I've been using Beeper a month or two. They had a long waiting list, and initially it was subscription only, but they are working on smashing through the waiting list and have changed to a freemium model where you get it for free and (eventually) they will have extra features for subscribers.
Basically, it's one chat app that connects to lots of different chat services.
If you're technical, the app is a fork of Element, and the service uses matrix bridges to connect to different chat services, but it's all presented in a (somewhat) polished way. The wait list is because they are still struggling with scaling and quirks but if you're on Lemmy you're probably already well familiar with putting up with this.
It covers heaps of chat networks. Whatsapp, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Signal, Telegram, and more. It also will let you SMS (unlike Signal 😬).
You can also connect to Matrix rooms but you don't seem to be able to connect to an existing Matrix account (it uses a Beeper matrix account to connect).
It doesn't do video/audio calls so they recommend you leave the original app installed and disable message notifications (but leave on call notifications) if you use this.
Yep. But if you're keen on this stuff, you can self host matrix and the bridges and do it yourself. Their bridges are open source, just not their apps whose features are their business model.
Well, that's super neat and very useful for my circumstances. I'm moving outside of the US soon to a place where WhatsApp is dominant, but I still want to use SMS/MMS with family and friends in the US since I doubt they'll make the switch. I've been using WhatsApp for about a year now while coordinating stuff for my soon-to-be home and I've come to the conclusion that WhatsApp is complete garbage.
Nice. Looking into this one. Although in reality I use about 95% whatsapp just because everyone else does. Wish we could all just switch to Signal or even Telegram but nah... Whatsapp is so engrained everywhere that it is not going to go away anytime soon.
Yeah, I guess I'm not sure about the actual statistics. I do know it was the point when I realized I wouldn't personally use Signal because everyone I know uses SMS, SMS federates with email, and if I tried switching to a non-SMS app, I'd be screaming into a void.
The only other message apps people around here use are Snapchat, FB Messenger, and WhatsApp, and I'd rather cut people off than use any of those.
I literally installed Telegram/Signal on my families devices, synced their contacts with the app, and said “if you want timely responses, message me here”
Yeah, that's the real "internet explorer of messaging services". Absolutely sucks to use it (doesn't even.deliver messages to me half the time), but 90% insist on it for chat groupa and such.
I do have like 2 people I only talk to once or twice a year that I don't have any other known contact for. But I only use it very rarely because of that. If I ever stop talking to them, I'll finally delete the whole account.
The thing it's missing the most is better multi device support and an updated desktop client.
For me, I think Matrix is more complete (specially since it backs-up your chats and media encrypted). The only thing it's lacking (at least Element specific) is encrypted chat search support on mobile.
I use it on windows. The client is totally fine for the most part.
Though for some reason it regularly screws up the device-connection, forcing me to reconnect the device, loosing access to every old message. Seems to be a rare bug though, as my family also uses the windows client and theirs never has this problem (out of 8 device 1 has this problem)
I use it for linux. Recently there was a bug where if you had a chat opened, it would pin one core to 100% usage. It also lacks feature parity with the mobile client (ex: gif search and send).
iMessage can't be "the mainstream" app by locking out most of the world tho. Plus it is definitely the ugliest thing Apple has ever made in its lifetime that I know of.
All Google needs to do is make a public RCS API. Then we will have all the important features iMessage has on Android via regular texting. I have no fucking clue why they are making RCS exclusive to their messaging app.
Yeah, it sucks that if I were using Signal only on my phone and eventually decide to start using it on desktop, it doesn't sync any conversation history, resulting in the desktop client showing nothing from before you set it up. It should have older devices send history to new ones. If you're permanently switching devices, are you losing that history for good?
I don't think it's really a chat app. Isn't it just a text replacement? Or does it just use that number as your ID to use it? I have it, but only ever used it with one guy.
It has lots of nice features over SMS: read/typing notifications, image/video support, proper groups, message expiration. I think that makes it a chat app
I feel like I would never get along with anyone who has an attitude of "I believe X. Change my mind." I can't imagine anyone starting a conversation that way is not an asshole.
i used to think it was a cool argument style like 6 years ago (i was probably 14) til i learned he was a nut and the change my mind is because of the republican (and religous) fear of being wrong not because he ever wanted his mind changed
i almost took the pill tho i luckily saved myself using critical thinking and not really caring about politics. i just wanted to hear a "smart" guy talk.
Oh i get it now. The person in the photo is an asshole in real life. It only took me a day of wondering why would someone be an asshole for not liking a meme template 😅
He’s a right wing piece of shit who constantly says and does the most unhinged shit. Don’t really follow him, but from the top of my head, he mocked George Floyd’s death, he mocks trans people on a regular basis..
Eh, whatsapp isn't ideal and its owner is one of the big devils of today, but it's the only way to send and receive instant messages among billions of people. I despise it, but it's the only way I can contact people. Needless to say, they don't give a single flying fuck about privacy.
Whatsapp outages make people migrate to Telegram for 1-2 days at most, nobody ends up staying there. Signal? I've only ever met three other people in RL who have even heard of it, and I work in IT.
A more apt comparison would be to languages. Whatsapp is english: clunky, weird, full of nonsense, but it's what "everyone talks". Signal would probably be lojban or esperanto.
As a Signal user and an Esperantist I agree. They both require a somewhat curious mind for you to bump into them in the first place. Unless you have that friend/relative who always recommends weird stuff for you (to ignore).
Yeah, but I disagree. Signal doesn’t require that by design, it’s just as easy to use as WhatsApp (unlike something like Matrix or Lemmy). It’s just as easy to switch and has a better privacy.
And while I even don’t use it much, I actually know quite some people on it (majority of which is non-techy).
Why would it even be weird or anything? I only use Signal and its pretty much the same as whatsapp on the outside...just in blue.
