it's a part of the way I identify
| myself, and for all that I can't delete it. I maintain contact
| with a friend in Germany via Whatsapp or Facebook messenger,
| and in this case it would be possible to use email (which is
| not nearly as casual as firing off a message in your spare
| moments) or some other service but it doesn't solve the problem
| about friend groups.
|
| I have friend groups around the world that my only way to
| participate in is Facebook. I believe moving abroad is in my
| future again, and Messenger is detestably the only real way to
| keep up with my friends back home. Leaving Facebook and
| Messenger is like leaving a bar I hate; I'm only here for the
| people and I wish we could go somewhere else.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| For younger friends, I found that they can sometimes install
| a 2nd messenger, depending on how close you are. Of course,
| if they already use 2 or 3, you might need to use one that
| they have.
|
| I would suggest to check if they use
| Telegram/Line/Kakao/Hangouts, or suggest it to them. They are
| all closed source, but at least is the lesser evil?
| ravingraven wrote:
| >Twitter, Facebook and Google need to be treated like utilities
| [...]
|
| Our generation is reinventing the wheel here, our ancestors had
| exactly the same problems with the power, water, gas, telephone
| and rail networks (at some point in time, all those were
| unregulated and privately owned) and did exactly that. Critical
| infrastructure needs to be heavily, regulated if not outright
| publicly owned.
| alex_duf wrote:
| I think similarly to how europe has forced Banks to
| interoperate by making them write a protocol that can
| interoperate, governments need to force social media
| companies to write down a protocol and use it.
|
| I like the analogy with utilities, but the issue is that we
| pay for electricity, but we don't pay for our usage of social
| media. As long as that's true we can difficulty do what I'm
| suggesting above
| simfoo wrote:
| Exactly that. There needs to be a mandated federation
| protocol for instant messenger apps that have lets say > 10
| million user in the EU.
| fart32 wrote:
| I don't like the idea of government having full control of
| these services.
|
| I believe that we need fully decentralized system, much like
| the e-mail, but realtime and E2EE. Sadly, it seems to me that
| we're taking the opposite direction. Just few widely used
| messengers, all of them are centralized, some of them have
| E2EE, but who knows for how long - EU commission seems to
| like the idea of breaking in. No matter what their intentions
| are, I didn't sign up for that.
| Shacklz wrote:
| In essence I agree with you, but let's not forget that in
| most countries, the government has already complete (albeit
| strongly regulated) control and access to postal services
| and everything that is sent through them, and I think most
| citizens (me included) are okay with that as well.
|
| Furthermore; I'd much rather have the government spying in
| my stuff than Facebook selling my data to the highest
| bidder; at least if that were my only two choices.
| fart32 wrote:
| > and everything that is sent through them
|
| Are you seriously comparing letters and private IM
| conversations? I don't know about you, but I
| received/sent maybe 5 letters in last 10 years, none of
| which were from/to another private entity.
|
| > I'd much rather have the government spying
|
| I consider this very short sighted and dangerours, but
| that's your choice.
|
| > at least if that were my only two choices
|
| Those are not your only two choices, that's kinda my
| point. We actually don't have to choose between a greedy
| company or a state. The only decision people need to make
| is centralized or decentralized system.
| veddox wrote:
| It seems most people have chosen the centralized system,
| whether we like it or not. So then, the next choice would
| indeed be ,,public or private"?
| baq wrote:
| > Are you seriously comparing letters and private IM
| conversations? I don't know about you, but I
| received/sent maybe 5 letters in last 10 years, none of
| which were from/to another private entity.
|
| ...because email and IM exist. they used to not exist and
| people sent paper letters to each other all. the. time.
|
| now there are places and people I need a particular
| digital post office company to communicate with - and the
| worst part is, it's because they don't really care and
| thus force me to risk giving up my data if i want or need
| (read - am forced to due to life circumstances) to talk
| with them.
| distances wrote:
| I think this trust difference is a general division
| between Europe and US. Europeans generally trust their
| governments more than private companies, and vice versa
| in the US. I would assume both have valid reasons for
| this on their own side of the pond.
|
| For what it's worth, I too would trust the government a
| whole lot more than Facebook.
| veddox wrote:
| That's a good observation, and I agree, though I wonder
| why.
|
| It would seem to me that Americans have had more
| experiences with bad companies, and Europeans more
| experiences with bad governments over the past 300
| years...
| Shacklz wrote:
| I share most of your sentiments, I really do. In a
| perfect universe, we'd all be using fully e2e-encrypted
| messaging systems. But:
|
| > The only decision people need to make is centralized or
| decentralized system.
|
| They already have this choice; Matrix and others exist
| for quite some time already. Yet it is evidently clear
| that your average citizen will flock to whatever
| messenger is the easiest to use and is already used by
| their friends/family. Security/privacy are second
| thoughts at best, if at all; and even if it were
| important, grasping the different implications of all the
| available options isn't exactly easy either.
|
| And since we can probably agree that the vast majority of
| folks already "fail" to make the right choice in this
| regard, I'd much rather have a regulated, government-
| controlled messenger than some company like Facebook. The
| former is accountable to its citizens, the latter to its
| shareholders - if I have to pick my poison, the choice is
| clear.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| I disagree. Facebook, Twitter and Google are ephemeral
| utilities. They will probably be replaced by another company.
|
| Privatizing them will just let someone else come along and
| Embrace, extend, extinguish them.
| llampx wrote:
| Them going out of business in 60 years doesn't mean we have
| to sit on our hands now.
| Closi wrote:
| > They will probably be replaced by another company
|
| Nobody has a chance, but different reasons in each company:
|
| * What we have seen with Google - For a search engine, the
| more traffic you get the better results you can give (you
| can A-B test different algorithms for different queries,
| and optimise results). For new entrants they need to be
| popular before they can be better, which is a catch-22.
| Additionally Google has significant revenue which is very
| profitable because of it's monopoly position, and it can
| use this to reinvest in search technology to further widen
| the gap. It's going to take more than 2 people in a garage
| to beat modern Google at search!
|
| * For a social network, Facebook buy out any potential
| competition when it's gaining traction to further solidify
| their monopoly. See WhatsApp, Instagram, Friend.ly e.t.c.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| I wrote a tweet thread about this which I will post here for
| convenience:
|
| Consolidation is a debt. You gain market cap at the cost of
| introducing systemic weakness and reducing broader market
| innovation. Once a company becomes a fundamental service they
| need to be regulated like a utility
|
| (I will illustrate with Facebook)
|
| Facebook can get the license to operate it but they also need
| to open up their API's so others can build on top. These
| should become web standards governed by w3c.
|
| Facebook is an interesting case as this system would remove
| all the perverse incentives driving their business model (no
| more ads). It would also crash their stock. That value hasn't
| disappeared though, it has been pushed out to the edge nodes
| of their network (specifically the companies building on top
| of their API's). My thesis is that this model will increase
| the overall pot while reducing the share the largest players
| have.
