<story><title>RFC 9518 – What can internet standards do about centralisation?</title><url>https://www.mnot.net/blog/2023/12/19/standards-and-centralization</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Tomte</author><text>Most people don&amp;#x27;t have friends on other continents. At least for Germany I can confidently say that there is nothing (except rounding error) besides WhatsApp. No matter the demographic.&lt;p&gt;I have never experienced a debate which messenger to use, and I have joined about twelve study-related group chats over the last two years. Same for personal messages. Some people have Signal or Telegram installed. After two or three messages for the novelty factor, everybody is back on WhatsApp. Because that app is open all the time.</text></item><item><author>ajsnigrutin</author><text>But it&amp;#x27;s not &amp;#x27;everyone&amp;#x27;, it&amp;#x27;s just grandma. Auntie is using Viber. Grandpa from the other side is using google hangouts (chat? something). And your cousin is using telegram.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.similarweb.com&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;research&amp;#x2F;market-research&amp;#x2F;worldwide-messaging-apps&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.similarweb.com&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;research&amp;#x2F;market-research&amp;#x2F;wor...&lt;/a&gt; Just look at the map of most popular messengers worldwide, it&amp;#x27;s not just one.</text></item><item><author>danbruc</author><text>You are not switching away from WhatsApp because that is what everyone is using, not because it would be harder to use Signal.</text></item><item><author>ajsnigrutin</author><text>&amp;gt; And because it is easy to switch, everyone will be using the best&lt;p&gt;But it&amp;#x27;s not easy to switch.&lt;p&gt;E-mail was easy to switch &amp;quot;back then&amp;quot;, when you didn&amp;#x27;t have a bunch of accounts tied to them. IRC was easy to switch, because most of the servers were interconnected into a few large networks, and all the clients used the same protocol.&lt;p&gt;And now? Your grandma only knows how to use whatsapp? Well, you&amp;#x27;re not switching away from that, and facebook is getting all your data.</text></item><item><author>danbruc</author><text>Nobody cares about [de]centralization, for more than 99 % of all internet users it does not matter whether the internet is the internet or a single server sitting in someone&amp;#x27;s basement. They want to use services - chat, write mails, watch videos, have a website, buy stuff, sell stuff - not run infrastructure of any kind. So nobody is going to have their own servers, they will all use existing services. And because it is easy to switch, everyone will be using the best - for some definition of best, could be easy to use, cheap, functional, ... - service and everyone else will go out of business. That also makes the internet simpler, there is one place for one kind of service and everyone else will also be there. And this does not only apply to end-users, the move of IT into the cloud is fundamentally the same thing, nobody wants to run the infrastructure.&lt;p&gt;You can maybe argue that everyone has their preferences wrong and they are hurting themselves in the long run, but good luck fighting that battle.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>k__</author><text>WhatsApp it is in Germany.&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, I saw multiple discussions (from non-technical people) about using signal or telegram in the last years.</text></comment>
<story><title>RFC 9518 – What can internet standards do about centralisation?</title><url>https://www.mnot.net/blog/2023/12/19/standards-and-centralization</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Tomte</author><text>Most people don&amp;#x27;t have friends on other continents. At least for Germany I can confidently say that there is nothing (except rounding error) besides WhatsApp. No matter the demographic.&lt;p&gt;I have never experienced a debate which messenger to use, and I have joined about twelve study-related group chats over the last two years. Same for personal messages. Some people have Signal or Telegram installed. After two or three messages for the novelty factor, everybody is back on WhatsApp. Because that app is open all the time.</text></item><item><author>ajsnigrutin</author><text>But it&amp;#x27;s not &amp;#x27;everyone&amp;#x27;, it&amp;#x27;s just grandma. Auntie is using Viber. Grandpa from the other side is using google hangouts (chat? something). And your cousin is using telegram.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.similarweb.com&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;research&amp;#x2F;market-research&amp;#x2F;worldwide-messaging-apps&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.similarweb.com&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;research&amp;#x2F;market-research&amp;#x2F;wor...&lt;/a&gt; Just look at the map of most popular messengers worldwide, it&amp;#x27;s not just one.</text></item><item><author>danbruc</author><text>You are not switching away from WhatsApp because that is what everyone is using, not because it would be harder to use Signal.</text></item><item><author>ajsnigrutin</author><text>&amp;gt; And because it is easy to switch, everyone will be using the best&lt;p&gt;But it&amp;#x27;s not easy to switch.&lt;p&gt;E-mail was easy to switch &amp;quot;back then&amp;quot;, when you didn&amp;#x27;t have a bunch of accounts tied to them. IRC was easy to switch, because most of the servers were interconnected into a few large networks, and all the clients used the same protocol.&lt;p&gt;And now? Your grandma only knows how to use whatsapp? Well, you&amp;#x27;re not switching away from that, and facebook is getting all your data.</text></item><item><author>danbruc</author><text>Nobody cares about [de]centralization, for more than 99 % of all internet users it does not matter whether the internet is the internet or a single server sitting in someone&amp;#x27;s basement. They want to use services - chat, write mails, watch videos, have a website, buy stuff, sell stuff - not run infrastructure of any kind. So nobody is going to have their own servers, they will all use existing services. And because it is easy to switch, everyone will be using the best - for some definition of best, could be easy to use, cheap, functional, ... - service and everyone else will go out of business. That also makes the internet simpler, there is one place for one kind of service and everyone else will also be there. And this does not only apply to end-users, the move of IT into the cloud is fundamentally the same thing, nobody wants to run the infrastructure.&lt;p&gt;You can maybe argue that everyone has their preferences wrong and they are hurting themselves in the long run, but good luck fighting that battle.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sureglymop</author><text>I have friends in different continents and the three main messengers I need to communicate are WhatsApp, Telegram and WeChat. Then most people also would like to use Instagram Direct Messages but I don&amp;#x27;t have an account there.
People in eastern Europe largely use Telegram and people in China use WeChat. Everyone else mostly WhatsApp. I don&amp;#x27;t exactly know how it is in the US though, perhaps iMessage is more popular there.</text></comment>