This seems to follow a progression
- No ads
- Non-intrusive ads
- Intrusive ads, but you can pay to make them go away
- Intrusive ads, but you can pay to make them less intrusive
- Intrusive ads and you have to pay just to see the content
- Content becomes ads
- Ads pretend to be content (see Dr. Pepper’s “Fansville”)
- Award categories for ads are featured in major award ceremonies
- Award ceremonies just for ads go mainstream
Actually not sure what’s real vs hypothetical at this point.
This is how you end up with that scene in Demolition Man where they’re singing commercials.
Use Signal instead and donate what you can per month! I’d much rather support them than Meta
There’s one slight issue with Signal and it’s that none of my contacts is using it and I’m not going to be the guy telling them to install it just so that they can talk to me.
Not gonna lie I did this with all of my friends and family and most of them switched 🤣 But I completely get not wanting to go there!
You should. If they’ll literally stop talking to you over an app choice how good of friends are they?
Aren’t you doing the same thing to them in this case?
Legitimate question: would Signal or Matrix be the most desirable place to end up in a hypothetical post-WhatsApp Hegemony world? Or XMPP for that matter?
I’ve honestly never got my head around the difference in terms of the pros and cons of each.
I actually haven’t heard of Matrix, it sounds like your knowledge on this topic surpasses my own!! I’m gonna research the things you mentioned though because I’m interested!
Time to find your matrix homeserver!
I do love the idea of matrix, but it’s definitely not a direct replacement for whatsapp, sadly.
Why not? What is missing?.
It’s more like Slack than Whatsapp IMO. It’s not so streamlined and using it on multiple devices is definitely mainly for tinkers. Or at least it was couple years ago. That cross signing through devices was everything but intuitive.
And THE feature everyone I know misses the most is giphy/tenor support, which is kind of dumb, but also really understandable. This and similar nice to have features are still lacking.
Is Matrix better for the users privacy? Definitely yes! But is it better user experience? Well, kind of almost, but not yet.
Cross signing is easy now, ether scan a QR code, or compare emojis. Multi device on Matrix is even better than WhatsApp, signal etc. because you are not forced having at least one android or iOS phone running the main instance but all instances are the same level, same as in telegram. Having threats is superior to what whatsapp offers (no threats) Well, I’m not a gif sender, so I never recognized that gif is not supported
Good to hear cross signing is now easier. I remember it was real PITA.
Why not? I never tried it so I don’t know the details
Because exactly 2 peopleI know have matrix users.
I still use it, and refuse to use Whatsapp, but it takes some effort to get people over to the beautiful FOSS-side
You can set up some bridges until you have convinced others to use matrix as well (Btw. Matrix is NATO approved 😝)
Yeah, you can do a lot of things with Matrix, unless you want to post a gif, lol. The main problem is it’s still far from being as user friendly as those like Messenger, Whatsapp or Telegram. Typical user doesn’t really care about its privacy upper hand or it being federated, typical user see it’s too complicated and nobody uses it, so he’ll pass on it too. Which is sad.
The app is not less user friendly than whatsapp. It is running the server that is difficult, but average joe can just create an account at matrix.org
Yes, but explain that to average person, especially older one. It’s hard, trust me, I’m dealing with this kind of people every day and unless it’s extremely streamlined (as whatsapp is, cause you don’t even need account name, it’s your number, yay, so easy) “it’s hard and I don’t have time/patience for that”… sad reality unfortunately.
I hope they do it. And I hope It’s bad enough to push users away.
Then I my exit out of the Meta ecosystem will be complete!
Does WhatsApp have a premium option like Telegram?
Not actually opposed to paying for my messenger, altho Meta won’t get any $ from me
Don’t worry, they’re still making money off you.