|
| The knock-on effect of this is that investors will see this
| as the final outcome and be less incentivised to invest. That
| may be a problem as we don't want to stop the emergence of
| billion scale companies altogether. Therefore a mechanism for
| the people to buy out the company at a fair legally agreed
| market value should be in place. This will stop crazy upsides
| and protect the undesirable downsides. The asset then becomes
| publicly owned but privately operated according to
| regulations.
|
| AI would fall under the same model. With open API's and
| standards anyone can get the data they need to build new AI
| companies. Especially feasible if we move towards self-
| sovereign identities and crypto methods of exchange.
|
| To facilitate more small tech innovation we need to introduce
| a UBI. It will allow more people take risks with their time
| leading to more cottage innovation. In 100 years it will be a
| fundamental aspect of fiscal policy.
|
| Additionally education needs to be refocused on making
| things. People are not equipped with the skills to build
| things. There is no better way to learn, grow and generate
| value. If we want a diversified small tech eco-system economy
| we need to focus on helping people develop the skills that
| make it possible.
| hkt wrote:
| Amen.
|
| Not to forget the things that were in co-operative ownership,
| either.
| emteycz wrote:
| Sure, let's make the public alternative, but I am strongly
| against taking over businesses.
| llampx wrote:
| I am strongly for taking over businesses which are de facto
| monopolies.
| emteycz wrote:
| If your public alternative can't win the users then
| "breaking the monopoly" will worsen the user experience.
| I don't want to live in that world - consider Telegram, a
| much better experience than WhatsApp, and it won over
| many users already. Evidently the monopoly is not as
| strong as is suggested. Telegram might not exist if there
| was a risk of losing the company. I don't want to be
| stuck with bad public software. In reality, when you
| destroy WhatsApp, people won't use the bad software, they
| will go to the next player and make it a "monopoly"
| because it most likely will be a better user experience.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Network externalities in communication networks make it
| so that you can create a 10x better application and still
| have 0 chance of competing.
| llampx wrote:
| At every step of the way, Facebook has leveraged its size
| and existing troves of data to undermine and buy out the
| competition. The goals of Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and
| Google are the same - world domination. Same as any mega
| conglomerate of years past. The difference now is tech
| scale and the willingness of regulators to allow it to
| happen.
| seniorivn wrote:
| no they don't need to be treated like anything, they are
| completely new thing, so if you think that their dominant
| market position is an issue, they can be forced to implement
| public api(open standart), therefore unlocking their userbase
| and allowing infinite competition
| GuB-42 wrote:
| In France, SMS is still the most common, even though it is
| declining. I think it is historic: we had cheap unlimited SMS
| plans before internet data plans were common.
|
| WhatsApp is popular but not a monopoly. Not really something to
| celebrate since its main "competitor" and #1 instant messenger
| app is Facebook Messenger. Skype and Discord are also
| significant, and I expect iMessage to be important too.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| But with SMS group messaging is rather cumbersome no?
| ddrdrck_ wrote:
| Yes, which is exactly why WhatsApp has replaced SMS : group
| messaging. People still use SMS for 1 to 1 conversation in
| France
| 72deluxe wrote:
| Based on all the groups my wife is part of, it seems
| other people get absolutely nothing done in life since
| they appear to be sending pointless messages on a group
| constantly. Her phone is constantly buzzing, and 99.9% of
| it is utter nonsense.
|
| It seems to me that the inability to easily message a
| group would be a bonus and not a loss!
| tdubhro1 wrote:
| I'm also in the UK and I deleted WhatsApp 2 years ago when it
| became clear that Facebook intended to move in the direction of
| fuller integration (I deleted my Facebook account after 1 month
| of usage 10 years ago). However, I had to reinstall WhatsApp
| because all of my kid's sports activities and school updates
| are organised through WhatsApp groups and it is impossible to
| participate without WhatsApp. Much as I believe in the cause,
| I'm not going to go preach it to the volunteers who coach my
| kids' rugby team. The scary thing here is that the actual real-
| life "social network" has been privatised and monopolised, and
| now we can't participate in society in very important ways
| without going through Facebook.
| studius wrote:
| In the U.S., my experience with Whatsapp was that I created
| an account and never used it once to communicate with anyone,
| then I deleted it.
|
| I've also withdrawn from social media.
|
| The exception for now is HN, because it's more of a forum,
| even when bad information sometimes instates itself as
| reality for a large conversation, like a big gathering of
| fans talking about their team that will inevitably fail to
| win or perhaps a bad STD.
|
| I learn what others are doing through direct and intentional
| communication, even if technology is used or if the
| information is second-hand. I don't text back or call back
| immediately, which my friends and family forgive, but it
| sometimes seems to hurt my relationships.
|
| I still worry of dependence on large companies, big data
| companies gathering more information about me than I know
| myself, and the potential of out-of-control AIs. However, I
| attribute these in-part to my own paranoid thinking that use
| my memories of large company layoffs, privacy concerns raised
| in the tech community, and mostly fiction.
|
| While I've come to the realization that the act to trying to
| be happy and successful is the very thing that makes me
| unhappy, and I just need to exist, maybe becoming better at
| whatever I'm naturally good at, while being here and now with
| those I'm with, giving my service to them... I still keep
| wasting time replying about things that don't matter.
| teekert wrote:
| WA is not particularly good, it's just that I don't know
| anyone who doesn't use it (in the Netherlands), even when
| you want to contact helpdesks it is sometimes the preferred
| way. I mean, we have this in many streets: [0]
|
| Without kids I could see myself getting away with not using
| WA, but with kids you are really setting yourself up for a
| very hard time (and prepare to be judged by other (annoyed)
| parents and your kid _will_ feel the consequences at some
| point, the kids will miss out on critical and fun
| information).
|
| WA has almost become what email used to be. Except that
| it's a controlled platform and we are locked into a single
| provider, a provider that once promised a focus on privacy
| and an app free of commercials, forever...
|
| [0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=whatsapp+buurtpreventie&t=ffs
| b&iax...
| dtech wrote:
| It has completely replace texting in NL and some parts of
| Europe too, and I mean that literally.
| teekert wrote:
| At one point I had unlimited data (2011-ish?) for 5
| eur/month and a text was 20 euro cents per 160 chars or
| so... So I guess providers wanted SMS to disappear here.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| yep, here in the UK everyone I know uses whatsapp. Some
| people have telegram as well, but WA is the baseline. The
| only SMS texts I get are marketing and automatic
| notifications.
| studius wrote:
| What does it do that's so great?
| Agingcoder wrote:
| It's more reliable than sms - I used not to receive some
| of the texts people would send me, which caused all kinds
| of misunderstandings. I ended up doing experiments with
| friends sitting beside me just to prove my point. The
| same thing happened to family members.
|
| I'm not sure what the problem was, but WhatsApp solved
| it.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| it just replaced texting back when phone contracts tried
| to charge lots of money for texts. The network effect
| does the rest.
| chaosite wrote:
| It's "good enough", and it used to be free when texting
| wasn't.
