Re:WhatsApp will progressively kill features until users acc...
by lolinder on Saturday May 08, 2021 @12:56AM
(#27084005)
The downtime I understand being a concern, especially for laypeople. The GP comment specifically identified Signal's secretiveness surrounding their server as the dealbreaker that made them "fine with WhatsApp", which is what I was actually responding to (didn't make that clear).
That said, Re: downtime, I've been using Signal for years now with non-techie family, and I've never had any complaints from them outside of that one two-day window. Signal is doing remarkably well even today. It seems like they just failed to adapt to the massive spike in load they had that week.
Re:WhatsApp will progressively kill features until users acc...
by KingOfCoders on Saturday May 08, 2021 @02:08AM
(#27084382)
The GP wrote "Signals two day outage with zero explanation killed a lot of their momentum at least with my contacts. Few months later 80% are back on whatsapp."
Re:WhatsApp will progressively kill features until users acc...
by DangitBobby on Saturday May 08, 2021 @01:52PM
(#27089320)
They also wrote this, which is, as HEAD~2 already said, the sentiment being addressed.
> Honestly after what Signal pulled with hiding their server code for a year to implement mobilcoin and still not releasing some parts of their code, Im fine with WhatsApp
no, it makes the people who recommends the switch (to their non-tech friends) look bad. The majority of people don't care about these sorts of issues regarding privacy or open-ness. "Normies" care about the usability, reliability and speed.
I had convinced a few (non-tech) friends who used to use whatsapp to switch over to Signal. Then signal went down, and they immediately switched back, and that downtime made it look like i made a bad recommendation. Signal also has a bigger spam problems than whatsapp (you get these fake Amazon people trying to spam/phish you on signal, which never happened with whatsapp). I will no longer be trying to get people onto signal, not because i don't like signal (i use it myself with friends that do remain), but alas, whatsapp is still the "main" messaging app.
So in all, the dominance of whatsapp is due to their reliability and momentum - no amount of privacy intrusion is going to change that. So signal needs to up their game, but i fear the opportunity has passed already.