The only reason people dont use it is because "eVerYonE hAs WhAtsApP" and they dont bother. 20 useless crap apps but 2 messengers is too much
According to Statista, 41% of 'muricans use it, which is a rather low number. Meanwhile, Brazil is the whatsapp country, in terms of percentage. In total numbers, that'd be India, as it's the most populous country in the world.
You can educate them if they ask but otherwise you can't force them because most people are very resistant to this type of thing.
Your best option is to stop using FB messenger yourself and tell them they can reach you on Signal. If they're really your friends, I'd like to imagine they'd follow you over. If your friend group switches, more people are sure to follow which will help speed along mass adoption and normalization via word of mouth to other friends and family.
A asshole conservative influencer whose bad faith knows no bounds. He's also recently been in the news for treating his ex wife like a slave/property. Really creepy shit.
Everyone always says this every time this meme is posted without explaining why he sucks. I'm not motivated enough to Google it. Yes, I understand the irony of the fact that I'm writing this, and could have just googled it in the amount of time I've taken to type this out. I'm still not googling it.
Look, I hate Facebook just as much as the next guy. But I live in The Netherlands and it's the primary way I can contact literally everyone I know. So changing to another messaging app is hard here.
In some countries like India, people just assume that everyone uses whatsapp. It's gotten to the point where whatsapp has become the definition of messaging (for most people).
I don't see how Whatsapp is outdated to the point where one would compare it to IE, but I'll say whatsapp is more like Google Chrome than IE.
That's the reality in most of the world nowadays. Latin America is exactly the same (including Brazil) and while traveling through Europe every single Airbnb communication with the hosts was made through WhatsApp... 8 years ago, I imagine it's even more massive now.
My last trip to the US a co-worker was really surprised I kept sending voice notes and I realized I haven't called my wife in at least my last 3 trips... But we communicate a lot. Async is way better than sync.
Except it does nearly everything any other messaging app does, so there really is no need to force a switch. Unlike Internet Explorer, that used outdated rendering engine making it both slow and buggy, it was unsafe as it used ActiveX, didn't support ad-blockers it actually broke or didn't open most new website.
Interoperability is a weird one though. Imagine WhatsApp can connect to Signal, and people use this feature. What would then be the point of using Signal, if WhatsApp gets the data after all?
(Signal has already announced not wanting to support this, I just used it as an example)
As I understand it, your example should be the other way around. WhatsApp will need to offer a public API to allow Signal to send and receive messages to/from WhatsApp users.
Signal is unlikely to be deemed a gatekeeper, so can keep their closed communication ecosystem. They can just optionally choose to support interop with WhatsApp. If they prefer, they can also have big warning signs in the UI, when their users decide to utilize that interop.
Whatever way it works, I could see people giving up certain services if they allow interoperability with the gatekeepers, because why use these alternatives then.
But then again, the services that take privacy seriously won't do it in the first place, so it should be a non-issue.
Since WhatsApp is proprietary, we don't know if the users are the only ones who can decrypt their messages. I'll always have to assume Meta can read everything, which is the most sensible data they could possibly collect.
So that alone should be reason enough to avoid it.
Yes. I don't endorse WhatsApp. What I meant is if you chat with 15 people out of which 5 use WhatsApp, only those 5 chats are potentially readable by Meta. Because those are the only chats which will get sent to Meta servers.
So you have the benefit that the other 10 chats are not readable by Meta.
At this point I just assume Meta, Google and Apple have my number due to people storing the number on their devices. Amazon also might have it because people might have paid me via Amazon Pay (and given it access to contacts).
I saw the technical discussions (if you are a tech person I would recommend watching those on YT) and it seems that EU is trying to find some middle ground where companies won't have to incur a lot of losses but still be open and create a fair environment for newcomers.
Telegram is a superior messaging app but it's privacy is questionable. The fact that they keep their encryption protocol hidden is bothersome and they aren't e2ee by default. And as stated before, it's not certain their e2ee is as private as they claim.
Yeah telegram may be better but the amount of people who use it is very few, the only people I know uses telegram is for porn or download movies and song, not for messaging. In the actual state telegram doesn't worth it because probably you circle of friends doesn't use it. Of course this is the case of my friends and my country (Colombia) where it's more probably find one to use WhatsApp than telegram
WhatsApp seems very conservative with adding new features. I generally feel the features they do decide to add are all pretty useful. Telegram on the other hand doesn't ever seem to slow down with the new features. Many of them seem great, but just as many I would never use. I'm still wondering why Telegram won't introduce end-to-end encryption as a default.
I'd say Viber is worse (unbearably slow, has ads), and it's the most used messaging app in Ukraine which just sucks. (basically everyone has it)
people are slowly switching over to Telegram but it still has less then 50% market share...
I wish I could say the same but if you want to date you have to here. I despise and absolutely hate how you have to you use a phone number to register. And then every contact you have can add you to a group so everyone there now can have your number.
I've had a stalker before and I hate that stuff like that makes it trivially easy for her to get my number again. I literally can't understand how women are okay with absolutely shitty systems like this.
I really can't repeat enough how much I strongly hate WhatsApp and how everyone else thinks it's so good for exactly the reason that I hate it. It's too easy to send messages despite me never giving you my number to begin with. SMS is the same but you can't add me to a group without my permission and share my number with a group of people I don't know.
If you live in most of Europe or definitely Latin America, yeah, it is so popular it's kind of inconceivable not to use it, or at least hard to imagine. I genuinely don't understand how people in the US communicate.
I've used SMS exactly 3 times in my life, all 10+ years ago. My phone plan doesn't even include SMS anymore. It boggles my mind that people use SMS in the US, and I mean that seriously.
Matrix or Signal only for me. nobody uses Whatsapp here in the states, sms is simply insecure in every way, and telegram has very suspicious roots imo, along with a lack of e2ee and a terrible ui.
signal is the most secure option and matrix is federated making it the most "open" option.
