WhatsApp fights back as users flee to Signal and Telegram

https://www.ft.com/content/ee1b716d-4ed2-4b26-8da1-40c98db7b9b6

by ptype • 6 years ago

42 17 6 years ago

ft.com

jnord• 6 years ago

https://archive.is/VQIJP

ybbond• 6 years ago

you understand me...

ffpip• 6 years ago

Whatsapp ran full front page ads on major newspapers in India today. Damage control.

https://twitter.com/ndtvfeed/status/1349231715085127682/

nowherebeen2• 6 years ago

“WhatsApp respects and protects your privacy”

If you have to say it out loud like this, you probably aren’t.

ignoramous• 6 years ago

I wonder how many privacy policy changes Google got away with by discretely sending emails over the years and/or showing popups with overwhelming text that no one would bother reading and click Agree because they simply wanted to get something else done immediately (like read emails or use navigation).

In a way, the current hysteria is a lesson in the power of defaults [0]. If the default for an app/service was private and secure and later you make the "mistake" of clearly articulating that you're going to be less private... it is going to end up a PR disaster. But... if you confuse masses along the way with large privacy policies (or other such dark patterns), you may get away with it as has happened many times in the past (Windows 10 being a recent example).

That's the reason Facebook and others are opposed to Apple because Apple's stance on being private by default will hurt them: Any data hungry app / service is going to have a hard time if it needs to show notices in plain language asking permissions to harness PII [1].

In a nutshell, what we are seeing with WhatsApp is may be why Google will never default to private with Android. Whilst Google may throw the technological kitchen sink at the privacy problem; at its core, it remains a design problem: How much do you respect your user's Right to Privacy by choosing the right defaults from the get-go, how simple do you design your UX around it?

Despite Apple's own privacy issues, you can't fault them for seeing a pretty good first solution to all of this: A 3-line popup.

[0] https://stratechery.com/2021/new-defaults/

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25654504

protoman3000• 6 years ago

does not affect the privacy of your messages with friends or family in any way

Excuse me if I intentionally misunderstand this, but legal uses every trick in the playbook to get what they want. So, above says that the new policy will not affect how friends and family can't read my messages to other recepients but Facebook might?

meibo• 6 years ago

WhatsApp's design still makes this impossible without leaking backups to Facebook or using a Keyboard that leaks what you type, this goes for calls as well.

It's not exactly clear what they actually want to do in the future, I assume it will have to do with the "modern" features like Statuses or they'll have a Facebook account-based backup solution.

seebye• 6 years ago

The link leads to a paywall. Great.

invalidusernam3• 6 years ago

I've started the push to get my core friends group off WhatsApp. It has been our primary means of communication for years, so it will be sad to lose our historic data such as chat threads, groups, and images.

Does anyone have any suggestions or tips on how to migrate data across to another platform? I'm sure most will not be possible, but I would like to at least migrate our images, ideally not manually.

rusticpenn• 6 years ago

I read about a signal fork that helps in migration of backup data for android. ( its a fork of Signal, however, when you delete the fork and install signal, the data is still there.)

nowherebeen2• 6 years ago

I think the hardest thing is getting family members off WhatsApp into Signal. Especially older ones who generally don’t understand technology and don’t like change.

llimos• 6 years ago

For this reason I chose to send them to Telegram instead of Signal.

It's true that Signal's privacy is better. But if you trusted WhatsApp up until now, and you use Gmail, you are no worse off with Telegram. And it's far more usable, I don't fancy having to explain to family members why they lost all their Signal chat history and can't get it back.

rakoo• 6 years ago

Is it important that images and videos are present in your new chat applications ?

On Android Whatsapp images are part of "All Images" (don't really know how to call it) and these are synced with your Google Photos account, but you are free to sync them with any other means (they're just files after all). I guess it's time to self-host this content so as to not have to do this dance again when the next platform fails you, again

bagacrap• 6 years ago

how often do you actually go back through the history? Apply the Kondo technique: thank the messages for their service, and let go.

Not totally being flippant; I understand the sentiment but it seems similar to the hoarder instinct.

pelagicAustral• 6 years ago

I made this push yesterday, I installed Telegram. Cant complain, its quite a refreshing experience really.

theonlybutlet• 6 years ago

https://github.com/jukefoxer/Signal-Android/tree/feature/wa-...

coffeekitkat• 6 years ago

What a great paywall

WhatsApp fights back as users flee to Signal and Telegram

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