It’s because the vast, vast, VAST majority of people have no idea that many apps are just showing a website. Also, the app version is almost always more efficient in terms of precious phone screen real estate compared to a browser. Apps also remember who you are so you don’t have to login. It isn’t hard to understand why people like them.
That said, many apps are horrible from a privacy perspective. But that is largely hidden from the average user, most of whom simply don’t think much about online privacy anyway.
I hope the ubiquity of irritating ads are the thin edge of the wedge that gets more people interested in ad-blocking, and then perhaps online privacy more generally.
But please tell your contacts that you’re using bridges, if you haven’t already.
You are effectively giving away encryption keys to a third party, since those messages need to be decrypted and re-encrypted mid-transit.
Everyone who is part of the chats you use bridges with deserves to know about that fact, at least.
I don’t like WhatsApp, but some people simply refuse to use anything else (“better”) and the web clients can bridge the gap but it’s extremely annoying not being able to answer a call with a person you are texting
Easy, I don’t talk to such people. They can have my email or phone number if truly necessary. Yes, same for family or work, just not using Meta products for communication. Surprisingly enough people do understand.
OK provocation aside yes, you actually have to stand for what you believe in. For some people it means not going to a meat restaurants, for others, like me, it means not accepting a WhatsApp chat or a Google Drive share. You also do that but because it’s either so ingrained or socially accepted you do not even notice anymore. Your standards are definitely not mine but if neither of us do push back, then we as a society go backward IMHO (even knowing my standards are not yours, assuming at least some of us do think and act based on new knowledge rather than random beliefs). So… yes it means my circle of acquaintances is not the most inclusive but I do accept boundaries and if it means someone is toxic according to my perspective, they are out, simple.
PS: you actually have no idea what my social life is. You literally can not judge if it’s “richer” or “poorer” than anyone else.
forgive my ignorance, I also hated teams when I had to first use it, but now other than it being a microsoft and probably data hungry app, what’s bad about it?
It has indeed improved a lot over the last 2 years or so and is now actually quite a mature product, as much as I hate to admit that about an MS product. My biggest gripes with it are its refusal to acknowledge you may be using multiple devices (to this day) and MS’s insistence that a person only do one thing at one time (can’t edit calendar items while checking a chat, for example). Their Linux app is a joke and I’m better off running it from Chrome. The phone app makes the WiFi interface crash constantly and I have to run it off 4G; it is the only app I have this issue with.
Which brings me to another gripe. Teams documentation insists that screen sharing on Linux is not supported, and sure enough you cannot see the option for it while on a call with someone. However if you are in a meeting (with however many people), the option magically appears and works absolutely perfectly.
what do you mean by the multiple devices thing? also my experience has been mostly fine on the linux app, granted I’ve never been in a teams call, so it makes sense.
Apologies for the late reply, still getting a hang of this!
By multiple devices issues I meant the following. Sometimes for example, I am on a Teams call on my phone but want to use my laptop to view screensharing stuff and join the call there too (without hanging up the phone). Teams will insist that my audio switch over to the laptop too and I have to manually disable the audio on the laptop and re-enable it on the phone. It shocks me that such a mature offering from a massive corporation still cannot figure out that I may want a screenshare/audio split onto two devices and ask me at least. Another smaller nag, if I want audio only on the phone, it will constantly bug me to tell me the incoming video is switched off. I kind of understand this however, I get that they want to let the average user know why there is no incoming video, but surely there ought to be a “leave me alone” setting for this.
WhatsApp was its own company, took advantage of an open market in EU where SMS (and “international” phone calls?) were extra rate charges on mobile phones. Once every one got accustomed to using whatsapp Meta took it over and now we’re stuck with it.
It’s almost impossible not to sadly, at least if you want to reach everybody in ypur contacts… It was the first popular messaging app here and inertia prevents people from moving to better alternatives now.
The reason is the network effect. I want to use signal or rather even an EU based messaging service, but everybody, including businesses, are on WhatsApp in my country.
In an ideal world, maybe. Hopefully we will see more of that thanks to RCS, since major players like WhatsApp, Message (Facebook) and iMessage will have to open up and be interoperable with other messaging systems.
So far, though, I’m stuck with WhatsApp (and iMessage for just one person!) and Telegram, nobody uses Signal here
The web version isn’t a standalone client like Signal, which registers as an additional device with e2e. WhatsApp web communicates with the WhatsApp app, so it doesn’t work if the phone isn’t connected to the internet (in early versions it had to be the same network, if I remember correctly).
I believe WA introduced a feature which allowed the desktop app to function standalone like Signal. Signal Desktop adds a second device with it’s own keys, so contacts send automatically messages to two devices. I’m not sure if it works the same for WA, and if they even have the feature. I don’t have a compatible desktop.
No, it’s probably because websites running in Chrome might lack the ability to detect keystrokes in the background. If they did, that’s a very very concerning security risk.
If they wanted to force you, they’d just disable the web app lmao
I think a lot of tech-savvy adults care about E2E on blue iMessage bubbles. I won’t talk about sensitive information via green, that’s all going to signal.
This just comes off as defensive and needy. I’m not even sure if encryption is affected by syncing with icloud, I was just raising a concern if that was a real reason for using it
Imma burst your bubble (pun intended) but that’s such a small part of the population and even such a small part of the tech savvy population that I don’t think it’s much of an argument.
That’s fair! I’m just going by my own experiences. But I have a lot of tech-savvy friends and acquaintances and even many non-tech-savvy mates are into Signal vs SMS because it’s secure, has great audio/video chat, and it’s not owned by shudders Facebook. I personally do not touch any google or Facebook products or services.
Apple gives it funny colours? Google messages just change saturation. Also for some reason I can’t send RCS (and e2e encrypted) messages to my relatives with apple phones. But I got most of them to use Signal :>
You shouldn’t use this app in the first place. It had many data breaches and it copy everything from Telegram (maybe everyone copies, but I don’t use other apps). I only mainly use Telegram and Matrix.
It’s impossible to convince that to friends and family. In my country everyone use WhatsApp as primary messaging app . It’s kind of like iMessage situation in US
It’s nice that a lot of my surroundings have finally jumped to Telegram. Previously it was Viber (bleh). But it’s much hard to go to Matrix because it’s much much less feature rich and less polished then Telegram. I can easily use it as a basic text messenger, but that’s about it. So Telegram is a solid middle ground. Can’t wait for the multi server Matrix accounts.
But WhatsApp have a really good app on windows which can attend calls and stuff . I think recently in Mac too . I’m using WhatsApp inside waydroid container in Linux so that I can at least attend calls
Technically you could run an Android container on Linux like with Waydroid and get WhatsApp too, it’s just that there’ll probably be more Android users
Where I live everything is on WhatsApp. You want to get ahold of a business: WhatsApp, friends organizing a party: WhatsApp, want to check the traffic: WhatsApp.
I honeslty haven’t had any issues with it. But I’m sire others are. I feel like that’s the biggest challenge since there’s a ton of distros and architectures
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