Except people at one point realized that IE is shit and switched to better alternatives. I don't see this happening with WhatsApp - everyone and their great grandfather uses it and all other messengers are niche occurrences
Reading the links provided would have answered your question.
Provisions for ensuring a higher degree of data portability, interoperability, and access to data for the platform's business and end-users.
There is some discussion on if this means that 3rd party apps can develop for chat platforms, and it seems so at face value. eg, gaim/pidgin or trillian can make a come-back and you can use whatever client you want to access the Whatsapp platform. Nothing would then stop an app from natively integrating whatsapps apis alongside their own.
Technically, unironically, its latest desktop version for Windows is better than expected. It's no longer based on Electron or whatever, consumes less resources than before and works adequately.
I'm not old enough to remember XMPP first-hand, so allow me to ask what functionality you mean.
Do you mean to imply a fediverse, where whatsapp.com is merely an instance, such as lemmy.world is here?
Regarding security, yes. Other than that, Beeper allows you to centralize all kinds of messaging apps into one pretty nice (and open-source AFAIK) UI. Currently using it for all my hardly-used communication channels.
Who the fuck cares. Nobody is going to start listening to him based on a dumb meme, just like nobody is going to start dating bees based on a dumb meme.
I have WhatsApp and Viber. 95% of people use WhatsApp, even though I prefer Viber.
I do not really have anything against it, even if FB owns it.
And I do not have a FB account.
Best messaging app is the one that has most users and is free to use.
Sadly the truth is so simple, that's why everyone in Asia, Europe, Africa and South America use WhatsApp.
Am in Europe and have never used Whatsapp. In fact, the only guy I know who does started using it because the company he was with at the time had a lot of business in Shanghai where they DO use it a lot.
Unencrypted by default, dubious e2e encryption, proprietary backend, based in Russia and later Saudi Arabia (if I'm not mistaken), which aren't really known for their good stance on privacy.
It's featureful, so it's fine if you don't really care for the privacy of the conversations you're having in there, otherwise you have way better applications/protocols out there
Yea people here aren’t a big fan of Telegram sometimes but it’s still much more privacy oriented than most main-stream messengers, and it’s just a very well-made app
It’s fast, supports uncompressed file sending, can log in on multiple phones at once, has cute stickers, customizable appearance, etc
The moment when I hear someone talking about SMS it is almost always an American. Can’t recall the last time I sent a text message to someone like that, wouldn’t surprise me if it was 10 years ago (for context: am Dutch)
It's not just the US, but you gotta realize that SMS has advantages. It isn't better than any other protocol, but it has the major benefit of not being tied to internet connectivity. There are a ton of places where data signals aren't as reliable.
It's universal, in that every carrier I've heard of has it. So it should work no matter what carrier you're on.
It will work right out of the box with any phone you buy because it's carrier based. You don't have to install anything else to use it. You don't have an extra login, no need to remember another password.
It's simple. You type, and that's it. No attachments (that's mms), no stickers, no junk. This makes it fast and easy for anyone to use.
And, you don't have to convince anyone else to install anything.
Obviously, there's benefits to data messaging, I'm not saying there aren't. I use other messaging way more than SMS, and have for maybe a decade now, though what I've used has changed over time.
But, yah, we yanks tend to value it more than the other countries where it's still important. That goes back to the pricing when data became a thing. Anywhere that data was cheap but sms merered, adopted things like whatsapp. Anywhere that sms was cheap, but data expensive used SMS by default. Iirc, Canada is the other big SMS focused nation. I think there's one or two in SEA, and the same in south America. I don't recall any of Europe having been sms focused, nor Africa.
TBH though, I tend to not get why anyone cares what another country uses within its own system. Like, if the EU did away with SMS entirely, it wouldn't prevent the US and Canada from having SMS. And if we did away with messengers via data (as dumb as it would be), y'all would still be fine.
The only time it matters is for international, or directly cross border communication. But there's multiple standards for that kind of communication anyway. Me and you aren't going to exchange phone numbers to use SMS, nor are we likely to use whatsapp together. If we struck up a friendship, we'd figure out what platform we both like, and use it. Since this is lemmy, I suspect it would be matrix or signal or maybe telegram.
That "lot of people" probably represent less than 1% of the population. "Normal" people don't use alternatives to SMS because they're more secure, they used them because otherwise they wouldn't be able to communicate with their friends.
You're on a platform where the privacy and open source crowd has a big stronghold, normies don't give a crap about that.
Heck, I'm very tech literate and the only reason I've got an alternative installed on my phone is because I've got two friends with whom it's become a meme that we use anything but SMS, everything else I do via SMS/MMS/RCS.
1% if the population is a lot of people, and encryption is becoming more and more important to "normal" people, otherwise WhatsApp etc. wouldn't be making such a big deal about it as a feature.
If you're using WhatsApp only because you need to pay for SMS or all your friends who have to pay for SMS use it, is privacy such a big deal to you?
The only reason I ever had it installed was because I became friends with people from other countries that had to pay for SMS when we didn't, they would have otherwise used SMS because it's a no brainer to just use the tech that doesn't require data and that's available by default.
Absolutely! Like I said, other protocols have their own beneft, and that's a huge one. It's why SMS for me is limited to really bland stuff when I can't get data signal in a store. Even that, I tend to keep my phone off in stores, but when you're doing "emergency" shopping for someone else, you kinda have to give up a little personal preference
Those are interesting points. I think I’m unaware of how many places there are without a proper data connection. I guess The Netherlands being this small has its benefits! Granted I haven’t traveled everywhere in the Netherlands but whenever I travel somewhere I have a proper connection.
While you are right that sms is the simplest form of messaging a phone can provide, I think nowadays everybody, their parents, and their grandparents know how to WhatsApp, but that might be limited to the Netherlands?
