MudMan

I mean, at the risk of being obvious, take your contract to a lawyer or two and ask them.

Hah. Not even. Between Youtube and Mastodon it was doing the job just fine.

Not like I don't see all those posts anyway, this place isn't THAT big yet.

Eh... what the hell is that link? The recommended videos on that place are WILD.

I had heard some rumblings about Rossmann being on some weird alt-right focused service, but I had honestly forgotten and I wasn't expecting to get a faceful of it by accident. Yikes.

Pricing doesn't hurt.

But yeah, people will pay for convenience. Nobody wants to dig around for pirated links if a simpler option is available.

But yeah, I hear you on international licensing. I try to keep up with Star Trek content and man, I don't know how you can bungle up a licensig deal that much.

The latest bit of genius includes Amazon Prime listing three seasons of Lower Decks, but the third season consisting on a page that tells you they don't have that season available, despite having had it before.

There is a fourth season. It's not available anywhere.

I gave up and pirated it, knowing it will eventually show up in a service I do own. It was all getting spoiled for me in social media anyway.

But it is, is the point.

Like, here it is.

Whatsapp (and Telegram, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Line... whatever is your local poison) have absorbed texting entirely. Whatsapp drives all texting, a significant chunk of voice calls, a lot of non-work videoconferencing and it serves as a Discord-like group chat platform for a lot of people. That's how your grandma got radicalized over here, not Facebook proper.

Again, social media is more regional than people think, and it often doesn't look like Twitter, Instagram or even Facebook.

Look, I know it's nonsense and I know it'd be a disaster and a threat and it'd imply they are in power and that's bad. So please, please, I don't get to vote, so go vote against these idiots if you can.

But I'm not gonna stand here and say I wouldn't like to see them try.

Just... maybe with access to a time machine so I can reboot the timeline after. But come on.

But you and I don't seem to be in the same society.

This is a heavily regional issue, which is my entire point. There is no iMessage alternative, we aren't in a WeChat area, or a Telegram area. Here it's overwhelmingly Whatsapp.

This is not the same everywhere. Social media is global, but the mix of it is far from universal.

I'm still a weirdo, but I can't afford to be a weirdo performatively these days.

So yeah, I can default to Firefox or keep the MS tools I have to use for work on its own contained browser instance, or refuse to use Samsung or Apple phones or whatever other act of technological petty rebellion that I want. But the point I'm making is that cutting the cord on Whatsapp is not practical for daily use in this region. It's very different in the US and in some other territories, but here it's definitely not.

It's far easier to step away from Twitter, Instagram and even Facebook than it is to do the same with Whatsapp here. That's the big takeaway that I want to convey here.

Oh, it's my choice to approach every potential client with a long-winded pitch about why I'm off the grid and don't believe in telephones.

It's just terrible for business, and since I do like to consume food to keep this sack of meat running, I don't do that.

Look, there are two things happening here:

One, you don't seem to get to what extent Meta has entirely replaced key parts of the communications infrastructure in several parts of the world. You may as well be advocating communication via carrier pigeon.

Two, you get a kick out of being the difficult contrarian weirdo that refuses to submit to the mainstream of modern tech because you work for some boss that thinks it's worth getting your skills despite that song and dance, so there is no immediate downside. I know. Been there, done that. When you freelance you get way less precious about that, by necessity.

And yes, by the way, I do keep separate hardware and software environments to isolate some predatory applications to work hardware. That is viable. Just... not for Whatsapp. Because EVERYBODY uses it and I like my friends and family to keep talking to me, too.

My employer is me.

I'm doing what my clients tell me, because it's generally considered to be a good business practice to not argue with one's clients unless you have a good reason to do so.

Me neither :)

Of course there are more than two countries in the world, so it's entirely possible to have different pricing structures anyway.

I don't think any providers charge for SMS anymore. Or at least you get enough free ones that nobody ever hits the cap.

Because everybody uses Whatsapp instead, so it's not even worth trying to monetize the residual usage. It's like email, only automated communications use it, so you're better off only charging government agencies and companies who are the only ones using it.