That’s not true. Apple was position itself as being better at security than Microsoft long before Google was selling devices to people.
For example:
Google is generally excellent at security, but that doesn't change the fact that they're a nightmare for privacy.
It's debatable whether or not that was true, and even if you believed it it was up for another debate whether that security was by design or because Apple's vanishingly small share of the PC market made it uneconomical to write malware targeting OSX.
This isn't to say that Microsoft was doing security properly back then either, they weren't.
[1]https://www.theregister.com/2017/11/28/root_access_bypass_ma....
Automative manufactures didn't give a rats ass about fuel economy until customers wanted it.
I don't much care. Companies don't have ethics, they have fiscal goals. If Apples fiscal goals happen to line up with my own goals, so much the better.
I would tend to trust a company who is doing something to selfishly support the bottom line way easier than I would trust a company who claims to be doing it for the common good of all humanity.
Google famously started off trying to not be evil and also be a profitable company simultaneously. It didn't work out great in that one of those goals became slightly more important than the other.
I remember some talk about those getting encrypted, don't k ow if that has happened yet.
That said, I’d be very happy to see that they did threaten a boycott as well.
Meta:
> Some countries have chosen to block it [WhatsApp]: that’s the reality of shipping a secure product. We’ve recently been blocked in Iran, for example. But we’ve never seen a liberal democracy do that.
They said they won't comply. UK would have to simply block WhatsApp.
https://www.statista.com/forecasts/997945/most-used-messenge... (non-free link)
I prefer iMessage over the other messengers, but I still haven’t met anyone who cares. A lot of people don’t even know why the bubbles are sometimes green.
This is not a thing outside the United States, and I doubt that most British politicians are even aware of 'blue bubbles'.
For example, the recent controversy regarding the release of Covid-related government communications was centred on WhatsApp, with no reference to other platforms like iMessage.
https://news.sky.com/story/politicians-are-drawn-to-whatsapp...
Not to mention MMS is vastly inferior to WhatsApp and iMessage for sharing media and other information.
Non Apple work machine?
Also outside of programmers, IT, and designers, you rarely get a choice in the company issued laptop. It never makes sense for a company to issue more expensive Apple computers instead of ThinkPads or Dell computers.
The machine is mine and I do work on it. Thanks for the concern but I’m not worried about getting sued. I’m sure it’s happened here previously, but it’s not like the US.
> Also outside of programmers, IT, and designers, you rarely get a choice in the company issued laptop. It never makes sense for a company to issue more expensive Apple computers instead of ThinkPads or Dell computers.
I’m not one of those professionals and I can get my job done quicker on a Mac. My employer doesn’t dictate how I get things done and paid for the machine I want. I think this is a good thing.
Any job that requires a crappy trackpad isn't a job worth having.
Just seeing those laptops is frustrating. What is the point of the trackpad if you have to use a mouse?
> My employer doesn’t dictate how I get things done and paid for the machine I want.
That is very much not your machine. If your employer ever gets sued, or runs into some investigation, or some internal dispute escalates enough, all the data on it is now likely available for them for review.
Given large enough company and enough people, you'll get that "preserve documents for discovery" email one day. It happens outside of the US too.
If I send an SMS message to a group of people, they all see a message from me. They don't know who else got it. And if they reply, they reply only to me. Is your experience different?
WhatsApp (and I think iMessage) allow me to create a group with a name/purpose and send messages to the group and receive replies to the whole group.
(P.S. I went from dumb-phones to Android and have limited exposure to iMessage's feature-set).
Does MMS not exist in your country?
That kind of pricing made WhatsApp an infinitely preferable alternative.
Phones automatically switching to MMS would be catastrophic.
Data (WhatsApp) is essentially free in comparison. £10 (13 USD) per month gets you 20GB: which doesn't care how many messages/recipients/photos you send.
Here in the US its common to have at least 1MB MMS max size. Back in the day 300-600KB was often the max size, but that's definitely changed over the years. Maybe its just splitting it up and re-assembling it behind the scenes, I'm not sure.