I can’t speak for the rest of Europe but we used to have all kinds of deals to make sms cheap, you could send 1000 messages for 10 bucks. Slowly but surely the internet connectivity as we know it today came around, and while there were still limits on the amount of SMS you could send in the early days, I’m pretty sure we haven’t had those for a while! Maybe we’re just too used to WhatsApp now.
I send SM's to my kids when they're on the go, as they religiously disable gsm data and only use wifi, which means they regularly don't get my WhatsApp messages.
Before they got their own smartphone I was scared that their data plans would cost me an arm and a leg, but it turns out they're extremely stingy with their data 🤷♂️
An irrational fear of suddenly using all of it up. Before they got their phones, we drilled it into them to be conservative in their data usage.
It's not that they complain that they have too little data, or how annoying it is that they have to leave it switched off to conserve it, they somehow are convinced that it is pointless to leave it on. We have mentioned numerous times that we'd be fine with upgrading their data plan, but they don't want to.
It's like us in the nineties dialing into our ISP to download e-mail. Weird. Cheap. But weird.
That’s interesting. I know a lot of people who WhatsApp with their grandparents though. All you have to do is install it on their phones once and then their phone becomes “the WhatsApp” in my experience
Yeah, same here. In Germany WhatsApp is extremely dominant. I tried to move to Threema, but only a couple of people are using it in the end, even after discussing the whole Facebook thing.
Some people are also on Signal, but again, only a few. In the end, especially for groups, I still have to use WhatsApp.
featureset and costs - most messaging apps don't support markdown to the same extent, sms and mms may cost extra depending on your carrier and contract, etc.
not defending whatsapp but rather the concept in general - use signal/discord myself depending on the situation
The messaging thats built in is unencrypted SMS. For more advanced features like group chats, sending media, voice notes, encryption, cross device support etc, an encrypted messaging app like Signal, Session , Matrix or even Telegram is better
My wife has an iPhone, I have an Android phone, our kid has Android, his wife has iPhone... there have been zero problems using the native apps singly or in groups.
In fact, I had more problems trying a low-rent provider (Mint) than I ever did the various stock messaging apps.
I have Android, my wife has iOS, I can chat with her singly and in group chat with other family members, I don't see a need to complicate things with another chat application.
It's just the default app that came with my phone. Encryption isn't important to me unless someone really wants to snoop on who may or may not have forgotten to buy toilet paper. LOL. We aren't talking trade secrets here.
I only use it because there's no way I could convince my friends and family to move to anything else.
There's no point in switching to another app if I then literally couldn't communicate with the people I need to through it.
I've been using Beeper a month or two. They had a long waiting list, and initially it was subscription only, but they are working on smashing through the waiting list and have changed to a freemium model where you get it for free and (eventually) they will have extra features for subscribers.
Basically, it's one chat app that connects to lots of different chat services.
If you're technical, the app is a fork of Element, and the service uses matrix bridges to connect to different chat services, but it's all presented in a (somewhat) polished way. The wait list is because they are still struggling with scaling and quirks but if you're on Lemmy you're probably already well familiar with putting up with this.
It covers heaps of chat networks. Whatsapp, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Signal, Telegram, and more. It also will let you SMS (unlike Signal 😬).
You can also connect to Matrix rooms but you don't seem to be able to connect to an existing Matrix account (it uses a Beeper matrix account to connect).
It doesn't do video/audio calls so they recommend you leave the original app installed and disable message notifications (but leave on call notifications) if you use this.
app is closed source :/
Looks cool though
Yep. But if you're keen on this stuff, you can self host matrix and the bridges and do it yourself. Their bridges are open source, just not their apps whose features are their business model.
A modern-day Trillian.
That's interesting!
I'm just not sure the "security" of WhatsApp is preserved in that case but it's certainly better than not being able to talk to certain people at all.
Also I think these kind of meta chat apps have been tried before and it usually doesn't end very well so I'm not sure I would be super optimistic.
Any of the chat provider can break their link to beeper and since they probably don't really care about it it shouldn't very reliable.
But a cool find nonetheless!
Well, that's super neat and very useful for my circumstances. I'm moving outside of the US soon to a place where WhatsApp is dominant, but I still want to use SMS/MMS with family and friends in the US since I doubt they'll make the switch. I've been using WhatsApp for about a year now while coordinating stuff for my soon-to-be home and I've come to the conclusion that WhatsApp is complete garbage.
Nice. Looking into this one. Although in reality I use about 95% whatsapp just because everyone else does. Wish we could all just switch to Signal or even Telegram but nah... Whatsapp is so engrained everywhere that it is not going to go away anytime soon.
Signal kinda put themselves out of the messaging app battle when they dropped SMS support
I totally get why they did it, but I think a lot of people stopped using it for this reason, unfortunately
I don't really want to start a debate on the Signal SMS dropout but ...
They could have put a big red warning and a disclaimer you have to read once for the unsecured SMS. It would have been fine.
Yes, you would have to maintain that but I think it would definitely have been worth it considering how much reach they lost dropping this feature.
I stopped using Signal when they did, and that's one less tech user advertising their secure app.
It's a shame because I think this will slowly kill the project.
I tend to agree
I don't think anyone uses or cares about SMS where I live
Lucky you. SMS is still the primary way people message each other where I live.
That's rough. I guess at least it's universal
I don't mind it so much. At least it's not Facebook Messenger or Whatsapp. I'd rather die than put those on my phone.
Facebook Messenger is dogshit but WhatsApp works well imo. More features than sms or even rcs. Dogshit privacy though, even if security might be good.
Yeah, I guess I'm not sure about the actual statistics. I do know it was the point when I realized I wouldn't personally use Signal because everyone I know uses SMS, SMS federates with email, and if I tried switching to a non-SMS app, I'd be screaming into a void.
