I guess if you can't get people to go to Facebook anymore, you can always bring Facebook to the people.<p>I'm not sure how I feel about this. I like apps with a singular purpose, that do one thing well. This feels like it's going to intrude on my peace of mind with big, distracting groups that broadcast low quality, high volume information.
Any sufficiently complicated messaging system or Social network contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Google+.
What I want from Whatsapp is:<p>- Option to block/filter/hide people within a group. This way I can mute inconsiderate jerks from groups I can’t leave (work/family);<p>- alternatively, option to mute and hide groups forever, no I don’t want a red dot to signal there’s new message. I want it completely hidden until I casually remember to check it;<p>- hide my online status<p>These three action points would alleviate all my pain points with their platform.<p>Unfortunately, I’m not confident they will give me this kind of control as this would be anathema to Meta core values: controlling their (product|user) and increasing engagement on their app to the expense of the user mental health.
I'm always intrigued by the crossover point between small scale more intimate group chats and larger scale message boards.<p>Does anyone have any examples or experience with platforms that pulled off that transition space successfully? And what were the key features that made the transition successful?
Whatsapp took Skype's market as a free voice over and video ip but the value of 'communities' is hopelessly questionable. We already have a crowded market for gossip groups (Nextbore, etc etc) and you could argue this directly competes with ye olde facebook. Maybe they are going to do a roll up of WA & FB as part of the brave new Meta era?<p>More importantly Meta owns astounding amounts of undersea cable, which lends credence to the idea they are the new 'cable and wireless'...
<a href="https://fairinternetreport.com/research/facebook-meta-submarine-cable-ownership" rel="nofollow">https://fairinternetreport.com/research/facebook-meta-submar...</a>
friendly reminder, whatsapp is not end-to-end encrypted. WhatsApp and iMessage are vulnerable to law-enforcement real-time searches. WhatsApp shares message metadata with law enforcement agencies such as the Department of Justice. If legally required, or at its own discretion (such as for investigating Facebook leaks), it can provide critical location or account information, or real-time data on the recipients messaged a target subject.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp#FBI" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp#FBI</a><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reception_and_criticism_of_WhatsApp_security_and_privacy_features" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reception_and_criticism_of_Wha...</a><p>you should use Signal.
>Today, we’re excited to announce we’ve started to roll out Communities on WhatsApp globally and this will be available to everyone over the next few months.<p>Does anyone else find these soft-launches irritating? Give us a date?
It looks like they copied Element's Spaces[1]<p>[1]: <a href="https://element.io/blog/spaces-the-next-frontier/" rel="nofollow">https://element.io/blog/spaces-the-next-frontier/</a>