|
| And it's better than SMS at Unicode.
| teekert wrote:
| And at sending/receiving pictures... MMS was even more
| expensive here.
| driverdan wrote:
| > I'm not going to go preach it to the volunteers who coach
| my kids' rugby team.
|
| Why not? I would.
| speleding wrote:
| And tell them what? Please all go install a different app?
| That only works if you can get everybody on board, it's
| unacceptable if a parent gets left out because he isn't
| there that day or cannot get it to work.
|
| You would also have to explain to them that Facebook cannot
| read your messages, but they can see the meta data. And
| then you have to explain to them what meta data is.
|
| I think your kid is not going to appreciate your efforts.
| Cro_on wrote:
| Wait for them to ask the why, tell them as succinctly as
| you can that fb is evil and there are alternatives.
| edeion wrote:
| My experience is similar.
|
| I want to add that when I left WhatsApp (~2y ago) I deleted
| my account. WhatsApp kept accepting messages on my behalf.
| People didn't know I wasn't getting their messages. I'm
| surprised I don't see this mentioned to the point I wonder if
| I did something wrong at the time.
|
| In the end, I reopened a WhatsApp account recently because
| everyone is using WhatsApp in France and I couldn't stand
| breaking everyone's efforts to bring us together during
| lockdown.
| nindalf wrote:
| > People didn't know I wasn't getting their messages.
|
| They saw 2 ticks, meaning delivered to your device? Or did
| they see one tick, meaning only delivered to the server?
|
| If it's the latter, that's a reasonable choice for the
| server to make. The server has acknowledged receipt of the
| message, and failed to send it to your device.
|
| If you wanted WhatsApp to advertise to your contacts that
| your account was inactive, you could have maybe sent them a
| message yourself?
| xuki wrote:
| > The server has acknowledged receipt of the message, and
| failed to send it to your device.
|
| Doing this without explicitly telling the other party is
| a dark pattern.
| nindalf wrote:
| What is with HN and throwing around words like dArK
| pAtTeRn?
|
| No it's not a dark pattern. They're being as transparent
| as possible. If you long press the message and click
| "info" they even explain what each tick means and when
| each event took place. It's literally not possible to be
| more transparent than that.
|
| And before the privacy brigade who've not used the app
| show up, this is configurable. You can opt out of sending
| and receiving read receipts. And since it's a closed app
| with no other implementation, you can't circumvent that
| either.
| heipei wrote:
| I would wager that most people using WhatsApp know the
| difference between one tick (server receipt), two ticks
| (client receipt) and two blue ticks (client actually read
| it).
| andybak wrote:
| I didn't know that until just now.
| cutemonster wrote:
| I didn't know that until after having used such apps for
| some year -- never thought much about those small symbols
|
| @heipei: the curse of knowledge, i learned yesterday, via
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25658216
| nindalf wrote:
| Were you a regular user? I'd wager most regular users
| know this. It's a verb among my friends, like "she's
| blue-ticking me".
|
| What's more, if you tap on "info" after long pressing any
| message, the app explains it to you.
| biztos wrote:
| I've been using WhatsApp a few times a day for the last
| year, a d infrequently for several years prior, and I had
| no idea.
| a254613e wrote:
| If you click on the message you get a Message Info screen
| which shows you exactly what the state the message is and
| the timestamps. It explicitly says
| "Sent"/"Delivered"/"Read" alongside the ticks and at what
| time it happened.
| goodcanadian wrote:
| I would take that wager. I certainly know what it means,
| and I imagine many users do, but the majority? I doubt
| it.
| edeion wrote:
| I can confirm my mother has no idea what these ticks
| mean. She can't make the difference between WhatsApp and
| iMessage either. At the time I left, I told her so and
| she kept wondering why I was not getting some of her
| messages (the ones she was sending on WhatsApp, that is).
| edeion wrote:
| I can only guess that people sending messages to my
| cancelled WhatsApp account saw only one tick. That's
| still meaningless to less skilled users and there's no
| way to tell if the user has gone forever or if they're
| just offline for a bit.
|
| Anyway, my point is that WhatsApp shouldn't silently
| accept messages for a non existent user no matter what
| weak signals you get. When you send a text message to a
| non existent number, you get an error. Same for an
| e-mail.
|
| I can't help but think it's a way to deter users from
| leaving WhatsApp.
| slim wrote:
| he _deleted_ his account. it 's absolutely not reasonable
| to accept my message without informing me the user I'm
| sending to is not on the platform anymore
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| Did these marks even exist 2yrs ago? I know they didn't
| when I started using WhatsApp ages ago, but I don't
| recall when they were added...
| asaddhamani wrote:
| They've been present for at least 5 years
| bigbizisverywyz wrote:
| the issue is that people would probably not want to pay for
| an app like WhatsApp, and so the 'free' alternative takes
| hold, and whoever controls that gets the cost of running the
| infrastructure in advertisement fees.
|
| If some company could set themselves up as a utility, and the
| mobile network operators were to pay that company to run the
| messaging app + infra, then it could be made to operate like
| a utility and nobodies data would have to be sold.
| Cro_on wrote:
| This could work as a good argument to switch if executed
| well.
|
| 'your device owns you and is siphoning cash from you'
| __lazybyte wrote:
| I could remember initially paying for a Whatsapp
| subscription a couple of years ago, I was happy to do so as
| I believed they were providing an essential service.
|
| I think that model could've worked.
| flemhans wrote:
| And wasn't it just $1 for a year?
| kar1181 wrote:
| This is precisely the dilemma in a nutshell.
|
| You have a choice but it's a bit like voluntary solitary
| confinement. Especially during a lockdown.
| toprea wrote:
| Just thinking out loud here, as I was considering something
| like this.
|
| I can also not give up the WhatsApp account due to the
| social pressure. What if I would use a second phone, a
| cheap one, used only for the whatsapp (and some other
| essential but privacy invasive apps). I would not have that
| second phone always with me, but it would provide me access
| to the social network I need without feeling tracked or
| providing more data than needed.
|
| I do understand that this doesn't fix exactly the issue
| presented here, but I already assumed that whatsapp data
| was already in Facebook's hands one way or another. But I
| would limit the amount of information that WhatsApp can
| track about me by having this application on a phone which
| does not really represent my full actions as i don't have
| it with me.
|
| Edit: Corrected some typos.
| catdog wrote:
| On Android you could use Shelter [1]. Might no be as good
| as as second phone but it heavily limits the data you
| expose. You can also freeze the app if you don't use it
| actively.
|
| The biggest annoyance is that Android only allows having
| exactly one of those "Work Profiles".
|
| [1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.typeblog.shelter/
| dreen wrote:
| I've recently switched to using Whatsapp in an emulator,
| which is kinda similar. I even almost got a virtual
| camera working so I can share my desktop screen via
| whatsapp call (would be super useful for parent tech
| support). Laptop cameras should work fine though.