The only other message apps people around here use are Snapchat, FB Messenger, and WhatsApp, and I'd rather cut people off than use any of those.
same here. Heck, even Nextcloud Talk is more sophisticated than frickin' WhatsApp these days...
I literally installed Telegram/Signal on my families devices, synced their contacts with the app, and said “if you want timely responses, message me here”
I think this could help you.
Interesting I’ll look into it thanks
Wait until you hear how many people use facebook messenger.
💀
Yeah, that's the real "internet explorer of messaging services". Absolutely sucks to use it (doesn't even.deliver messages to me half the time), but 90% insist on it for chat groupa and such.
Basically all of Scandinavia
I'll take facebook messenger over whatsapp any day. At least it works on PC and has third party clients
I do have like 2 people I only talk to once or twice a year that I don't have any other known contact for. But I only use it very rarely because of that. If I ever stop talking to them, I'll finally delete the whole account.
Signal is the best.
The thing it's missing the most is better multi device support and an updated desktop client.
For me, I think Matrix is more complete (specially since it backs-up your chats and media encrypted). The only thing it's lacking (at least Element specific) is encrypted chat search support on mobile.
Signal client looks optimized on MacOS and Linux i don’t use Windows so not sure what’s going on there
I use it on windows. The client is totally fine for the most part.
Though for some reason it regularly screws up the device-connection, forcing me to reconnect the device, loosing access to every old message. Seems to be a rare bug though, as my family also uses the windows client and theirs never has this problem (out of 8 device 1 has this problem)
+1 for linux cluent, absolutely no complaints
I register my Signal on off-shore phone number and i use it over MullvadVPN with multi-hop so i think is pretty private this way
I use it for linux. Recently there was a bug where if you had a chat opened, it would pin one core to 100% usage. It also lacks feature parity with the mobile client (ex: gif search and send).
Well Signal Desktop client and Server is running on Java 🥲🥲🥲
There's no way that we can have a mainstream alternative to imessage if we keep declaring a new app or protocol the new best one every two years.
iMessage can't be "the mainstream" app by locking out most of the world tho. Plus it is definitely the ugliest thing Apple has ever made in its lifetime that I know of.
All Google needs to do is make a public RCS API. Then we will have all the important features iMessage has on Android via regular texting. I have no fucking clue why they are making RCS exclusive to their messaging app.
I think have settled into what they know.
I think that iMessage is only prevelant in North America. Here in Europe (Portugal, at least), everyone uses Whatsapp.
Hopefully the new MLS for app interoperability will ease the adoption of any newer app
Yeah, it sucks that if I were using Signal only on my phone and eventually decide to start using it on desktop, it doesn't sync any conversation history, resulting in the desktop client showing nothing from before you set it up. It should have older devices send history to new ones. If you're permanently switching devices, are you losing that history for good?
Nope, you can backup the chats and import them when installing Signal on the new device
Hadn't thought of that!
Still waiting for the ability to log in one two phones, and ideally also uncompressed photo/file sending
But yea Signal is great
SimpleX or Matrix are way better
Session is good too but is only used by IT people… Signal is used by lawyers and many more
SimpleX >>>> Matrix
I don't think it's really a chat app. Isn't it just a text replacement? Or does it just use that number as your ID to use it? I have it, but only ever used it with one guy.
It has lots of nice features over SMS: read/typing notifications, image/video support, proper groups, message expiration. I think that makes it a chat app
I have all those features with Google Messages (as long as I'm not talking to an iPhone user).
Signal's UI has improved a lot though. Still I only know one person that uses it.
I was implying mms as well. Didn't know about the other additions. I only knew one person with it, and we haven't spoken in years.
I wish people would stop using the Crowder meme template.
Same. We even have a nice alternative. https://postimg.cc/rzvDYFXW
From now on, I'll adhere to the "Calvin: Change my mind" meme format. Thank you for your input. 🫡
Oh shit that is him! I never even noticed before. Major ick.
Why?
Because he's an asshole. A grifting asshole to be specific.
I feel like I would never get along with anyone who has an attitude of "I believe X. Change my mind." I can't imagine anyone starting a conversation that way is not an asshole.
i used to think it was a cool argument style like 6 years ago (i was probably 14) til i learned he was a nut and the change my mind is because of the republican (and religous) fear of being wrong not because he ever wanted his mind changed
i almost took the pill tho i luckily saved myself using critical thinking and not really caring about politics. i just wanted to hear a "smart" guy talk.
Oh i get it now. The person in the photo is an asshole in real life. It only took me a day of wondering why would someone be an asshole for not liking a meme template 😅
How come?
He’s a right wing piece of shit who constantly says and does the most unhinged shit. Don’t really follow him, but from the top of my head, he mocked George Floyd’s death, he mocks trans people on a regular basis..
Hahahaha u mad?
You bad.
Eh, whatsapp isn't ideal and its owner is one of the big devils of today, but it's the only way to send and receive instant messages among billions of people. I despise it, but it's the only way I can contact people. Needless to say, they don't give a single flying fuck about privacy.
Whatsapp outages make people migrate to Telegram for 1-2 days at most, nobody ends up staying there. Signal? I've only ever met three other people in RL who have even heard of it, and I work in IT.
A more apt comparison would be to languages. Whatsapp is english: clunky, weird, full of nonsense, but it's what "everyone talks". Signal would probably be lojban or esperanto.
This is SMS in the US. No one uses WhatsApp, telegram or matrix. Every iphone user uses imessage and so we are stuck with SMS.
As a Signal user and an Esperantist I agree. They both require a somewhat curious mind for you to bump into them in the first place. Unless you have that friend/relative who always recommends weird stuff for you (to ignore).
Yeah, but I disagree. Signal doesn’t require that by design, it’s just as easy to use as WhatsApp (unlike something like Matrix or Lemmy). It’s just as easy to switch and has a better privacy. And while I even don’t use it much, I actually know quite some people on it (majority of which is non-techy).
