You uninstall WhatsApp and tell your closest family and friends that they can only reach you on Signal. Because you are so important to them, they will install Signal as a backup/secondary app. Other people will do the same, and it will snowball into everyone having Signal installed and at some point people will realise that the network effect is gone.
This is happening. First they get surprised that communication is possible beyond WA, even exactly the same. My mother's reaction was hilarious after sending me photos from Signal, free of charge. She was thinking only WA is free, every other app will charge her. I had to explain that calling, voice or video is also possible, without any payment.
> You uninstall WhatsApp and tell your closest family and friends that they can only reach you on Signal. Because you are so important to them, they will install Signal as a backup/secondary app.
I'll be the one friend that'll insist on SMS/email. I’ll even offer to use some other supposedly encrypted method like Keybase or Matrix. If that doesn't work as a fallback, then I guess we can agree to disagree, and someone else can play the middleperson for us. :)
I refuse to use Signal because it doesn't offer chat sync, or message preservation if I either lose or have to wipe my phone.
That was my thought process evaluating alternatives this morning. Signal is apparently lauded by the privacy crowd, but I took one look at it and said "no way is Mum going to use this".
I went with Telegram because the usability was good, WhatsApp-like functionality, and I saw a few people I know already on it - non-techies in particular, which is vital if we're going to disrupt WhatsApp.
lots of my friends have both whatsapp and telegram
and now some of them are almost exclusively on telegram and some on whatsapp
and whats worse is,now there are some half-and-half conversations in both
and on top of that whatsapp rolled out business accounts and every mom and pop store has whatsapp and thats the only way you can communicate with them in real time
You won't get them to switch and I use both. I try to get people to switch to Signal for comms with me and the hope is that if more people install it then they'll use it to communicate with each other. The majority of my contacts have not installed it. I am not yet worried enough about the current state of whatsapp that I'm willing to forgo using it entirely.
Signal, at least, is a very easy install and will just locate your contacts by their phone numbers (like WhatsApp) so the technical barrier is very low.
Edit: Oh, I came in to this thread without seeing anything about this new privacy policy. My comment was about the state before that. I'm only looking at the change now.
I'm over here confused about how so many people are using Whatsapp. Is this is the United States or other countries? No one I know uses Whatsapp over here.
I did however do what others are suggesting. I installed Signal, and told my close family and friends to install it to communicate with me - and to not use standard SMS anymore.
While I did get a bit of grief over it initially, we are all happily using Signal now, and more people I know are moving to it all the time.
It's also a great middle ground for iPhone and Android users to communicate.
You're absolutely right. Which is why any alternative we DO deem worth evangelizing should absolutely not have the same vendor lock-in problem as WhatsApp has. Which Signal and most of the alternatives listed do: they are single-service clients.
If we do manage to migrate some/any of our friends away from the embedded plethora of contacts they have on WhatsApp, I really hope it's towards something like Matrix, or similar, that doesn't have that same problem.
dustinmoris|5 years ago
boraoztunc|5 years ago
ValentineC|5 years ago
I'll be the one friend that'll insist on SMS/email. I’ll even offer to use some other supposedly encrypted method like Keybase or Matrix. If that doesn't work as a fallback, then I guess we can agree to disagree, and someone else can play the middleperson for us. :)
I refuse to use Signal because it doesn't offer chat sync, or message preservation if I either lose or have to wipe my phone.
cedricbonhomme|5 years ago
juniperplant|5 years ago
I can state that it's a bit unrealistic to expect this kind of outcome.
csmattryder|5 years ago
That was my thought process evaluating alternatives this morning. Signal is apparently lauded by the privacy crowd, but I took one look at it and said "no way is Mum going to use this".
I went with Telegram because the usability was good, WhatsApp-like functionality, and I saw a few people I know already on it - non-techies in particular, which is vital if we're going to disrupt WhatsApp.
shiftingleft|5 years ago
saargrin|5 years ago
and now some of them are almost exclusively on telegram and some on whatsapp
and whats worse is,now there are some half-and-half conversations in both
and on top of that whatsapp rolled out business accounts and every mom and pop store has whatsapp and thats the only way you can communicate with them in real time
i dont think im gonna be switching out
rohan1024|5 years ago
Let the exodus begin!
pelasaco|5 years ago
nebulous1|5 years ago
You won't get them to switch and I use both. I try to get people to switch to Signal for comms with me and the hope is that if more people install it then they'll use it to communicate with each other. The majority of my contacts have not installed it. I am not yet worried enough about the current state of whatsapp that I'm willing to forgo using it entirely.
Signal, at least, is a very easy install and will just locate your contacts by their phone numbers (like WhatsApp) so the technical barrier is very low.
Edit: Oh, I came in to this thread without seeing anything about this new privacy policy. My comment was about the state before that. I'm only looking at the change now.
sic1|5 years ago
I did however do what others are suggesting. I installed Signal, and told my close family and friends to install it to communicate with me - and to not use standard SMS anymore.
While I did get a bit of grief over it initially, we are all happily using Signal now, and more people I know are moving to it all the time.
It's also a great middle ground for iPhone and Android users to communicate.
lucideer|5 years ago
If we do manage to migrate some/any of our friends away from the embedded plethora of contacts they have on WhatsApp, I really hope it's towards something like Matrix, or similar, that doesn't have that same problem.