| tdubhro1 wrote:
| I'd be very interested if you could add some info
| regarding what software you used to do this.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| Trouble is you are privileged enough to be able to afford
| two phones. For many families, even a $300 device is a
| significant expense. So if your approach was the only
| approach, only the rich would have privacy.
| CincinnatiMan wrote:
| Why the use of the word "privilege"? We don't know what
| balance of OP's wealth is earned vs unearned (privilege).
| cmpb wrote:
| It could also be that he had the "privilege" to earn it
| (as not everyone has that privilege).
| SkyBelow wrote:
| Seems a bit reductionist of the concept of privilege
| because everything becomes privilege as there is someone
| who has experienced worse with few options. For an
| extreme example, dying with cancer becomes a privilege
| compared to someone who loses their life immediately in
| an accident. Only one of those two has a chance to say
| goodbye as well as prepare their friends and family.
| magnusmundus wrote:
| Exactly. Privilege can indeed be earned through hard work
| (without implying that's the only way to gain/earn it),
| and one is free to use privilege in life. It's still
| privilege, and the troublesome part is when that goes
| unacknowledged.
| skinkestek wrote:
| Or it could be they just worked really hard or
| prioritised or what do I know.
|
| But I agree privilege is vastly overused.
| 72deluxe wrote:
| We also don't know how much the phone was. It could have
| been a very cheap device. My main phone was PS200 and the
| previous one was PS120.
|
| Looking on Amazon.com, a Huawei P Smart 2019 (32GB, 3GB)
| 6.21" FHD+ Display, Dual Camera, 3400 mAh Battery, 4G LTE
| GSM Dual SIM is $209.99.
|
| I think some have assumed that he went out and bought an
| iPhone 12 Pro Max as a second phone, and we don't know
| that.
| 72deluxe wrote:
| Thankfully his approach is not the only approach - just
| don't use WhatsApp! I never have despite the pleadings of
| my friends to use it.
|
| If they can't be bothered to email or send an SMS to me
| or use Signal or video call via the multitude of
| alternative messaging services (Duo, FaceTime, Skype,
| Signal etc. etc.) I don't think they're that bothered
| about being my friend are they?
|
| If their friendship hinges on me using a specific mobile
| app, that's a shallow friendship.
| ufmace wrote:
| There's a "social capital" thing going on here. Your
| friends are usually willing to make some amount of effort
| to talk and hang out with you, depending on how close
| friends you are, but there are limits to that. Nobody
| wants to get together with someone who insists on doing
| everything their way every time. Most people don't care
| to spend what social capital they have getting their
| friends to use a different messaging app. You're only
| burning even more social capital if you try to lecture
| them about things they don't care about, such as Facebook
| having their personal information.
|
| Particularly, this social capital is at its minimum when
| you're trying to develop new friendships. Good luck
| starting any when you refuse to use the app that everyone
| else in the area uses to communicate.
| 72deluxe wrote:
| That just sounds like "everyone else is smoking, so I
| should start smoking too". Just because everyone else is
| doing it does not mean it is the right thing for you to
| do.
|
| In this instance, if developing friendships relies on me
| sending my data to some unknown person the other side of
| the world so that they can build graphs on my activity
| and follow me around just because everyone else has
| decided that's what they want to do, then I would choose
| another path.
|
| Wouldn't you? If not, please send me all your data and
| details of your activities, all the time. If you can
| trust that data to some guy you've never met in a
| datacenter, then why not send it to me. You've got my
| username - that's more than you'll ever know about the
| people looking at your data at Facebook.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| > "everyone else is smoking, so I should start smoking
| too"
|
| No, what they said is equivalent to "everybody is smoking
| but I'll annoy the hell out of them so they stop, and
| I'll refuse to meet them in person before they quit"
| ufmace wrote:
| It's an individual-level realpolitik. You (the general
| you) are welcome to take such a stand if you care to, but
| the price is that your social opportunities may be
| severely constrained. There might be other things about
| you or your life that also constrain your social
| opportunities, things more important than who has your
| data, and if that's the case, then taking such a stand
| may leave you rather seriously isolated.
|
| I would not "choose another path" because those things
| are more important to me. To be blunt, I'm not sending
| such data to any individual HN reader because that would
| have no relation at all to my practical ability to
| maintain friendships with people in real life.
| ColinWright wrote:
| You may have missed the point that in Europe, many _many_
| things are organised via WhatsApp. Kids football clubs,
| dance clubs, parents ' evenings, school closures, social
| club outings, ... _lots_ of things.
|
| Other people are saying that in their countries, Health
| Services and bank transactions are coordinated via
| WhatsApp.
|
| It's not just about messaging your friends, and for many
| people, "opting out" of WhatsApp is not a viable path.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25669702
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25669600
|
| [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25671117
|
| [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25671855
| 72deluxe wrote:
| I live in the UK. I understand that people arrange items
| via WhatsApp but it seems baffling to me. Why not just
| use email to notify people??
|
| When you sign up to any service, they ask for an email
| address. They don't ask for a mobile number necessarily,
| and there is never a "my mobile number is on WhatsApp"
| checkbox. Why is the assumption of the organiser that
| you're on WhatsApp your concern? They have assumed you're
| on a certain platform, and it's their mistake.
|
| It reminds me of the tidal wave of people suddenly
| abandoning their own websites and instead using "Find Us
| On Facebook". They might as well put "Use this keyword on
| AOL".
|
| Facebook is not the internet, and WhatsApp is not the
| only communication method.
| ColinWright wrote:
| Perhaps it's baffling, and perhaps I agree, but one
| cannot deny the reality. They don't use email, they do
| use WhatsApp, and not using WhatsApp is effectively
| impossible for people in that situation.
| 72deluxe wrote:
| Then the reality is insanity!
|
| My mind is blown.
| drago-1 wrote:
| >What if I would use a second phone, a cheap one, used
| only for the whatsapp (and some other essential but
| privacy invasive apps). I would not have that second
| phone always with me, but it would provide me access to
| the social network I need without feeling tracked or
| providing more data than needed.
|
| This is what I'm doing currently: an old phone used
| exclusively for whatsapp (with an empty contact list); it
| always stays at home. I only use it to coordinate kid's
| stuff (school, social activities, etc), so there is no
| problem with me not having it with me the whole time.
| orestarod wrote:
| You can limit what an app can gather anyway, if you wish.
| If you would go to such extremes to have a second device
| just for WhatsApp, there are ways to hide things from it
| on your one main device, too. I go for microg in order to
| cut Google's surveillance, and usually allow no
| permissions on untrusted apps, so all they can get is the
| IP. You can mitigate that too when needed, though
| probably with more effort than is practical (accessing
| the internet is something that can also be restricted
| from default Android permissions).
| niutech wrote:
| I have a second dirt-cheap used phone with a disposable
| SIM card just for WA. But you could make a
| WA<->Matrix<->Signal bridge (https://matrix.org/bridges/)
| using a temporary phone no.
| igravious wrote:
| When I switched from Windows to Linux, sure there were some
| inconveniences but with enough technical knowledge and a
| bit of inconvenience I was able to get by.
