Their tactic of degrading ux when you don't give them permissions has been happening for a long time.<p>Accounts in WhatsApp have a username, but if you don't enable contact permissions on your phone, they will only display the contact phone number in the conversation list view. The username is there if you click into their profile from the chat, but WhatsApp wants to punish me instead.
Great, I will eventually uninstall it when they make me. I only keep it around to deal with people that haven't switched to Signal or Telegram yet. I have all three on my phone. Whatsapp usage has dropped a lot lately in my circle of friends. I removed Facebook Messenger ages ago (nobody I know uses that anymore). Just like the Facebook app and instagram. Whatsapp is the last bit of Facebook software on my phone.<p>I've been watching this corporate stupidity train wreck play out over the last few months. Every time I open whatsapp I get an obnoxious dialog urging me to pretty please accept their T&Cs. I click it away because I can. The fact that I can amuses me because it signals a certain amount of despair by Facebook. It's not normal for an app to be usable without accepting the terms and conditions.<p>The dilemma Facebook has is the very real problem that people are opting to uninstall rather than accept. Their users are angry and disgruntled. Which is why they are allowing people to use the app without accepting the terms and conditions. Which is of course highly unusual. From a legal point of view, until I agree, the old T&Cs apply. Basically they are saying those were actually fine and nothing really changed and it's all cosmetics but bla bla bla could you please accept the new ones anyway. It's a very weird position to take legally.<p>Either the old T&Cs were fine and there never was a reason to change them or the new ones materially change the old T&Cs and they should just state in plain language why and how. Instead we get this months long weaseling that is no doubt partially inspired by the fact that they are under a lot of scrutiny by authorities in the EU and US for privacy violations, monopolistic tendencies, data leaks, etc. The real issue is that the new T&Cs are of course designed to carve out some legal wiggle room there for Facebook to do user hostile things like ads and tracking. So they are in fact a change and they need users to swallow that.
I've been clicking the X everytime i get the popup for a few days now. I haven't really thought much about it or actually read it yet. I honestly fucking hate WhatsApp and wish I could convince the few people i talk to on there to use something else, even SMS. I've tried, yet they always message me through WhatsApp. They're not people i can really ignore either.<p>Anyway, i guess this is mostly a rant. But fuck WhatsApp, they actually manage to somehow be worse than Facebook messenger. At least messenger let's you appear offline.
Signals two day outage with zero explanation killed a lot of their momentum at least with my contacts. Few months later 80% are back on whatsapp.<p>Honestly after what Signal pulled with hiding their server code for a year to implement mobilcoin and still not releasing some parts of their code, Im fine with WhatsApp
I see people in the comments discussing applications for instant messaging. What is worth talking about is protocols.<p>Once upon a time there were IRC and XMPP.<p>But for whatever reason people stick to silly corporate funded gimmicks.<p>Support open protocols.<p>I am really happy that for email we still have SMTP and IMAP. And if my current email provider decides to screw me up I will just jump over to another one in a matter of hours.<p>There is no added value in signal, imessage, whatsapp, threema, icq, viber, telegram, slack.<p>All these “apps” want to substitute open protocols the same way google and facebook try to replace world wide web.<p>If we talk about Signal. I am still not convinced. Yes, they are a 501c3 nonprofit.
But what they lack is transparency of decision making process. And their governance model is not clear. In other words there is no guarantee that they won’t irreversibly switch from good to evil.<p>Now, on protocols. Imagine signal was a protocol similar to smtp or xmpp in the sense that you would not be tied to a specific app or server or company or people. Matrix looks promising in this regard but unfortunately matrix is too complicated and at this level its adoption rate will be even lower than signal’s<p>So why don’t we put some love into creating a protocol for a secure e2e instant messaging and video conferencing that we would stick to for the next 30-40 years?<p>That would be a real innovation and value for everyone excluding corps and rotten political regimes.
Your messaging app wants to screw you over? If only there was an alternative. Or dozens.<p>Seriously, is there something so sticky about WhatsApp (other than being a new vector for Facebook to invade your life) that almost any alternative isn't preferable? We block it outright.
what's WhatsApp? is this a competitor for Signal? (jk).<p>I've got a few dozen non-US clients, they loved WhatsApp, after our first Zoom meetings they asked a few times for WhatsApp connect. I mentioned privacy and protecting our respective business interests by moving to Signal. they had near zero issues switching and hardly had any questions. as a tech professional, when we make a recommendation to others who trust us, they just follow. don't abuse the power, fight for the user.
It kept showing me the prompt, and must I have dismissed it <i>at least</i> two hundred times over the past few months before last night I clicked "agree" by accident while half-asleep :(<p>And of course, there's no way to go back :(
I hope this ends up with them offering a paid version for people that don’t want advertisements. These companies should be forced to at least have that as an option, it is frustrating to see when my children are playing these games with tons of ads and there’s no way to pay to have them removed.
Most privacy policies say that continued use constitutes acceptance. Does anybody know why this update requires explicit acceptance? What's in it that's so serious?
Nearly all the major Internet services in China have been doing this for years, like Taobao (Alibaba's eBay), Weibo (Twitter equivalence). Some even ask you to login by using mobile app to scan QR code, so that you must install a mobile app.
The time family was making me to install this malware, it decided to go and delete _all_ my contacts in the phone. Thats when i immediately uninstalled the application and spend some time restoring all the contacts it deleted. Needless to say i told family, i wont use whatsapp, contact me by other means.
The Google Maps app did (does?) something like this. If you wanted to set your "Home" and "Work" shortcuts you had to enable history first.
It still baffles me that we don't have a Web app for messaging without all the fuzz of being part of a major network or corporation.<p>We could even make a Peer-to-Peer based thing
Had more and more friends move to Telegram lately and actually everyone is noticing how much better it is. I will still stick to that May 15 deadline and delete the app!
I say bring it on. Slowly people will be annoyed and switch to other platform, I will have no reason to use it by then. It is very sad that Apple is not providing Messenger to Android, it can definitely eat Facebook's lunch.<p>I think Facebook has a better bargaining chip with Instagram, it has been their front tier force competing with others.
Can someone who understands GDPR better than me explain how this works in light of the policy that you can't degrade functionality to force tracking consent?
I took the harsh route. I sent an email to all my contacts saying that I was on matrix and/or email and would not be on whatsapp anymore. It's a bit sudden and most of my contact will never message me again, but I'm fine with that.
> <i>WhatsApp will then switch off all incoming notifications and calls for your account</i><p>I have disabled notifications on all apps on my phone (except the phone app), so I think I can live with this for some time.
I only see Signal and Telegram mentioned in this thread. What about Threema? Is it any good? <a href="https://threema.ch/en" rel="nofollow">https://threema.ch/en</a>
Threema and Signal marketing must have a field day. All they have to do is book some popups and add a "choose another messenger instead".. third button..
FB is really overplaying its hand lately.<p>All the cool people have left...and thus the network effects are gone. I open FB & whatsapp maybe like once a month