Comment by dabedee
8 hours ago
It's very difficult to do business in Western Europe without Whatsapp. I have probably asked more than 60 people to switch to Signal and the social burden it introduces (i.e. asking a new acquaintance to install a new app) can have negative signalling effects (e.g. you don't adapt, create more work, why do you care so much about privacy, etc.)
I personally abhore Facebook (and IG,Whatsapp) and don't want to use any of them; I have uninstalled/reinstalled Whatsapp many times. Out of practical concern, I now only use Whatsapp in business settings where it would create tension and create social awkwardness not to. But I dislike the fact that I do.
In Central Europe (Poland), too.
Nobody, and I do mean nobody, realizes that using Whatsapp by default (which everyone accepts) synchronizes their entire contacts list to Meta. It's a golden trove of valuable data for an ad targeting company.
People don't realize that there is so much that can be inferred about you from your contacts. Whether you have kids, which schools they go to, and similar personal information.
All of this is not even on the radar and people reduce privacy to "whether someone listens in on my calls or conversations" and tend to brush it off, because they honestly don't care about that part.
Signal doesn't make it easier by refusing to allow encrypted iCloud backups for so many years (which means people lose data when they lose their phones!) and recently introducing a subscription backup service instead of allowing me to do an encrypted iCloud backup. It's hard to explain to people that they should use an inferior product just because of "privacy".
Yep, same in South Africa. I still haven't accepted those T's & C's from a few years ago so can't chat with most businesses. In some cases there is no other option, so I just... don't use that company.
On the other hand, I've convinced a lot of my friends to get Signal. I'm the only person that they speak to on Signal, but that's fine ;)
All my close family now use Signal after me and a sibling pushed for this. That's 30+ persons. The network is growing too, since all children and new partners join in 1:1 and groups.
We like having two apps: WA for friends, Signal for family. There are only few reasons to mix the two.
All my close family now use Signal after me and a sibling pushed for this. That's 30+ persons. The network is growing too, since all children and new partners join in 1:1 and groups.
I think it is interesting to see how fractured things are even in western Europe.
I'm in Scandinavia, and at least here, Messenger is by far the most dominant messaging app.
Meta in general has a really tight grip here.
Whatsapp is also from Meta.
Same in Israel. Doctors, schools, etc all use WhatsApp. You can't live without it here.
Telegram is fairly common in Western Europe
In my experience: Only for drug dealers, cheaters, people doing sex stuff secretly for whatever reason (e.g. not being out of the closet), "underground/alternative vibe" communication channels (e.g. raves, hackers) and russophiles...
It's a standard chat application, people are also using Facebook, WhatsApp, etc for illegal/immoral discussions. I've been using it as my main chat client for more than 10y and have never used or felt the need to use the community channels, it's just a great messenger.
Doing illegal stuff in public Telegram channels is extremely stupid, they aren't encrypted, you're pretty much giving your information to law enforcement (I know Telegram is often blocking sharing info on their users to law enforcement, but you can be sure agencies are monitoring your telegram channel discussions).
The Russophile comment is pretty frustrating given Telegram is the most commonly used messenger in Ukraine and lots of Eastern Europe...
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Like you said "in my experience."
You could use it for other things lol. My entire boring friend group uses it for none of those.
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This sort of anecdotal evidence tells more about you than Telegram ;)
.. which is a worse option for different reasons than WhatsApp
It does have a nice Bot API though. For building personal stuff or just sharing between friends, the risks can be mitigated (imo).
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Okay, what are the reasons? It's difficult to see how Meta is in any way more trustworthy than the country which Telegram is from. I trust TG secret chats much more than Whatsapp's supposed e2e.
We work on helping people move to Signal from WhatsApp. It'll be easier once they have a Communities feature, as WhatsApp is very far ahead there.
The main advice we got is that although you need to migrate individuals, the main focus should be on migrating channels. If you have a family group chat, that's the target. Tell people about how Meta spies on them, etc, and then support everyone in the channel to individually set up Signal if necessary.