|
| But social media? What do I switch to?
|
| > This is precisely the dilemma in a nutshell.
|
| Exactly my problem too (car mechanic, plumber, school
| parent committee, loads of my friends ...) - I need my car
| fixed, I need my plumbing fixed, I need to communicate with
| other parents. I hate that I have no choice but to use a
| Facebook product when I am not even on Facebook!
| saos wrote:
| Wow I had a similar experience at university. I only joined
| Facebook because my course had a Facebook group where we all
| communicated. Now this same hook exists in WhatsApp. It's
| pretty crazy
| hkt wrote:
| I tried to run a branch of a charity without WhatsApp and
| Facebook for two years and it was impossible. I had to give
| in and sign up.
|
| So, these things should be regulated and operated like
| utilities. Phone companies don't have the right to mine my
| contact list, and neither should Facebook.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| If you think privacy is important, you have to do something
| about it.
|
| It's a lesson in civics. To do nothing and say nothing while
| expecting someone else to fight the good fight is poor
| citizenship, but it is very good consumerism.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...
| helmholtz wrote:
| I'm in Europe, and I'm doing it to the best extent that I can:
| no permissions allowed to whatsapp, no profile picture, no read
| receipts, no notifications, sending a standard message to all
| personal groups that 'lads, I'm moving to signal, ciao'.
|
| Beyond that, I will not entertain personal messages on
| whatsapp, only work related. Each new person will be greeted
| with "Do you mind awfully if we use Signal?" Does this come off
| as self-important? Sure. But it helps that I don't care too
| much if it does. I had the same attitude quitting FB and
| Twitter too, I just don't need people that much. I don't have a
| 100 friends anyway. I have like 15 that I really want to keep
| in touch with. Those 15 will understand.
| antpls wrote:
| That's not true, I live in West Europe and I never used
| Whatsapp in my life. There are always alternatives to get
| informed here.
| gizzlon wrote:
| Not possible? I think you mean that it's painful.
|
| And it is, and I sympathize, but you and your family will not
| die or starve. It's possible.
|
| I'm fed up an will remove fb and wa from my phone, at least. It
| will be painful
| agd wrote:
| > but the inertia is so great it's not possible.
|
| It is possible, but difficult. You may lose access to some
| groups, but you can't have everything you want without some
| sacrifice.
|
| Personally, I'm leaving WhatsApp. Yes, my family and friends
| will be a bit annoyed about the hassle of contacting me
| separately, but so be it.
| 72deluxe wrote:
| What hassle would that be? They could send you SMS or call
| you.
|
| Would they really find that too difficult? The mind boggles.
| edgarvaldes wrote:
| 1 on 1 can be done. But group communication? They will
| leave you out and it will be your burden to get the info
| using another channels.
| 72deluxe wrote:
| That seems quite the choice to make: learn about group
| chats or send all your data to Facebook.
|
| It seems quite one-sided.
| kubanczyk wrote:
| WhatsApp means groups. A lot of groups. Both long-living
| and ephemeral.
| a254613e wrote:
| That sort of behavior is very selfish, wouldn't you agree?
| You expect everyone to be annoyed and go through the hassle
| of contacting you, when you can't even keep one app installed
| to communicate with all of them.
|
| And in a lot of countries you wouldn't lose access to "some
| groups" but you would lose access to ALL of them, from
| social, to every other group.
| agd wrote:
| You could easily flip it around. Why should others expect
| me to sacrifice my privacy to socialise with them?
|
| For me, ditching WhatsApp is altruistic, helping make it
| easier for others to socialise without giving up their
| privacy and security.
| grumple wrote:
| You guys do have emails though, why isn't that used instead?
| ruairispain wrote:
| So many children using it. Wonder what the EU law is on data
| privacy and under age kids? Can under-18s legally sign this
| snooped data over to FB?
|
| Hope some lawyers can stop this in its tracks. Otherwise Signal
| or some other service will get our business
| Number157 wrote:
| Don't know about kids but I think there is some requirement
| that people can meaningfully say no. Seems this is a breach
| of such a requirement.
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-
| protection/refo...
| jwr wrote:
| Yes, usage by kids is a real problem. My child is one of only
| two in the class that doesn't use WhatsApp. All the others
| do. They have what they call a "class group", even though not
| everyone is there.
|
| When I try to tell parents how much Facebook learns about
| their kids (their friends, networks, and by merging data from
| different sources: habits, school, frequented locations,
| etc), they just roll their eyes. The response is "well
| everybody is tracking us, who cares".
|
| All this even though there is Signal, which works JUST FINE.
| kar1181 wrote:
| Children luckily are much more flexible and chop and change
| with the wind. It's the older folks once something is
| established it ends up becoming bedrock and super hard to
| change. Parents/Adults are busy if something 'works', there's
| a lot of resistance to changing it.
| MattJ100 wrote:
| Last I checked WhatsApp minimum age was 16 (in the EU at
| least) to comply with the regulations.
|
| Obviously that doesn't stop (many, many...) just using it
| anyway. But Facebook will happily turn a blind eye to this
| unless their hand is forced.
| distances wrote:
| Here all the kids use it as soon as they get a phone. If
| they can't write yet they'll send emojis (!!). The minimum
| age is just a meaningless smoke screen.
| MattJ100 wrote:
| Yes, though I feel like people are finally (slowly) waking up
| to the problems here. Both the US and the EU are finally
| looking deeply into Facebook and other big tech.
|
| I don't think politicians are going to solve the problem for us
| entirely, but a bunch of us have been working on technical
| solutions for decades and they aren't the entire answer either.
|
| A little regulation combined with the right alternatives may go
| some way. I'm optimistic, though we have a very long road
| ahead.
| comeonseriously wrote:
| Assign everyone an IP V6, there's plenty. Then treat that as
| our internet phone number. Define a chat protocol that contains
| the very basics and everyone has to support that. Want to send
| a chat, you have their IP V6. Exchange using QR code. No server
| necessary for the basics. If a text fails sending device can
| keep trying or just give up.
|
| This takes chat away from any single service.
| MayeulC wrote:
| Unfortunately, IPv6 addresses have to be assigned by someone,
| and they typically change when moving around/changing
| provider. And you have to go trough the firewall...
|
| I prefer something you can generate yourself, like encryption
| keys. That's the approach taken by yggdrasil (and cjdns
| before): generate an encryption key, map the public part to
| an IP address (there's almost enough bits in v6). Plus, it
| can easily be end-to-end encrypted.
|
| Another plus is that you can generate as many as desired.
|
| As for the protocol, Matrix is experimenting a bit with going
| p2p.
|
| https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/
| the_french wrote:
| This approach ignores all the aspects that made whatsapp /
| chat services popular in the first place. A short list:
| - Contact Discovery - Group chats - History / Log
| - Shared message order - Communication beyond text
| (emojis / reactions / inline images) - Ability to
| receive messages while offline - No need for technical
| skills
|
| These aren't trivial features, they are prerequisites for any
| replacement, decentralized or otherwise. Just because we as
| developers like / tolerate things like IRC doesn't mean the
| rest of the world will accept it.
