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WhatsApp is a shithole. Communities, Channels, Payments, Avatars all these destroyed the simple chat app. Meta is aiming for a monopoly here.
Signal and Telegram pretty much useless if you don't have your needful people on the platform.
It's just not a battle I am willing to fight. Too many people I can't contact without Whatsapp and none of them willing to swap.
Thanks to EU, you'll be able to contact these people on WhatsApp without using WhatsApp.
Great, I can't wait for Whatsapp to be the only way to reach customer support and make payments. I always felt the confused look of people when I tell them I don't have Whatsapp wasn't enough.
always felt the confused look of people when I tell them I don’t have Whatsapp wasn’t enough.
the worst part is that most people cannot fathom that you don't have Whatsapp and you want to continue not having. The confused look is because their way of thinking is "ok you don't have, so what, open an account, it's taking 10 seconds".
Today, on "Features No One Asked For".
“Features board members demanded because they increase value for shareholders”
Whatsapp turning into WeChat should make Signal and Threema look even better.
If only people cared. Sadly, they don't.
Source: am one of probably three people in the country that refuse to use Meta CRAPWARE. And thus, very lonely.
I feel like FOSS apps keep getting more viable while closed source apps keep getting worse. I feel like the next version of the internet is the one few know about. Even Mastodon is getting better, and Lemmy is pretty much a reddit equivalent now.
Because with nonlibre/nonfree/closed apps, user interest is never at the front. It is only considered at the beginning when apps need to gain userbase, then they can exploit it.
Every app that take away user ability to inspect, modify or share it is creating a path for abuse.
Meta adding the same features to all their apps, for whatever reason
Everybody wants to be We Chat.
And WeChat sucks. The only reason it dominates in China is because the government mandated a bunch of social control stuff to run there making it virtually mandatory just to exist in China.
Western VCs wished they could have their shitty app being mandatory.
Look at El Musk and his "X app" obsession. He wants it so bad he burned the brand he paid BILLIONS to acquire just to chase his everything app.
The maturity of decentralized communication cannot come soon enough
If only there was a standards-based platform that everyone could use, supported by all telecommunications providers. Ah dammit. Probably just a pipe dream. /s
XMPP should return to reclaim its rightful role.
It’s a little hard to imagine for us Americans, but internationally WhatsApp has a thriving unofficial ecosystem of businesses operating solely out of the chat app.
I love to hate on Meta as much as the next guy on Lemmy, but this is probably one of the sounder business decisions Meta has made in awhile.
Don't use WhatsApp or Telegram. There are better things to use. (Signal, Session and simplex chat)
lol. "Don't use the messaging apps used by all your friends and family. Use another app so you cant contact them. "
Man, messaging is a nightmare. I use signal with a few of my closest contacts, whatsapp with most other people, sms as a fallback and for work I have to occasionally use Teams and fucking Viber (ugh). At least I managed to liberate myself from the clutches of Slack.
If only there was some standard way to get these apps to talk to each other so everybody could use what they want. Oh wait, there was, it was called XMPP, it worked perfectly and big tech fucking killed it and replaced it with the irritating clusterfuck that is the current status quo.
Sure, I use Signal with some. But I will have to use WhatsApp to interact with most people. They won't switch just because I tell them to.
During the peak of Whatsapp Controversy, I had 50 out 450+ contacts on Signal. Now it is just 5 people.
Signal shot it's self in the foot removing sms capabilities. Tragic.
This is US defaultism. People doesn't care about sms capabilities outside the US. The US isn't a huge market for Signal.
I think it did effect things. SMS is weirdly popular in the US (i think it's might be cause they didn't use it much in the 90s?) but people I know in France and UK still use texts for some things, even if messaging apps are where most of communication happens (French people even use mms which is insane).
I know that I managed to convince a number of tech-shy people (including parents) to get Signal by telling them replaced their sms app, so it wasn't a whole extra app / network they needed to use. It was great for me because I could ditch WhatsApp completely. But when signal stopped supporting sms they went back to just whatsapping and texting, so I cracked and reinstalled WhatsApp to keep in touch with them.
Good. Keep cluttering the app until people move to simpler alternatives. Preferably libre.
I want out but no one in my group chats will leave. 😭
What I did was say I'm deleting my WhatsApp account in [insert sensible time] and if anyone wants to contact me, to use Signal. Lost contact to some, but many followed.
At the company’s global Conversations event in Mumbai, WhatsApp introduced an in-app shopping feature for merchants and customers. Dubbed ”Flows,” [...]
That name sounds more like a feminine hygiene product than a shopping platform.
The software enshittification cycle continues.
I was recently in Brazil and it amazes me how the country adopted the platform. You can do everything in it. And it’s not that you’re always talking to someone on the other side. It’s all automated. Remember those gigantic labyrinths of menus you had to listen when calling a business? Now it’s all in WhatsApp, but with the advantage of being much faster to read. I asked for a service in a company, they gave me a protocol number. When I wanted to check on it, I just had to type the number on WhatsApp and it would tell me if it was ready. So, no need to develop GUI, sites, and so on. Everything is accessible through WhatsApp.
So, I understand why Meta rolled this out and started with Brazil.
In the end, it feels like we made full circle and we’re coming back to the Telnet era of doing business.
Are there any WhatsApp clients without all the crap noone asking for?
There soon will be because EUR turned their arm into opening the chat protocol. As soon as that happens expect other chats to be able to talk to whatsapp without the oficial app. So hopefully... Soon.
This is far more likely to become the Do Everything App for the Western World than X/Twitter is.
pls whatsapp stop copying from fucking telegram there should be a law to make it not possible this is killing competition
Awesome, maybe then I can get everyone I know to switch to a better platform.