WhatsApp has near-total market penetration in Switzerland. I hope this will change now, at least a bit. Until recently, you'd get strange looks if you mentioned that you don't use WhatsApp. (People sometimes assume that means you don't own a smartphone.)
The whole situation has seen mainstream media attention here, which helps a lot I guess.
Of course. I was talking about an entirely different place with huge differences — from education to value of life (which is close to zero IMHO).
Or they can go passive-aggressive: Mandate the exclusive use of privacy-friendly IM platforms for government and public services. If WhatsApp isn't compliant with the privacy requirements they set, tough luck. This will bring everyone onboard to another platform, and they can then individually decide if they'll also continue to use WhatsApp.
> Mandate the exclusive use of privacy-friendly IM platforms
Ah no, you definitely are not from here :-) (no offence meant)
That's ultimately what it boils down to. Making an alternative messenger that people will use is one problem, but making one that people will use *instead* of WhatsApp is an entirely different beast. The former can be solved with new (non-privacy related) features, but that's not gonna be enough to overcome the network effect.
The really important question here is whether people really don't value their privacy that much or if they just don't know any better. If people really don't care, then there is no problem to be solved. If it's an uninformed decision, then this is not a technological problem but a societal one that can be solved with awareness campaigns for example.
But we should also remember most of the popular apps right now started with small bubble.
People like HN readers and techies is what going to influence non-tech people in long run.
back in 2016 i decided to be the renegade and go to the shiny new telegram when everyone was over at whatsapp. took me years to convince 3-6 relatives to install telegram if they wanted to talk to me. wanted to avoid "whatsapp university" because everyone knows when unkills come to "chat". this meant that even today my messaging is on demand, if i want to talk to someone, i message them, reply and i close the app.
over the past month i have seen an explosion of "x joined telegram" and i told those relatives "remember how i made you download telegram back in the day, now i want you to get element because i am quitting telegram". that brought a few laughs.
my point is like yours. short of something catastrophic with whatsapp or facebook or instagram, people will not change because it requires you to download an app which takes 5 minutes. too much friction. /s
Where a request of 'can we do this chat on Signal?' would have been greeted with confused 'what are you talking about?' responses in December are now either not a problem or being answered with something along the lines of 'we would, but <X> is still only on WhatsApp'. This is not just techies, but parents in my kids school, biz contacts and investors, and even my retired parents who now use signal to chat and exchange photos with the rest of the family.
It is not much now, but that sound you hear above and those small chunks of rock and ice bouncing past might just be a growing avalanche. Social networks have faced this sort of threat before. Sometimes, like Google+, it fails to catch on and reach critical mass, and sometimes MySpace finds itself on the wrong side of the switch to a new default and disappears.
Isn't there a `made in India` alternative trying to get into that ?
> Penetration of Signal in real world is way too different from what it "feels" here on HN.
No, it's not that clear cut.
My only tech friend in my peer group is the one reluctantly moving to Signal while his SO and 20 of his SO's friends are moving to Signal. (sidenote: I asked about Telegram and the consensus seems to be "yeah but it's the united arab eminates, right ? no.")
Ok here's my proposed solution: 1. Be Indian 2. Create rebranded fork of Signal 3. Give it an Indian name and call it "Made in India" 4. ??? 5. Profit
All the alternatives I know are backed by for-profit corporations. So privacy concerns still remain. Few notable ones I came across are/were:
Hike (was shutdown last week) JioChat ShareChat
Edit: Why? Because the public should know the people who have significant amount of influence in society.
The public doesn't know about Diffie Hellman or Brian Acton or Mike Schroepfer or Alex Halderman and yet here we are.
What else do you need to know about Moxie Marlinspike or Matthew Hodgson and Amandine Le Pape beyond their technical blogs, opinion blogs and conference appearances and the products they put out there ? To decide what ? What does it change regarding their work being done in the open ?
If you suspect them of something there's nothing in the world that they could say or put out that would convince you they aren't... what ? Why is being secretive suspicious and concerning ? What are you suspecting ? You already know more about their name and what they do and think that people who worked on covid vaccines and that has a significant amount of influence and society.
Here, in India if you mention SMS you get weird looks even from people who crossed their youth using SMS. Communication is WhatsApp here.
My physiotherapist, my doctor's nurse (who handles my appointment) they all function on WhatsApp, and no, they are even going to try Signal. Grocers, delivery people — it goes on. My bank and credit card relationship managers communicate with me on WhatsApp. They are never "migrating to" Signal.
I am the only one among my contacts who will be moving away from WhatsApp — everyone else (among my people who are using Signal sparsely or actively as of now) have WhatsApp installed and will keep it.
Most of my recent Signal convert contacts have already started replying on Signal after hours or days, some have uninstalled. Most of those people will soon uninstall it is what I expect. Unless Signal brings social features that makes these people experience FOMO of broadcasting their lives on one more network :)
Penetration of Signal in real world is way too different from what it "feels" here on HN.