Most (non-techy) people haven't heard from it and don't bother searching for alternatives since WA is ubiquitous.
Why would it even be weird or anything? I only use Signal and its pretty much the same as whatsapp on the outside...just in blue. The only reason people dont use it is because "eVerYonE hAs WhAtsApP" and they dont bother. 20 useless crap apps but 2 messengers is too much
as another signal user and esperantist, i unfortunately agree as well. but it doesnt have to be like this
Signal was fantastic until they stupidly killed SMS integration.
I'm not sure I have all of them, but I regularly use (privately)
I'm tired boss.
Look into Beeper! It just got RCS support in its last update. Not sure if they plan on supporting Teams though.
If you're tech savvy though, look into setting up your own Matrix server for a Teams bridge.
Beeper looks amazing but is waiting list only.
A very short one. It's technically open to everyone now!
Well that's great news! I joined the wait-list last week and got an email saying they'd get back to me when I could get access.
I have never used Whatsapp nor does anyone I know.
Murican, I suppose.
It's mostly not used in the US afaik. I've seen it in a lot of places in Europe and the middle east
According to Statista, 41% of 'muricans use it, which is a rather low number. Meanwhile, Brazil is the whatsapp country, in terms of percentage. In total numbers, that'd be India, as it's the most populous country in the world.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1311229/whatsapp-usage-messaging-app-users-by-country/
Chrome is the Internet Explorer of the browsers.
SMS is IE, Whatsapp is Chrome, and Signal is Firefox. Use Signal/Firefox.
I disagree. IE was incredibly proprietary, and SMS is at least an open standard.
IE is...idk Facebook messenger or Imessage or something.
ICQ
Ahh Trillian and Miranda memories...
So how do I get my friends to use Signal instead of fucking Facebook messenger?
You can educate them if they ask but otherwise you can't force them because most people are very resistant to this type of thing.
Your best option is to stop using FB messenger yourself and tell them they can reach you on Signal. If they're really your friends, I'd like to imagine they'd follow you over. If your friend group switches, more people are sure to follow which will help speed along mass adoption and normalization via word of mouth to other friends and family.
What is Beeper/Matrix? Although I'm from the golden age of Trillian/MirandaIM 😆
This is whole other category :)
Nah. SMS and iMessage are the IE of messaging. Unsafe and locked in.
iMessage I'll give you, but how is SMS locked in? It's a completely open standard.
I was thinking of SMS alternatives at a carrier level... But yeah, you're right.
Fuck Steven Crowder and any meme based on his bullshit
Who's Steve Crowder?
A asshole conservative influencer whose bad faith knows no bounds. He's also recently been in the news for treating his ex wife like a slave/property. Really creepy shit.
Tldr; he's a huge asshole.
You can say fascist, it's okay.
True. Fascists are sort of like the ultimate assholes though.
Wait wtf?
Oh yeah. The videos are horrific imo
But the memes are 👌
Fair
The why has been explained, but everyone assumes you know who Steven Crowder is. He's the guy in the meme.
If you already realized that, that's fine. It was a recent discovery for me.
Everyone always says this every time this meme is posted without explaining why he sucks. I'm not motivated enough to Google it. Yes, I understand the irony of the fact that I'm writing this, and could have just googled it in the amount of time I've taken to type this out. I'm still not googling it.
He's a conservative talking head who likes to rage bait anyone further left on the spectrum than him.
I say this based on an admittedly extremely limited bit of information, and a heavy helping of just guessing about the rest.
This right here might be one of the reasons
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=u2z_Z3p8yGY
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Look, I hate Facebook just as much as the next guy. But I live in The Netherlands and it's the primary way I can contact literally everyone I know. So changing to another messaging app is hard here.
Steven Crowder is the wife abuser of the meme world.
signal and telegram are so much better, don't know why we can't get over that shit app
In some countries like India, people just assume that everyone uses whatsapp. It's gotten to the point where whatsapp has become the definition of messaging (for most people).
I don't see how Whatsapp is outdated to the point where one would compare it to IE, but I'll say whatsapp is more like Google Chrome than IE.
That's the reality in most of the world nowadays. Latin America is exactly the same (including Brazil) and while traveling through Europe every single Airbnb communication with the hosts was made through WhatsApp... 8 years ago, I imagine it's even more massive now.
My last trip to the US a co-worker was really surprised I kept sending voice notes and I realized I haven't called my wife in at least my last 3 trips... But we communicate a lot. Async is way better than sync.
Here, use this:
Except it does nearly everything any other messaging app does, so there really is no need to force a switch. Unlike Internet Explorer, that used outdated rendering engine making it both slow and buggy, it was unsafe as it used ActiveX, didn't support ad-blockers it actually broke or didn't open most new website.
I hope that the DMA gets passed in the EU. It'll (hopefully) break the monopoly worldwide
Interoperability is a weird one though. Imagine WhatsApp can connect to Signal, and people use this feature. What would then be the point of using Signal, if WhatsApp gets the data after all?
(Signal has already announced not wanting to support this, I just used it as an example)
As I understand it, your example should be the other way around. WhatsApp will need to offer a public API to allow Signal to send and receive messages to/from WhatsApp users.
Signal is unlikely to be deemed a gatekeeper, so can keep their closed communication ecosystem. They can just optionally choose to support interop with WhatsApp. If they prefer, they can also have big warning signs in the UI, when their users decide to utilize that interop.
Whatever way it works, I could see people giving up certain services if they allow interoperability with the gatekeepers, because why use these alternatives then.
But then again, the services that take privacy seriously won't do it in the first place, so it should be a non-issue.
The point is that anyone could switch at any time and we wouldn't have to make switch all at once.
There would be real competition.
