The tactic of pushing users by deliberately degrading ux has been obvious for a long time with mobile websites vs mobile apps as well.

Usability of mobile websites has intentionally been kept worse than that of mobile apps. Probably from not long after smartphones and mobile apps first came to be popular.

Just one example is the local ads service by eBay where the mobile website is usable, but just so much more clumsy than the app.

And all just with the goal of pushing users to the apps because they enable much more valuable data collection.

Reddit's mobile site nags you constantly to download the app. They started restricting the comments you can read without an account. And their site redesign is just bloated and bad. Seems like every social media site gets popular and then starts turning on their users to squeeze out more ad money, more data, more rent and metrics and growth. I'm super glad HN exists.

Everything on mobile is so brazenly user-hostile. The result of a tightly controlled ecosystem (at all levels) where the end user is just something to be consumed. Everything about it is so incredibly unpleasant, that I try maximally to stay away from mobile anything.

And people keep repeating the lie that the app stores somehow created a better experience for end users. Dark patterns and deliberate sabotage of the UX is pretty much only confined to the mobile ecosystem; Desktop-friendly companies also tend to be much more open (e.g., Discord, and Telegram have bot APIs, Tumblr publishes RSS feeds for all its blogs), while the more mobile-first a company is the more user-hostile it acts (e.g., TikTok uses UUIDs in its share links to track the fuck out of you).

The lies about malware are the most laughable. Malware ultimately only matters for business usage (if for that). I have seen (non-tech-savvy) people here use Windows PCs with all its software pirated (completely typical here in Iran, and presumably in most of the developing world), and they are just fine. They needed to install some antivirus software before Microsoft upped their game, or their computer would break after some (rather long) time, but installing a (pirated, of all things) antivirus app isn’t that hard. People could just pay the computer retail shops to do it for them for a small fee.

Note that this is still the state of affairs even for most enterprise PCs in Iran. Malware just isn’t that pernicious for end users. Ultimately, WhatsApp itself is nothing but malware. There isn’t much difference between poor users who are forced to use a malware-injected cracked app, and people forced to use a privacy-invasive app like WhatsApp because of network effects.

Yeah this is true, and I’m such a spiteful human being I actually take on the ux suffering just to screw them. You have to embrace it.

Hate to be the bearer of bad news but you're probably hurting yourself far more than them

Not if I don’t use the service or ever install it on my devices.

How are you going to take on the UX suffering without using the service?

You may still be hurting yourself more than you hurt them. I say may since I don't know your circumstances, but I am missing out on communications from my employer since they insist upon using WhatsApp.

Then it's your employer that's hurting you, not you yourself.

I agree since they should not be using WhatsApp for internal communications. The problem is that they do not see it that way since it adds additional hurdles with respect to communications from their perspective. That is especially true since I am the only holdout and few people seem to know how to use the organization's email system with any degree of proficiency.

> I am missing out on communications from my employer since they insist upon using WhatsApp.

Is that a company-wide policy or just between eg. you and your team? Which country?

It is between the team and it is in Canada.

EDIT: Just to add, the employer does not have a policy for communications between team members.

Is the mobile device issued by your employer? Seems like a pointy-hair layer problem otherwise.

The account would have to be linked to a personal device, otherwise I wouldn't regard it as an issue. (Only the team lead is issued a mobile device.)

Someone shoulder-surfing you can see the phone number of the person you are messaging and might mess with them?

If some unstable person is breathing down my neck messing with my contacts is not what I would worry about.

It's too easy to do and can be done from quite far away. Also you don't need eyes. An innocent pic or video taken in public can capture that info.

I think long ago, Signal used to display phone number just beneath name when you are chatting someone. That always made me a bit uncomfortable. Now they don't do that, only displays name.

If they are that close.. they can see the words you are writing. If you are sending winky love icons who you are sending it to may not be as important your actual content.

I am bridging WhatsApp to my Matrix server. On Matrix it shows the username when the number is not in your contact list, and only then did I notice how unnecessary access to the contact list actually is (as long as you don't start new chats with people)

How do you bridge in?

Yes, this is interesting

Sorry for the late reply, I use https://github.com/tulir/mautrix-whatsapp as bridge for my Matrix server. You need your own server to install this bridge. The easiest way to do all this is with https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy, which takes care of many things

If you talk with a number that is not in your agenda, WhatsApp will display the number. If you talk with a number that is on your agenda, WhatsApp will display the agenda name. WhatsApp never displays the nickname (on the list) no matter if you accept everything or not.

They could display the nickname, that could be a nice addition, but anyway removing the contacts permissions is the same as having an empty agenda. WhatsApp isn't degrading or punishing you.

So what, who cares how this works technically. They made it work that way, hiding usernames on purpose to push users to give their app contacts permissions that aren't needed to display usernames.

It does? At least in group chats I have hundreds of people not in my contact list but they display as "0123456789 ~Steven".

That's why I said 'on the list' referring to the main screen (where you can see the list of all active chats). As far as I know the nickname is shown on messages on a group, next to the number, and on the info screen (of both a private and a group chat).

Isn't that pulled from the agenda of other people in the group?

That's the name you set for yourself

signal shows usernames even when you don’t give access contacts.

that is not totally true, at least not in group chats. i can see names or part of names of people that i don‘t have on my contact list.

I think that is a security feature.

Otherwise, I can impersonate anyone with any name and contact image that I want. The way it is set up, you are the only one who has control over the displayed name (with fallback to the phone number). I actually like it that way.

No, it's not a security feature. If you do allow contact access, but don't add people to your address book, you see the name they chose for themselves. And it looks different (slightly faded gray instead of color coded, a tilde in the beginning, slightly smaller font). At least on my Android.

That's exactly what I was referring to. I think I have misunderstood the parent comment. I thought he was complaining about this being the default behavior when you don't enable access to your contacts.

Wow, so that's why I've been having this issue. That's incredibly sleazy.

What confuses and worries me is that Telegram (on iOS) seems to be doing the same. If I don't allow it access to my contacts, it won't let me add anyone manually either, even by username.

Telegram has an open API, so if this is really the case, you can ultimately fork the app.

Yeah first thing I thought was "Cool, self-DOS."

This is why the os shouldn't let apps know what permissions they have. Apps should have access to an empty address book or fake gps coordinates if they don't have those permissions.

This is my #1 peeve. I have friends who work at FB, and the mental acrobatics they do to justify this would have been quite amusing, if it wasn't such a daily annoyance.

Well that's how they got to 2 billion users...