Coincidentally, just like not covering the nose with a mask in protest, what you do only makes the problem worse.
The only way forward is to stop using such an app with explanations, offer alternatives to people seeking to contact you, support legislation that breaks shady business models like that, etc. Sadly, few people have courage to look weird, boring or slightly crazy in this way.
(I have no such problems with WhatsApp, but I’m guilty of the same with regards to Telegram. It’s built intentionally insecure by default: I have literally no contacts who use E2EE chats now, because those are opt-in and so half-assedly implemented—I used to have a couple of “secret chats” but one vanished and another broke so nothing is delivered anymore; we switched to plaintext and I keep postponing quitting the app.)
If enough people join you, it's a win. If not, you've wasted your effort / money / vote / time.
Sometimes it's hard to discern if that critical mass exists.
How did it start? Some people adopted it, then their friends adopted it, etc. How does it stop? The same way!
If people are made aware and meet resistance (e.g., a person they really want to keep in touch with who doesn’t use that app), things change.
A boycott that does not drive the company out of business is not automatically unsuccessful: more people learn about the issue, some stores might start stocking competitor’s goods, etc. In a functioning system, if a bunch of people voted for the loser the winner would feel the pressure to adjust policies (vs. if no one did and the winner feels righteous enacting the extreme version of the policies you disagree with), and if not well next time more people may support the losing party.
Chat programs are not stores in any typical sense of the word.
Chat programs are effectively clubhouses. Convincing a person that they’ve joined the wrong club, invested time and effort in the wrong club, and should make better and more informed choices in clubs…
Lol. Have you MET a human before?
Good luck and don’t hold your breath.
Chat programs are also not clubs. There is no associated identity. No hardcore WhatsAppers it Telegrammers.
In fact, if you regularly meet actual humans, you might find out that most of them simply don’t care.
You dislike WhatsApp? Give them something equally convenient but that cares about privacy and they will just use it. Refuse to add them on WhatsApp and if you are an interesting person they will install whatever you use, even Signal, to stay in touch.
Please keep it polite. I don't see how you can know that commentator's intent.
I also think that WhatsApp is evil, but that doesn't change the fact that a lot of communication takes place via this medium. Doing without it altogether has real opportunity costs. In this respect, it's up to each individual to decide whether and how to use it. It's similar to criticism of consumption and capitalism: in the end, you still have to buy your food somewhere and pay for it with money.
There's some opportunity cost you just can't accept. If your only two options are a) don't use Whatsapp or b) use Whatsapp to help your elderly neighbors, I'm going to think you're not a good person if you stick to your ideology in this specific case. You can't really start arguing 'what-ifs' because you don't know the details of their situation and the decisions they made, so we should take them at their word that those are the two options they considered.
All to say, the world isn't as black and white as sticking to your guns no matter what. People that want true change would do well to remember that, since a majority of folks do not think along these lines and act with much more simple motivators.
That's a terrible comparison. One is a selfish moron, the other idealistic.
The way I read it was “hmm that’s nice, people are now able to see the lunacy of that period in such a way as to make an off hand comment like that.”
The masks did nothing positive. It was the law of the land in public health that they were useless at preventing respiratory infections before people in positions of power wanted to scare people into compliance with massive overreach of their authority, then it became “mask up.” And once everybody “masked up,” all we got was yet more confirmation that yeah they are pointless in trying to prevent respiratory viral spread. Even if they kinda, sorta worked for that, which they don’t, the costs are still far too high.
All the masks contributed to was oxygen deprivation, micro plastic inhalation, and the degradation of the fabric of society. Think about it, it was bad enough for adults trying interact with faces wrapped up and concealed, “think of the children!”(actual legitimate usage of the phrase, btw) much worse for them having to do the same. People were harassed, assaulted, tased, arrested, for not wearing a “mask,” it was insanity.
Stop being a creepy mask person.
But fair; if in the same country you can call. ( and if not, you can go thought a service allowing you to call abroad. Like the now senile Skype )
This is such a sad perspective.
I received a response. Three months later. They said “please send more money and we’ll ship your item”. Very helpful. I’d guess they check that email inbox once every few months based on this.
I could use any existing XMPP server, or even start one, and be able to contact directly with any of my both Google and Facebook contacts
It was wonderful glimpse of what it could be if greed and drive to herd consumers into their own walled gardens wasn't the main driving factors.
Think of it this way: why doesn't Gmail just close their SMTP gateways and defederate from e-mail? Because there's shittons of systems that expect to be able to send mail this way. They'd have to spend loads of time and energy corralling people out of open standards and into a proprietary Gmail API for no externally-visible benefit.
That doesn't apply to XMPP. It was an entirely new protocol with only two very large adopters federating with one another. Legitimate automated systems that needed to send messages didn't really exist yet, so there was no legacy cruft holding people to the open standard. But there were plenty of spammers who realized that they could get into literally every Gmail and Facebook screen with it.
In e-mail, we have a complicated setup of blocklists, heuristics, and domain authentication to handle spam. This inherently costs more time and money to set up than just having a closed messaging system with sign-ups that are controlled by one entity. But the big e-mail providers deal with it because open[0] federation is an iron rule of the e-mail system.
[0] Ok it's more like "open if you spend enough time getting an originating IP that isn't on every blocklist, setting up SPF/DKIM, getting your recipients to add you to contacts and check the spam filter, and so on"
I caved in during the pandemic. Lots of dear friends and family members, especially elderlies who couldn’t be bothered with anything else, and volunteer work to help the medical emergencies.
It felt ridiculous to ask people to use other means of communications under such circumstances. My noble ideologies felt very small and I said fuck it. I’m glad I did.
It’s the only Meta service I use, but I’m a heavy user. There’s no turning back.