| ozborn wrote:
| Everything you list could be supported at the client level
| with a decentralized IP6 level protocol without a need for
| a centralized server middleman.
| baliex wrote:
| "Be the change you want to see in the world" -- I'm gonna have
| a go at switching as many people away as possible; friends,
| family, co-workers. It's all about critical mass so every step
| in that direction is a step toward your school and local
| community communications being on some alternative platform
| instead.
| HeavyStorm wrote:
| It's hard for most of to world remember that there isn't just
| US, UK and Europe in this globe...
| mslack616 wrote:
| Not only Europe and UK, LATAM is also pretty much governed by
| WA. I remember one time I had a visit of some folks from
| Canada, they were very surprised that we used it as our main
| chat/communication app. When I asked why, they said "we don't
| hear from it (referring to WA) that much, we all just use
| iMessage" I guess in their context/community most people own
| iPhones.
| niutech wrote:
| Why not make a local WhatsApp<->Signal bridge using Matrix
| (https://matrix.org/bridges/) and a disposable SIM card, and
| just use Signal app on your phone?
| pier25 wrote:
| Same in Mexico and (AFAIK) most LATAM countries.
|
| If I need anything to be delivered to the house I need to use
| Whatsapp (gas, water, food, etc).
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| >how much of a monopoly WhatsApp has in Europe and the UK
|
| Everything you said applies to the Indian subcontinent, SE Asia
| and South America which form the bulk of the WhatsApp user base
| as well but with lesser or no scrutiny whatsoever when compared
| to EU/UK.
| TheRealSteel wrote:
| Yep, in Australia I had basically never used WhatsApp. It's
| barely a thing. (However, Facebook Messenger dominates there,
| so it's not as if the privacy situation is any better, Facebook
| Messenger is just a better app/website to use).
|
| Here in the UK I am literally _required_ to be on WhatsApp to
| live in the building I currently live in. I have no choice in
| this matter. It 's just the default messaging service for
| everyone.
|
| If you join any kind of club? WhatsApp group. If you want to
| talk to someone about renting a room or apartment? WhatsApp
| chat. Live with housemates? WhatsApp group.
|
| Plus the whole fact that if I deleted facebook, I would cut off
| contact with my friends and family (I can't expect like 25
| people all to switch messaging services just for me). I would
| lose access to my thousand-dollar Oculus VR headset (I hate
| them so much for buying and linking facebook and Oculus, and
| hope a better competing standalone headset comes out).
|
| And don't forget, you can't use an Oculus Quest with a blank
| facebook account you made just for that - they actually check
| that you're really using the account and force you to verify
| with photos and ID.
|
| They are the absolute epitome of evil. Facebook, in many ways,
| but particularly in regard to Oculus, is a moustache-
| twirlingly, cartoonishly evil organization.
|
| Could I just never buy an Oculus? Hopefully one day. But when
| not just your hobbies, but also your study and skillset and
| career prospects are right in that industry, you swallow your
| pride and make a damn facebook account.
|
| I was also required to be in facebook groups for university
| classes back when I was a student. I HAD to be on facebook to
| get a degree. And for an amateur theatre group I joined.
|
| Not to mention everything going on with misinformation about
| elections, vaccines, etcetera etcetera.
|
| Some of this stuff is now moving to Discord, which is probably
| _better_ than anything owned by facebook, but being better than
| facebook is a damn low bar, and Discord is still ultimately a
| for-profit corporation that would sell your soul if it made
| them a dollar.
|
| This "just stop using it" attitude you always get on Hacker
| News and reddit about facebook and their various messaging
| platforms baffles me. Do you people not have lives? Jobs?
| Friends? Family? If you (in or out of a pandemic lockdown) want
| to do just about anything outside your house, or a whole bunch
| of things inside it, you need to use Facebook services.
|
| It sucks and I've love to stop supporting them but it's not
| like most of us have a realistic choice.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| > This "just stop using it" attitude you always get on Hacker
| News and reddit about facebook and their various messaging
| platforms baffles me.
|
| Unfortunately, seems that for many people on HN, HN is almost
| all their online social interaction, + tech people on
| signal/mastodon. Some don't seem to understand the concept of
| having family and friends who are not tech-savy (or even hate
| tech). Or understand the concept of social capital.
| TheRealSteel wrote:
| Yeah. It's not that I don't believe those people, it's just
| that I don't think they should act like it's a real option
| for everybody.
| chalst wrote:
| While WA is near ubiquitous in Germany, from my own experience
| many non-technical people in the UK prefer Telegram to WA. WA
| is the only way I can reach some of my contacts in Germany, but
| with my UK contacts I can avoid it altogether.
| dusted wrote:
| I disagree, they're NOT public utilities, they're private
| companies that people chose to use (why is beyond me).
|
| What could be considered instead, is building public utilities
| as a community.
| corty wrote:
| Almost all public utilities have started as private companies
| of some kind. Broadcast, telecom and railway companies are
| the most recent examples. They started as private companies
| but then, due to limited spectrum, unification pressure,
| needing to include everyone including remote places and
| wasteful duplication got transformed into publically owned or
| at least publically licensed and regulated utilities
| (depending on which utility and country you are looking at).
|
| So, while they are not yet public utilities, they should be
| turned into such.
| herbst wrote:
| I am in europe, switzerland and plenty of friends in austria.
| Yes many of my social circle have whatsapp but none is using it
| exclusively as it was some years ago.
|
| People have the choice and use it. Not sure what is holding
| other circles back?
|
| I havent had whatsapp in 4+ years and only rarely have to fall
| back to SMS
| dtech wrote:
| What is the alternative are your social circles using? SMS is
| the only alternative with a wide install base and the
| experience is inferior to WA,Telegram etc.
| herbst wrote:
| Telegram, Signal, Discord, some via Email depends on the
| people. Everyone has a second or third messaging app
| Tepix wrote:
| Do you have kids? What do they use?
| herbst wrote:
| I dont. Guess they would communicate by dancing on tiktok
| judging from my knowlege about teens these days :)
| pjmlp wrote:
| Also in Africa, most business live out from WhatsApp.
|
| You will find WhatsApp contacts for any kind of communication,
| ordering a taxi, food, whatever.
|
| Move out of WhatsApp, and it is going to be quite boring out in
| the Savannah.
| timvisee wrote:
| Ditched it about 2 years ago. And man, it's so hard! Literally
| everybody uses it here in the Netherlands as well.
|
| I'm getting strange looks every day when people hear I don't
| use the platform. It's horrendous.
|
| I also really fear for the moment where I've to tell a nice
| girl I met that I don't use the platform, and that we should
| use X other platform instead. I can imagine that to be a
| letdown or to be weird. That's insane to me.
| 72deluxe wrote:
| I got used to the strange looks. I got the strange looks when
| people heard I didn't use Facebook. If you asked them to sign
| up to a website on the Internet that was popular in your
| circles just so you could be friends, they'd refuse, eg.
