<story><title>Poll: Switching from WhatsApp</title><text>So many choices, so much discussion.  Looking for the &amp;quot;Wisdom of the Crowd&amp;quot; from the HN community. Other options in the comments would be welcome</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>incrudible</author><text>I like to think the problem is that &amp;quot;the nerds&amp;quot; have failed the rest of the people. People used to listen to us about computer stuff. Then computers became usable without us. Then smartphones arrived. We gladly were relieved of our obligations, but also of our influence.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s too late to go back. People are already used to the trade-offs, convenience rules above all. People may be &amp;quot;sort of concerned&amp;quot; about privacy, but they shrug it off. If privacy was high-value, any privacy-conscious competitor would&amp;#x27;ve taken the market by storm.</text></item><item><author>jbotz</author><text>Well, I don&amp;#x27;t know where parent is located, but here in Brazil they are pretty much right.  &lt;i&gt;Everybody&lt;/i&gt; has WhatsApp... it&amp;#x27;s assumed that if you have a phone you have WhatsApp.  A lot of financial transactions are conducted by doing a bank transfer and then sending the receipt via WhatsApp.  The schools send essential messages to parents via WhatsApp.  During lockdowns, stores were taking delivery orders via WhatsApp.&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s more, several cell phone operators&amp;#x27; plans include unlimited WhatsApp, but only a few GB of other data... meaning when your data limits are reached you can still use WhatsApp for the rest of the month, but not i.e. Signal or Telegram.  That makes is rather hard to convince people to switch.&lt;p&gt;So yeah, pretty damn close to critical infrastructure.  I&amp;#x27;m still going to delete my account and see what happens, but unlike the siblings here I can&amp;#x27;t disagree with parent, at least for Brazil.&lt;p&gt;[Edit] When I delete my account I&amp;#x27;m going to lose old conversations, but that doesn&amp;#x27;t bother me anymore because I already recently lost them once when I switched from Android to iOS... WhatsApp has no way of keeping your history in that case.  And otherwise there&amp;#x27;s really no friction to deleting an account, since you can always recreate it.</text></item><item><author>apexalpha</author><text>Where is the &amp;quot;Don&amp;#x27;t switch&amp;quot; option? Because as much as I hate that Facebook bought them, they&amp;#x27;re part of what I would call &amp;quot;critical social infrastructure.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Asking to leave WhatsApp is like cancelling your contract with your ISP and going offline just because you don&amp;#x27;t like the company.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>randomsearch</author><text>I think it’s simpler. Boycotts don’t work at an individual level. I have been boycotting nestle for decades. Can’t say they’ve become less evil. That’s because the marginal effect is negligible for them and strongly negative for the individual (assuming you’re a fan of Kit Kat’s).&lt;p&gt;Network effects amplify the marginal impact on the individual, because they lead to a monopoly with no true competition. Sure, you can leave whatsapp for signal, but you can’t talk to that community group on WhatsApp from signal. From an individual’s point of view the market power is an absolute monopoly.&lt;p&gt;The only solution to these problems is organising to the level of a mass boycott, or regulatory intervention. The former is impossible because too many people don’t care about the company’s behaviour (not because they’re ignorant, they just don’t care) and the latter is slow and a very hard and unfun pursuit for campaigners.&lt;p&gt;Nothing we say to non nerds will be of sufficient magnitude on an individual level. It’d have to be collective action.&lt;p&gt;Personally I’m far more worried about Facebook undermining democracy right now. That’s sufficient reason to shut them down.</text></comment>
<story><title>Poll: Switching from WhatsApp</title><text>So many choices, so much discussion.  Looking for the &amp;quot;Wisdom of the Crowd&amp;quot; from the HN community. Other options in the comments would be welcome</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>incrudible</author><text>I like to think the problem is that &amp;quot;the nerds&amp;quot; have failed the rest of the people. People used to listen to us about computer stuff. Then computers became usable without us. Then smartphones arrived. We gladly were relieved of our obligations, but also of our influence.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s too late to go back. People are already used to the trade-offs, convenience rules above all. People may be &amp;quot;sort of concerned&amp;quot; about privacy, but they shrug it off. If privacy was high-value, any privacy-conscious competitor would&amp;#x27;ve taken the market by storm.</text></item><item><author>jbotz</author><text>Well, I don&amp;#x27;t know where parent is located, but here in Brazil they are pretty much right.  &lt;i&gt;Everybody&lt;/i&gt; has WhatsApp... it&amp;#x27;s assumed that if you have a phone you have WhatsApp.  A lot of financial transactions are conducted by doing a bank transfer and then sending the receipt via WhatsApp.  The schools send essential messages to parents via WhatsApp.  During lockdowns, stores were taking delivery orders via WhatsApp.&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s more, several cell phone operators&amp;#x27; plans include unlimited WhatsApp, but only a few GB of other data... meaning when your data limits are reached you can still use WhatsApp for the rest of the month, but not i.e. Signal or Telegram.  That makes is rather hard to convince people to switch.&lt;p&gt;So yeah, pretty damn close to critical infrastructure.  I&amp;#x27;m still going to delete my account and see what happens, but unlike the siblings here I can&amp;#x27;t disagree with parent, at least for Brazil.&lt;p&gt;[Edit] When I delete my account I&amp;#x27;m going to lose old conversations, but that doesn&amp;#x27;t bother me anymore because I already recently lost them once when I switched from Android to iOS... WhatsApp has no way of keeping your history in that case.  And otherwise there&amp;#x27;s really no friction to deleting an account, since you can always recreate it.</text></item><item><author>apexalpha</author><text>Where is the &amp;quot;Don&amp;#x27;t switch&amp;quot; option? Because as much as I hate that Facebook bought them, they&amp;#x27;re part of what I would call &amp;quot;critical social infrastructure.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Asking to leave WhatsApp is like cancelling your contract with your ISP and going offline just because you don&amp;#x27;t like the company.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>raziel2p</author><text>Eh, it&amp;#x27;s not like &amp;quot;the nerds&amp;quot; can build a better product in terms of UX anyway, and definitely can&amp;#x27;t market it better.&lt;p&gt;Besides, who says &amp;quot;the nerds&amp;quot; are trustworthy anyway? They keep arguing among each other about which operating system or programming language is best, and why should we take their advice when software security vulnerabilities keep being discovered?&lt;p&gt;Not disagreeing with your point - it&amp;#x27;s become too easy to just randomly click &amp;quot;agree&amp;quot; on any TOS and trade away your privacy&amp;#x2F;security for convenience - but don&amp;#x27;t make it an &amp;quot;us vs them&amp;quot; type of thing. To me, this is purely corporate interest being prioritized ahead of public needs because most politicians either have no spine or answer to lobbyists more than the common person.</text></comment>