True. However there are certain advantages
I know it's not perfect but better than the current scenario and a step in the right direction
Since WhatsApp is proprietary, we don't know if the users are the only ones who can decrypt their messages. I'll always have to assume Meta can read everything, which is the most sensible data they could possibly collect.
So that alone should be reason enough to avoid it.
Yes. I don't endorse WhatsApp. What I meant is if you chat with 15 people out of which 5 use WhatsApp, only those 5 chats are potentially readable by Meta. Because those are the only chats which will get sent to Meta servers.
So you have the benefit that the other 10 chats are not readable by Meta.
Yeah, true. And concerning your name and phone number, they probably already have that too, one way or another.
At this point I just assume Meta, Google and Apple have my number due to people storing the number on their devices. Amazon also might have it because people might have paid me via Amazon Pay (and given it access to contacts).
Oh man, I hadn't heard of the DMA before. How exciting!
I only heard of it because I follow Matrix blog.
I saw the technical discussions (if you are a tech person I would recommend watching those on YT) and it seems that EU is trying to find some middle ground where companies won't have to incur a lot of losses but still be open and create a fair environment for newcomers.
I think it's already been passed, it should be coming into force next year!
Oh wow. TIL! Any recommendws sources? I want to read the full coverage
Oh yeah it says it directly on the wiki page you linked XD
Lmao my bad. Thanks I'll read up about it.
Its privacy is very questionable, but how is it outdated?
Telegram laughs in the corner Whatsapp is copying telegram features that are implemented years before
Telegram is a superior messaging app but it's privacy is questionable. The fact that they keep their encryption protocol hidden is bothersome and they aren't e2ee by default. And as stated before, it's not certain their e2ee is as private as they claim.
IIRC they did publish their encryption protocol, at least a lot of information about it is here. It's true E2EE is not enabled by default.
In the end, both encryption protocols are hidden. We can't really be sure they use what they say they are using in both cases.
TG has become a very big source of Piracy in recent years.
People only use TG for that mostly at this point.
How is that, in any way, answering the question?! You could mention some of those features...
It's copying features that hangouts has abandon.
Sorry, I don't have Twitter, I tried opening the profile, but it keeps blocking me, even Nitter and Squawker don't work
Edit: uhh, why did you edit out asking me to look up Telegram X's Twitter profile? Now I look dumb lol
Yeah telegram may be better but the amount of people who use it is very few, the only people I know uses telegram is for porn or download movies and song, not for messaging. In the actual state telegram doesn't worth it because probably you circle of friends doesn't use it. Of course this is the case of my friends and my country (Colombia) where it's more probably find one to use WhatsApp than telegram
WhatsApp seems very conservative with adding new features. I generally feel the features they do decide to add are all pretty useful. Telegram on the other hand doesn't ever seem to slow down with the new features. Many of them seem great, but just as many I would never use. I'm still wondering why Telegram won't introduce end-to-end encryption as a default.
Op thinks only the USA exists apparently
I'm from india
Yo from india too
Told
I stole this meme from a comment🫣
[deleted]
Can we further compress this meme template to the point that nobody could possibly tell it's Stephen Crowder in it
here you go:
it's 5.6 kB webp
That's surprisingly high quality for something measured in 4 digit bytes
Beautiful, thank you
Crowder... ugh. What a terrible human being.
I never have any problems Whatsapp. My messages get sent and I receive messages no problem.
Yeah the real problem is giving Facebook any control at all over your messaging experience.
And the player above is the problem that you can't send messages to someone on WhatsApp withour having their app too...
I'd say Viber is worse (unbearably slow, has ads), and it's the most used messaging app in Ukraine which just sucks. (basically everyone has it)
people are slowly switching over to Telegram but it still has less then 50% market share...
Whatsapp is still supported
I’ve somehow never used WhatsApp.
You must not be from Europe or Brazil then
pls send help
Oh, that recruitment agent sometime ago.
Are you using facebook?
No
Whatsapp?
No
Xing?
No
...
Hey, just send me an E-Mail.
Gigachad.
I on the other hand was actually pleasantly surprised when I got contacted by a recruiter on Matrix , that was the best feeling ever
Me too
Same. I hate all these messaging apps people use. Unless you need security, then just use the one your phone already has. Otherwise use signal.
I wish I could say the same but if you want to date you have to here. I despise and absolutely hate how you have to you use a phone number to register. And then every contact you have can add you to a group so everyone there now can have your number.
I've had a stalker before and I hate that stuff like that makes it trivially easy for her to get my number again. I literally can't understand how women are okay with absolutely shitty systems like this. I really can't repeat enough how much I strongly hate WhatsApp and how everyone else thinks it's so good for exactly the reason that I hate it. It's too easy to send messages despite me never giving you my number to begin with. SMS is the same but you can't add me to a group without my permission and share my number with a group of people I don't know.
How though
No idea. It’s just not a platform anyone in my life has used in a manner that dragged me in.
Cool
Surely it can't be so popular it's inconceivable to you that someone hasn't used it.
If you live in most of Europe or definitely Latin America, yeah, it is so popular it's kind of inconceivable not to use it, or at least hard to imagine. I genuinely don't understand how people in the US communicate.
You text someone. What're you talking about?
If you send an SMS in Europe, you get no answer most of the time
All the better
I've used SMS exactly 3 times in my life, all 10+ years ago. My phone plan doesn't even include SMS anymore. It boggles my mind that people use SMS in the US, and I mean that seriously.
It is. To stay in contact with anyone you need whatsapp.
Well I'm glad that isn't happening here, because I would just have to miss everything.
Matrix or Signal only for me. nobody uses Whatsapp here in the states, sms is simply insecure in every way, and telegram has very suspicious roots imo, along with a lack of e2ee and a terrible ui.
signal is the most secure option and matrix is federated making it the most "open" option.
Someone has not used Line...