| "please sign up to basschat.co.uk because all my friends like
| bass guitars".
|
| If their friendship relies on you installing an app on your
| phone, that's a very shallow friendship isn't it?
| dd_roger wrote:
| > If their friendship relies on you installing an app on
| your phone, that's a very shallow friendship isn't it?
|
| This argument doesn't make sense. You can't just ignore
| practical aspects entirely and justify it with a cheeky "if
| they're truely your friends they'll accomodate ahah".
|
| Sure if I want to send a private message to a friend I
| don't care whether its via SMS or whatsapp, but if I'm in a
| group chat with 5 of my friends I won't send a transcript
| of the conversation to the one person who doesn't
| participate.
| 72deluxe wrote:
| Why not inform your friend of the outcome? Half of the
| group chats seem to be utter nonsense until a final
| outcome is made, particularly with arranging something.
|
| Or would you not want your friend to attend?
|
| The choice is: do I want my friend to be included in my
| activities?
|
| The choice is not: do I want my friend to be included and
| also send all of his data to some people I've never met?
| rimiform wrote:
| As someone who lives in the Netherlands, I feel your pain. I
| don't think I can get my contacts to really switch to
| something else, and even if I could, new ones would use
| WhatsApp anyway.
|
| I think your fear depends strongly on how open-minded/techie
| the girl is, though: I've used Signal to communicate with all
| of my Tinder contacts, but I will admit people remark on how
| it feels like a 'drug deal'.
| john_minsk wrote:
| Just use something else....
| sebow wrote:
| Be the change you want to see. I mean sure it requires to be a
| little charismatic and usually to be an inspirational figure,
| but i quit facebook & messenger in 2015 and since then a lot of
| my friends(whom i never talked on the matter) made the switch.
| Simple explanations like: "it's made to be a drug" and some of
| the negatives (like privacy here) switch more people than you
| think.
|
| And i totally disagree on making these corporations utilities:
| you're just giving them access to more possible critical
| infrastructure they can datamine, which is what it's being done
| on billions of people through these 'apps'.
| kolla wrote:
| I hardly know anyone who uses Whatsapp, people mostly use
| messenger in swe, nor, fin, den.
| ksec wrote:
| Blame Carrier. Modern SMS could have been great, but Carrier
| didn't want to lose the however minimal revenue they had with
| SMS. ( Not every countries has unlimited SMS across all Network
| and across the world )
|
| Or Blame MSN, the Instant Messenger, when Microsoft refuse to
| admit defeat to the Smartphone platform.
|
| So WhatsApp took over in EU ( I believe iMessages or SMS is
| still popular in France ), UK, SEA, Brazil, Hong Kong. Line in
| Japan and Taiwan, KakaoTalk in South Korea. Unsure about
| Australia and Canada. ( They use WhatsApp but not to the extent
| of countries listed above. )
|
| And it is iMessages in US. I have no idea why that thing even
| took off. I have tried it dozen times over the years and every
| few months it has problem with message delivery, people in
| group not receiving any messages. Poor Searching capabilities
| etc....
|
| Telegram has gain usage but for different kind of reason. And I
| dont see it ever being used in the same manner as WhatsApp.
|
| So most of friends just clicked yes and share their Data. It is
| important to note despite the increasing hostility against FB
| on HN, and in Tech Circle, most people in the world seems to
| have no problem with it. I dont see WhatsApp going away any
| time soon.
|
| Edit: How does this data sharing fit in with GDPR in EU?
| mrweasel wrote:
| I think iMessage took off, because you don't realise it's not
| SMS. Open the Messages app, type a message, if there's an
| iDevice in the other end, BOOM, iMessage.
|
| Where iMessage fails is when the device in the other end
| isn't an Apple device, or perhaps the contact previously used
| an iPhone, then fallback to SMS is troublesome.
|
| Most of my familymembers will send an "SMS"... except it's
| via iMessage, but nobody knows or cares.
| 72deluxe wrote:
| I have this problem. I use an Android phone, but have a Mac
| and iPad. My mum has no idea how to send an SMS to me so
| will send me messages on iMessage that I don't see for
| weeks because I haven't used the iPad or Mac (been working
| on Windows for a while writing code).
|
| Infuriating.
| rutthenut wrote:
| Carriers now looking to RCS as the messenger alternative, but
| if they price it like MMS, they will kill it. To do it
| cheaper, they have to give a large chunk of the service to
| Google, which gives Google the data mining opportunities :(
| mrweasel wrote:
| MMS is free at this point, in many countries. The carriers
| in those countries will make more money by using RCS,
| because it will use cellular data (at least if I understand
| it correctly), which isn't free.
|
| My point being that I don't think many carriers care about
| text messaging, or phone calls. They sell you a fixed cost
| plan for those. The only thing that can really affect your
| price is data usage. If Google wants to deal with the
| hassle of managing a messaging platform, great, that's
| money save on running a service that isn't making money
| anyway.
| distances wrote:
| Is RCS using Google infrastructure? I thought it stands
| for Rich Communication Services, the SIP/IMS based telco
| system?
| nosedrip wrote:
| GDPR still holds. The data can only be used in an aggregated
| from for advertising purposes within platform (facebook,
| insta, whatsapp) and not be sold to others. You have the
| right to have your data deleted upon request.
| stiray wrote:
| > How does this data sharing fit in with GDPR in EU?
|
| It actually doesn't fit at all. As long as "payment" for
| usage is based on agreement to share personal data it is
| illegally obtained consent. Either they are ignoring their
| lawyers or they should fire them.
|
| EDPS Opinion 4/2017 on the Proposal for a Directive on
| certain aspects concerning contracts for the supply of
| digital content, 14 March 2017, p. 7.
|
| "There might well be a market for personal data, just like
| there is, tragically, a market for live human organs, but
| that does not mean that we can or should give the market the
| blessing of legislation. One cannot monetize and subject a
| fundamental right to a simple commercial transaction, even if
| it is the individual concerned by the data who is a party to
| the transaction."
|
| https://edps.europa.eu/sites/edp/files/publication/17-03-14_.
| ..
| pmlnr wrote:
| > I'd change to Signal or Telegram in a heartbeat, but the
| inertia is so great it's not possible.
|
| It has to start somewhere. It is possible, but it takes will,
| and the acceptance that you will lose some contacts.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| Most of my friends have migrated to Telegram now.
| fpoling wrote:
| In Norway WhatsUp is popular, but my dentist still use SMS and
| email, and so other businesses that I interact with. My son's
| school has own app for communicating with parents and teachers
| use Teams to present online lectures. My son uses Discord to
| talk to friends, but I think he is an exception.
|
| What is really problematic is Facebook monopoly for organizing
| any social activities or events. There are simply no
| alternatives especially among 30-50 years old. Like the saying,
| "What parents were afraid video game would do to children,
| Facebook did to parents."