I can't speak for all history, but from about 2004 or so in the US MMS and SMS were often bundled and billed the same, especially for networks which had rolled out 3G/EV-DO. Having a plan with 500 messages usually meant 500 combined SMS and MMS message.
And then of course the vastly higher fidelity of pictures and video sent via iMessage.
The other major feature I see for other messengers over SMS/MMS is much larger attachment sizes. It can be challenging sending an MMS with attachments >1MB. Meanwhile, I can send a 100MB file/video or an 8MB photo over Signal. WhatsApp allows for 16MB attachments. Sending a quick video in-line with the chat thread in MMS is miserable and gives an incredibly trash quality video while most other chat apps you can stick a decent quality 30 seconds or so video without any issue. Photos sent over MMS are usually junk while one could get a decent 4x6+ print off an 8MB photo.
So I use 2 or 3 other apps for mostly a few international people I know but basically everyone I know just defaults to SMS/iMessage.
Nowadays it's mostly about convenience and features compared to SMS, and iPhone has a much smaller marker share in Europe so iMessage isn't a thing.
In contrast, in many European countries Whatsapp has 90%+ penetration [1]. Even where it's relatively unused it's more common than iMessage.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1311229/whatsapp-usage-m...
Whatsapp works on PC, Mac, Android and iOS
iMessage only works on Apple devices.
It’s by far the largest messaging service that is e2e encrypted by default. I think it’s more than fair to call it ahead of the curve for a service of its size.
https://www.wired.com/2014/11/whatsapp-encrypted-messaging/ https://blog.whatsapp.com/end-to-end-encryption
As recent as 2021, there's been questions: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/09/whatsapp-end-to-end-...
But, let's go to the start - WhatsApp started in 2011.
Encryption arrived in varying degrees until there was some pressures to change the amount of privacy messages had for advertising purposes.
Lots in the news at the time.
2018 "Another point of disagreement was over WhatsApp’s encryption. In 2016, WhatsApp added end-to-end encryption, a security feature that scrambles people’s messages so that outsiders, including WhatsApp’s owners, can’t read them. Facebook executives wanted to make it easier for businesses to use its tools, and WhatsApp executives believed that doing so would require some weakening of its encryption."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/whatsapp-fou...
2018 "Acton said he tried to push Facebook towards an alternative, less privacy hostile business model for WhatsApp — suggesting a metered-user model such as by charging a tenth of a penny after a certain large number of free messages were used up." https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/26/whatsapp-founder-brian-act...
2018 "WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum quits over privacy disagreements with Facebook" https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/30/jan-koum-...
2018 WhatsApp co-founder: "I sold my users' privacy" to Facebook "https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brian-acton-whatsapp-on-faceboo...
Encrypted in transit is not at rest, let alone the backups of messages on Google Drive / iCloud.
Check Article 12:
https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...
> No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
I'm no fan of Meta or their privacy violations, but saying that voluntarily downloading an app (which by the way does clearly outline their privacy practices) is equivalent to having my humans rights violated just really waters down what "human rights" should mean.
that's all true until an app becomes the only way to interact with certain groups of people. i certainly wouldn't call my usage of Discord voluntary. it doesn't actually matter how often i read their privacy policy and shake my head. either I break off contact with a large part of the internet that's important to me or I begrudgingly agree "voluntarily" to their terms and conditions.
https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-data-leak-contact-impor...
And aside from that, a lot of software communities are on Discord now. People are gating download links behind it, use their threading feature for support and put their knowledge base in channels. And not just small communities and developers. ASUS has made their main communication channel Discord too.
I agree it's difficult. I've had success showing keybase to people because of how barebones simple it is - but it's not a solution for everything of course.
How many non technical people have heard of Discord?
If the number in your name is your birth year I'm not too surprised, but don't assume you can project from your own experience onto others 1:1.
I can't even get my wife to install Element - and she works in tech as a senior python / automation engineer. People want neatness on their phone and low total complexity, and installing a messenger for a single person is over the line for most.
