<story><title>US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In</title><url>https://twitter.com/BenBajarin/status/1162048579654963200</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pcmoney</author><text>It is interesting that the comments on the Twitter thread are &amp;quot;Just use WhatsApp&amp;quot;. Which is basically iMessage but from Facebook. Comparing two, the vendor lock-in from Apple seems much preferable to the one with Facebook in light of the data scandals Facebook has and their ongoing effort to backdoor WhatsApp and integrate it with FB messenger etc. Also a group message is only as secure as its most weakly encrypted member and sms definitely loses there vs iMessage.&lt;p&gt;I would rather have Apple win the network effect here vs another data pimp like Google (who, ads aside, can&amp;#x27;t be trusted to maintain any communication platform).&lt;p&gt;I would much rather this all be standardized with end to end encryption protocols. (C&amp;#x27;mon Signal!)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>joekrill</author><text>The most significant difference is that WhatsApp is at least platform independent. iMessage simply is not an option on Android - it&amp;#x27;s limited to iPhone users only and it doesn&amp;#x27;t seem like Apple has any intention of changing that. WhatsApp, on the other hand, can be used by whoever wants to download it.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s still vendor lock-in. Just not to the same extent.</text></comment>
<story><title>US Gen Z and the iMessage Lock-In</title><url>https://twitter.com/BenBajarin/status/1162048579654963200</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pcmoney</author><text>It is interesting that the comments on the Twitter thread are &amp;quot;Just use WhatsApp&amp;quot;. Which is basically iMessage but from Facebook. Comparing two, the vendor lock-in from Apple seems much preferable to the one with Facebook in light of the data scandals Facebook has and their ongoing effort to backdoor WhatsApp and integrate it with FB messenger etc. Also a group message is only as secure as its most weakly encrypted member and sms definitely loses there vs iMessage.&lt;p&gt;I would rather have Apple win the network effect here vs another data pimp like Google (who, ads aside, can&amp;#x27;t be trusted to maintain any communication platform).&lt;p&gt;I would much rather this all be standardized with end to end encryption protocols. (C&amp;#x27;mon Signal!)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>danpalmer</author><text>In Europe WhatsApp was huge well before Facebook purchased them. From my own experience, the product has barely changed since then, so I don&amp;#x27;t really feel like it&amp;#x27;s a Facebook product (yet), and so while I dislike using Facebook services WhatApp is basically fine for now.&lt;p&gt;Almost everyone I know uses WhatsApp. Funnily enough my family are the only ones who don&amp;#x27;t, and use iMessage instead. This isn&amp;#x27;t an active choice though, it&amp;#x27;s that they are on an iPhone and using SMS, so they get iMessage by default.&lt;p&gt;This is a long way of saying that for many Europeans, &amp;quot;Just use WhatsApp&amp;quot; feels like an obvious response, why wouldn&amp;#x27;t you?</text></comment>