| loycombinate wrote:
| Users in Hong Kong use WhatsApp to stay out of trouble with govt.
| Like accidentally talking about politics. If Facebook can read
| msg then govt can make them turn over the msg.
| cerved wrote:
| the data mentioned isn't messages but phone numbers, contacts,
| status messages, logs etc.
| loycombinate wrote:
| Having phone numbers and contacts of certain people can get
| you into trouble.
| seesawtron wrote:
| Do people still believe that Facebook doesn't collect data from
| the apps owned by them? Hell even the apps that is Facebook SDK
| send user data to Facebook even when you don't use facebook owned
| apps:
|
| https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9941-how_facebook_tracks_you_on_...
| blackcats wrote:
| They know the Facebook Mafia does, but non of their network is
| moving to alternatives
| croes wrote:
| They don't care
| sdfjkl wrote:
| How to get your friends and family to use Signal instead: "I'm on
| Signal if you want to talk to me."
| hliyan wrote:
| Perhaps messaging should once again be built into the
| telecommunication infrastructure (like SMS) and billed along with
| voice and data.
| craftydevil wrote:
| As a part of Boycott , lot of us moved towards privacy centric
| ZOHO app Arattai.
| johnwayne666 wrote:
| Can an iOS dev tell me what data Facebook can gather if I install
| WhatsApp on my iPhone but disable every permission except the
| notifications and mobile data access?
|
| People I talk to and my IP address but what else?
| satellite2 wrote:
| Couldn't the EU force them to standardize the protocol and to
| interoperate with other client/servers?
|
| With WhatsApp becoming the new defacto sms / mms it would make
| sense.
|
| Could they even reuse pieces of the legislation that made it
| happen for usb chargers?
| croes wrote:
| You mean the signal protocol.
| upofadown wrote:
| The protocol isn't really the root issue with
| interoperability. It's identity. As a start you should be
| able to easily use your verified identities across the
| different systems.
|
| Signal would probably be a poor base for an interoperability
| standard. Which flavour would you use? Signal Messenger,
| Matrix, OMEMO and allegedly WhatsApp all use the Signal
| protocol but can not interoperate at all.
|
| Signal Protocol is also more complex than it needs to be. It
| has two levels of forward secrecy for example. It is
| basically all the crypto geekery of the last few decades
| packed into a instant messaging protocol. Something intended
| as an interconnection standard should be as simple as
| possible.
| croes wrote:
| Simple as possible? Than use email. The security of the
| signal protocol is necessary if you look who all wants to
| read the data. The EU wants to practically abolish
| encryption so that intelligence services and authorities
| can read all messages.
| upofadown wrote:
| In general, more complicated cryptography is less secure
| than simple cryptography. More stuff to attack.
| croes wrote:
| If you meant the cryptography in your previous post , you
| are right. I thought you were talking about the protocol
| in general.
| csunbird wrote:
| Can we unleash the EU anti-trust regulators on them for monopoly
| abuse?
| kashyapc wrote:
| Not unexpected at all. After all, it is gratis; WhatsApp will
| _jolly_ well do as they please--until regulators unleash the
| whirlwind.
|
| On a related note, as a regular Signal user (and I've had a
| modicum of success converting some friends to it), I worry how
| they intend to stay afloat with "grants and donations" for the
| next 95 years.
| ivanstame wrote:
| I will stop using the fucking app. It is time to change tech
| industry and to actually charge for a product other then to sell
| the users. Let's stop this!
| cybert00th wrote:
| Oh excellent!
|
| I'd been putting off moving all our family WhatsApp groups to
| Telegram.
|
| Now I can actually justify the time it will take.
| mro_name wrote:
| I've never done either and feel great.
|
| Who can't?
| sneak wrote:
| Wasn't that Facebook's main promise when they purchased WhatsApp?
|
| Forget whether or not they can, legally; if I recall correctly
| they explicitly promised not to.
|
| People who work for those without integrity are baffling to me.
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| Accept it and then disable its access to contacts to see how it
| goes. May have to go to signal.
| julianmarq wrote:
| It's very interesting how upon news like this, everyone rightly
| jumps at the throat of the evil corporation pushing for more
| control of everyone's information. But when the discussion is
| about free speech--which this stuff is directly related to, just
| in a subtle way--then suddenly at least half the comments are
| clamoring in defense of the large corporations' right (to censor)
| to host whatever they want in their platforms.
|
| All because "the users don't know better, so it's good to filter
| the information they get access to" or because "information
| overload is somehow more likely to push people to the extremes
| than siloing and letting people live in filter bubbles" and other
| similarly paternalistic justifications. It's interesting how
| facebook trying to get the information is bad, but _using_ that
| information, among other things, to filter what its users see or
| not is apparently good.
| banach wrote:
| Thanks, Facebook, for the reminder to speed up transition to
| Signal for the rest of my social circles.
| beertoagunfight wrote:
| Fuck Facebook, I'm out.
| JadoJodo wrote:
| I was a loyal (and paying) WhatsApp user who would advocate it to
| anyone I could find. The combination of privacy, features, and
| ideology was exactly what I wanted in a communication app. Then
| Facebook bought them for $19B and I knew that, despite any
| allusions to the contrary, they would want that money back. And
| you don't get it $5/yr/user.
|
| I switched to Telegram and never looked back.
| cabamba wrote:
| Either you pay to a service or the service trades you as an
| asset. Telegram is no exception. You are fooling yourself
| thinking that you escaped the trap.
| OJFord wrote:
| > [The spokeswoman] said there will be no change in how WhatsApp
| shares provides data with Facebook for non-business chats and
| account data.
|
| That sounds a lot less alarming, in the third to last paragraph,
| than the headline or first few paragraphs?
|
| Don't get me wrong, I ditched Facebook years ago, and wouldn't
| use WhatsApp but for family and a pre-Corona club I wouldn't have
| (much at all) contact with otherwise. That quote just makes me
| much less annoyed than my initial reaction was. Which is of
| course her job, but assuming it's true...
| dheera wrote:
| WeChat banned me for an hour for violating the ToS, and it
| wasn't clear what I violated.
|
| I use LineageOS for privacy reasons, and intercept various
| things I consider to be privacy violations.
|
| I very much disagree with these ways of operating, for systems
| that monopolize human-to-human communication. We live in a
| bunch of walled garden communication apps, people don't use any
| open systems like e-mail and phone anymore, and those walled
| garden apps bully us into giving them data? They are all
| starting to behave the same way.
| ev1 wrote:
| You're using quite literally a spy app that does continuous
| root and tampering/safetynet/etc checking.
| croes wrote:
| Could simply mean they are already sharing all data with
| Facebook.
| sedatk wrote:
| Yep, it's old news.
| https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/25/whatsapp-to-share-user-
| dat...
| amatecha wrote:
| Don't worry, already stopped using the app years ago when FB
| acquired them.
| 98hio wrote:
| Seems like a GDPR violation. I think collection of user data has
| to be voluntary in a meaningful way.
| andred14 wrote:
| No problem see ya!
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