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WhatsApp seems set on introducing ads, but they won't appear in your inbox
(www.androidpolice.com)
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this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2023
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Use Signal instead and donate what you can per month! I'd much rather support them than Meta
There's one slight issue with Signal and it's that none of my contacts is using it and I'm not going to be the guy telling them to install it just so that they can talk to me.
In the EU by next year app communication protocols need to be compatible by law, it is mainly said that it would mean that whatsapp could communicate with telegram but I suppose it also should work with signal.
Should work pretty well even, since they use the same encryption protocol.
Won't happen though. Signal is very much against interoperability, and they're not big enough to be considered a gatekeeper that will be forced by law.
Fun fact I learned not long ago:
Even iMessage technically wouldn't count as a gatekeeper, since it is in fact below the usercount threshold the EU defined.
Signal is not required to be interoperable and the CEO also stated that they won't.
That's... Well, I guess I have zero incentive to try Signal then.
As Signal is open source, I guess someone could just fork it. It's not like anybody is really using it en masse as it is, and the kind of people who use it at the moment are also exactly the kind of people who would be happy to migrate to another service if they had a reason to.
Literally everyone in the UK uses WhatsApp, including 100% of my own extensive contacts. If I could download an open source rival app and still have full interoperability with WhatsApp users, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I've got Signal installed on my phone, but it's basically pristine and unused due to the lack of people to talk to. What's another app for the pile?
Not gonna lie I did this with all of my friends and family and most of them switched 🤣 But I completely get not wanting to go there!
You should. If they'll literally stop talking to you over an app choice how good of friends are they?
Aren't you doing the same thing to them in this case?
The only thing stopping me would be that literally no one on my contact list wants to do that... including work. I'm sure that's the same for most people.
Yeah great, then I can talk to literally nobody because I've never met a single person in my life who has signal, and now it doesn't even do texts anymore! Hooray!
SMS was considered a safety issue amd discontinued.
And if nobody in your friends group start talking about, nobody will get to know it.
I know it was, that's when I stopped using signal. And I'm not going to waste my time trying to convince a bunch of people to sign up for yet another app to chat in, they're not interested and don't care because WhatsApp exists.
I was in your place once.
At some point I just decided I couldn't be bothered with installing junk software that rendered my low spec cellphones unusable in a very short time.
If anyone wanted to reach me they could send me an sms, email me or spend the time to properly call.
Worked like a charm to thin the herd.
I'll remember that next time I decide I have too many friends. My low spec phone works just fine with one extra app on it.
Just today I found out that usernames are available for public testing.
I'm using it. Thinking of bringing peoples from lemmy to signal.
Signal is this weird middle ground. I would prefer it if the person already has it. But if I am to try convincing someone to at least try another messaging solution, I would rather lead them to XMPP.
Also having to use either signal-cli or Waydroid is VERY annoying, because they arbitrarily decided to screw desktop over.
Legitimate question: would Signal or Matrix be the most desirable place to end up in a hypothetical post-WhatsApp Hegemony world? Or XMPP for that matter?
I've honestly never got my head around the difference in terms of the pros and cons of each.
I actually haven't heard of Matrix, it sounds like your knowledge on this topic surpasses my own!! I'm gonna research the things you mentioned though because I'm interested!