In Jan, there was a big outcry, i thought all would move to signal.
I have about 25% of the conversations in signal, but especially for groups, whatsapp is so sticky, that they seem to have broadly failed in signal, and are back to whatsapp.
I continue to have individual conversations on signal with most friends, but the idea of being able to leave whatsapp seems to be much tougher than I thought.
The way I see it, you can choose to be part of the problem or not. And with a product that gets stronger the more people use it, then using it is part of the problem. You can’t complain about how So-And-So company’s products are bad, but then say “but I can’t bear to stop using em!”
I cut all of FB and their ecosystem out of my life years ago. Can’t say this one person out of billions has had an effect on the company but at least I can honestly say I’m not even a tiny part of the problem.
I don't proselytize to normal people anymore because most just aren't receptive to the message. It's like an addiction. Even when they agree with me, everyone has their little excuses as to why they can't possibly quit. And at the end of the day your one-one-billionth share of the problem amounts to peanuts, anyway.
well, it requires sacrifice on your part to stop messaging your friends. Most people would not give up their friends for "the greater good" of stopping privacy intrusion (which won't have an effect until the majority of people give up whatsapp first).
I can see why most people won't fight the good fight.
My life is rich in social engagements and I don't need Facebook to do it. And now that I'm off Facebook, the friendships I do have have grown immeasurably in closeness. My overall stress has plummeted.
I strongly believe that platforms like Facebook and Twitter are extremely harmful to social cohesion and mental health.
i don't care what or how your life is - this discussion is about the general case. Not everyone has a rich social life, and these messaging apps/services do help people engage with others which would otherwise have not.
And to change can be disruptive - casually dismissing these concerns is not the way to solve the problem connected with these platforms.
I'm not dismissing these concerns. The social harms of these platforms far outweigh whatever gains are wrung from them. They are a net negative to society and to public discourse, full stop. The longer we defend the legitimate reasons people have to stay netizens of these platforms, the darker their shadow weighs over our consciousness.
My country has a former prime minister on Facebook's oversight board because everyone here uses Facebook. That's not in anyone's interest but Facebook's because now it's convinced us that it can be brought to heel, as if it was Facebook, the company, that was the problem.
That's a treacherous misdiagnosis: the issue is the platform itself. It must be dismantled if society is going to heal from the psychic traumas unknowingly and knowingly caused by our participation.
I think your over-generalization in the first paragraph doesn’t work for most situations. This can apply to a small messaging app in which there are many alternatives, but you can surely participate in something while still pointing out its flaws. https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/
It works the other way around too though! Create Signal equivalents for your WhatsApp groups, add the subset of the WhatApp members that also have Signal, and then if you have something fun to share, do so in the Signal group. That way you're meeting people where they are, while simultaneously using an app you can get behind as well, leaving it to others (and their FOMO) to meet you where you are.
And Signal saw that movement, and decided instead of focusing all their development effort in making sure the user experience for all these new users was top notch and developing in the open, instead to push a cryptocoin that no one has heard of before but one which their principals likely have a stash of.
Given Signal's behavior, I am not going to waste any friendship capital trying to convince my friends to switch to Signal.
Not sure for you, but what makes WhatsApp the stickiest for me out of the chat apps is the statuses (stories). I start many of my conversations on WA by seeing someone's status (story). On Signal, Telegram, or even iMessage, there isn't that nudge to restart the conversation.
I think if those platforms made some story-like feature, I'd have an easier time leaving WhatsApp.
Fascinating! Maybe it depends on the region...I have many friends in East Africa and they seem to use it all the time. This has inspired me to look more closely at which friends actually post and which ones view the statuses. Thanks!
As I mentioned in a different comment, maybe it depends on the region, with many of my friends who post being from East Africa. Would you mind sharing in which part of the world are most of your WhatsApp contacts living?
>> the idea of being able to leave whatsapp seems to be much tougher than I thought.
Network lock-in is real. I think a lot of people who disconnect from fb also disregard the difficulty. Even if you don't like the barman, your local is wherever your buddies hang out.
It is difficult but not impossible. Everyone switched from Myspace to Facebook. Thing was the Facebook offered something different. But it did start small. The way you defeat network lock-in is by fighting against it hard. It definitely is not easy. I lost friends when I deleted my Facebook. But truth is, they weren't people I frequently talked to anyways so it is probably better to call them acquaintances. The thing is that I've contacted plenty of those people years after nothing and they are all happy to grab a beer. But we pretend that this isn't the case. We say "Yeah, I'd do that, but they wouldn't." Or something similar.
Though I'll admit, getting people to switch to Signal was a lot of work. People like Elon and Joe Rogan helped onboard a lot of the people that were holding out. One group chat has a member that is only there because everyone else bought in and he complains, but uses it (big WA user).
I don't think people calling for disconnecting are unaware of the difficulties. Ripping off a bandaid hurts, but the thought of ripping it off often is more painful than the actual experience.
I noticed something very similar. About 25% of one-on-one conversations are now in Signal. Another 25% are in iMessage, which is a very easy sell for iOS users.
I've had a terrible time with group chats. One large chat is occurring in iMessage (very poor experience). Another large chat is occurring in Discord, which has been fantastic, but it changes the dynamic and caused a few friends to ghost (the onboarding to Discord is harder for newcomers vs. iMessage, WhatsApp or Signal IMO).
When was this? There was a migration from groupv1 to groupv2 which could explain it. I've always found it stable personally (including during migration). At any rate, it should be better now that there are less changes.
Most of my groups went to Signal. But until they support live location (something I use frequently, albeit less during Corona), I won't uninstall Whatsapp. For all their privacy faults, it's still the app with probably one of the best UX (so easy it's the only app my grandma can use) all features I'd want for a chat app without annoying extras.
The Signal UX for groups is truly terrible. It looks like a rainbow puked in there. And heaven help you if you use their crappy desktop client. It doesn't sync with your mobile client unless you open the app on your phone, and then syncs everything slowly, which messes up your group chats if you happen to send another message in between.
When is the last time you used it? Because I have none of these issues. None. Especially since "It doesn't sync with your mobile client unless you open the app on your phone" is architecturally completely wrong. The desktop client doesn't communicate through your phone. That's how WhatsApp web works, but Signal Desktop doesn't.
For me it went from 30% FB, 60% Whatsapp, 10% Signal in January to 0% FB, 10% Whatsapp, 90% Signal today. I might get rid of the 10% after May. So it's possible. That said I'm only talking about maybe 15-20 contacts, so small sample size.
Yup. Just like how we couldn't communicate for 2 days when Signal's servers went down a few weeks before I made the switch.
The difference with me is that my server has a dozen users and I could rebuild the whole thing from backups on a brand new provider in a couple hours if I needed to. I doubt I'll need to, though. It's not exactly working hard. :D
I continue to have individual conversations on signal with most friends, but the idea of being able to leave whatsapp seems to be much tougher than I thought.