> You are a very ignorant if you think there is no barrier to getting someone to try an app with a substantially less good UX than what someone's currently using, and that that barrier doesn't border impossible in a group of 10.
Yet many people do have multiple messaging apps.
And Discord the one you think is so popular is not even in the top 10…
https://www.statista.com/statistics/258749/most-popular-glob...
They aren’t counting iMessage as a separate app. But do you really think it wouldn’t rank above Discord?
> I can't even get my wife to install Element - and she works in tech as a senior python / automation engineer.
Maybe your enlightened millennial friends and family aren’t as willing to change as you think they are?
> People want neatness on their phone and low total complexity,
Yet the average person has 35 apps on their phone
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/app-and...
In modern life, people don't discuss politics in townhalls, pubs, or whatever anymore. Online communication is by now far too siloed and supervised to the point of being unusable. Media are one-way streets, pushing the agenda of billionaires.
But you need to be able to have controversial discussions about "heavy" topics without fear of being ostracised. You need to have a back-channel to give feedback to "higher ups". Etc.pp.
A society where the individual is degraded to a mere drone (even if only loosely via framing) controlled by the "hive mind", without any recourse to voice constructive criticism is a lot of things, but certainly no democracy. There looms a dystopia on our doorstep.
> But you need to be able to have controversial discussions about "heavy" topics without fear of being ostracised.
Uh, why? People should have freedom of speech, but it feels like a lot of people want freedom from the consequences of the their speech. If anything, I think a lot of our current social disharmony is a direct result of the extremely recent development of people being able to mouth offline with very little social constraints.
Mike Tyson probably said it best: "Social media made y'all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it."
It's like exploited workers and people living in quasi-slavery, many of them don't understand their rights and "voluntarily" waive them. My parents didn't really understand the implications of "voluntarily" accepting Meta's privacy statement - once I explained it to them, they were in complete horror.
Yikes, seems like this is built to keep people from saying things about powerful people that they don't like.
If I cannot attack the honor and reputation of a person, and by extension, artificial person like a corporation, what good is freedom of speech? How can I call someone out for being a scammer, or for doing horrible things? How does one seek public redress of a grievance against a company, or an agent of the government? Does arbitrary apply to timing, or the circumstance? Who is the arbiter of arbitrary? This is not a human right. It is a nice tool for a tyrannical government to strip away rights from people. Oh, you've violated Mr. Arresting Officer by accusing him of falsely arresting you. Now you get to deal with the false arrest and a human rights crime. Likewise, Ms. Bought a Mansion with Public Money can no longer be accused because she has a human right to not have to trifle with public accountability.
Threads is not an attempt to push spyware on users, that would be incompliant in the EU. (And what is this spyware you believe is in Threads?) More likely they know exactly how much work it entails to be compliant and they decided to initially skip the EU market to speed up their launch.
https://github.com/SubhamTyagi/openinwa (I recommend downloading from f-droid)
Good thing the EU just outlawed that model and forced everyone to support "third party app stores" that are thinly-veiled shells for Facebook/Google/etc to bypass that review process.
the "I wanna sideload" crowd are nothing more than allies of convenience for FB and others. Facebook was already experimenting with getting users to manually sideload the full-telemetry build and now they can just say "oops not supported on safari, install the native app".
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/facebook-and-google-...
The sad thing is that all their details and yours are already known to Meta.
The dozen of us who behave like you will keep trying though.
One for work, one for personal use, and one burner for stuff like this. It has little more than the base OS, a few intrusive apps, and some minimal fake PII.
Also handy for providing a "valid" phone number I never have to deal with.
I had to look it up.
Meta was also in the biggest mass surveillance & influence scandal of all times for a private not too long ago, please don't forget
If so I missed the memo (that isn't unlikely, I'm not saying you are wrong!). Any references/links for that? A quick search doesn't turn up much, but Google isn't what it used to be…
You cannot actually believe that meta gives a single solitary fuck about privacy?
I think the GP is likely aligned with you anyways.