I've only seen it being used in Japan. Are there other places where its widely used?
No.
That's not correct, it's widely used in Thailand and Taiwan.
I love Cony and Brown but I'm never using that app.
Line is awesome, didn't know people hated it.
Except people at one point realized that IE is shit and switched to better alternatives. I don't see this happening with WhatsApp - everyone and their great grandfather uses it and all other messengers are niche occurrences
In the EU, Microsoft also got forced to tell people about alternative browsers. Maybe the DMA will be WhatsApp's equivalent.
Reading the links provided would have answered your question.
There is some discussion on if this means that 3rd party apps can develop for chat platforms, and it seems so at face value. eg, gaim/pidgin or trillian can make a come-back and you can use whatever client you want to access the Whatsapp platform. Nothing would then stop an app from natively integrating whatsapps apis alongside their own.
sigh
Reading the links provided would have stopped you from writing this comment.
No company is going to risk losing 10% of all their total monies for non-compliance.
Facebook is estimated to make 116.6 billion US dollars per year. They will not give up 11.7 billion dollars every year as a fine.
But they will be forced to.
Weird, I don't know anybody that uses WhatsApp.
Are you American by any chance?
Technically, unironically, its latest desktop version for Windows is better than expected. It's no longer based on Electron or whatever, consumes less resources than before and works adequately.
That said, I still don't like it.
Right click on .config file, left click on show more options, left click on edit with Notepad++.
Fuck you Microsoft!
It has become better, though.
Have they fixed the problem where you have to use your phone number as your ID?
Cos that's what's stopping me signing up. I refuse to use my phone number as my ID for a service that isn't actually carried over SMS or phone calls.
WhatsApp and Telegram become this big, including less recognized Signal, because they use phone numbers.
It won't be changed, ever.
WhatsApp functionality is closer and closer to functionality of XMPP 10 years ago.
Maybe after another 10 years they finally adopt [email protected] function.
I'm not old enough to remember XMPP first-hand, so allow me to ask what functionality you mean. Do you mean to imply a fediverse, where whatsapp.com is merely an instance, such as lemmy.world is here?
Telegram is better in pretty much every way, and has been for almost a decade
Messaging Apps are only as good as whatever Apps most people use.
Regarding security, yes. Other than that, Beeper allows you to centralize all kinds of messaging apps into one pretty nice (and open-source AFAIK) UI. Currently using it for all my hardly-used communication channels.
telegram isn't even e2ee, why would anyone recommend it.
.... The comparison, here, is WhatsApp, so
Besides, surprisingly people like cross-device sync even if they happen to not have access to their old devices
Telegram's frontend apps*
WhatsApp is usually 2 years behind Telegram for all cool and interesting features.
It has at least one advantage relative to ie6.exe - it's cross platform.
i think we should stop using this specific variation of the meme even though it's the original because crowder is cringe
Isn't he that trumpy guy? I have no idea
Uber Trump guy who also abused his wife. He also loves dressing on drag (no issue with that) despite wanting drag shows banned.
Who the fuck cares. Nobody is going to start listening to him based on a dumb meme, just like nobody is going to start dating bees based on a dumb meme.
I gained a bee fetish from memes' power of suggestion
Oh myyyy. I'm somewhat of a bee myself.
Not simply cringe, but so many faults, there are too many to name. Pick one.
what did he do?
I have WhatsApp and Viber. 95% of people use WhatsApp, even though I prefer Viber. I do not really have anything against it, even if FB owns it. And I do not have a FB account.
Best messaging app is the one that has most users and is free to use. Sadly the truth is so simple, that's why everyone in Asia, Europe, Africa and South America use WhatsApp.
Am in Europe and have never used Whatsapp. In fact, the only guy I know who does started using it because the company he was with at the time had a lot of business in Shanghai where they DO use it a lot.
Its ubiquitous here in Spain, too.
in belgium it's probably the most popular messaging app.
Messaging app that needs to have a lot of users in order to be usable is shit.
No ability to send a message to user of other app should be the biggest disadvantage.
more like netscape....
WhatsApp is like hemorrhoids, you can try to ignore it but it's getting your attention eventually no matter how hard you try.
And all the Europeans have it
Southern Africa would like a word... Even the BANKING system is in the boat...
Definitely tje easiest way to have a family group chat between multiple countries.
thatsthejoke.jpg
And we're proud!
No, I don’t think I will.
Aim wants a word.
in our country we use viber and I don't know which one is worse
That is a spicy take I must day
How you interpret this comment is like an age test.
My cousins and I used to stay up until the early hours of the morning using TextPlus on our ipods lol
Then what is facebook messenger? Netscape?
Not the IE, the telex
I've been out of touch since IRC and ICQ were the preferred way to communicate over the internet. What are folks using nowadays?
But its a privately owned product and capitalism breeds innovation?
This is the stupidest use of this stupid meme with this stupid piece of shit that I've ever seen
Even Zuckerberg uses signal.
#TelegramMasterRace
Bruh, seriously?
What do you have against it?
Unencrypted by default, dubious e2e encryption, proprietary backend, based in Russia and later Saudi Arabia (if I'm not mistaken), which aren't really known for their good stance on privacy.
It's featureful, so it's fine if you don't really care for the privacy of the conversations you're having in there, otherwise you have way better applications/protocols out there
I'm pretty sure it's used exclusively by flat earthers and antivaxxers
Everytime one of my phone contacts signs up to telegram, they are either tech guys/girls or conspiracy theorists.
Yea people here aren’t a big fan of Telegram sometimes but it’s still much more privacy oriented than most main-stream messengers, and it’s just a very well-made app
It’s fast, supports uncompressed file sending, can log in on multiple phones at once, has cute stickers, customizable appearance, etc
I really don't get the need to have an app that does messaging. My phone DOES messaging, built in. Why do I need another one?
I assume you're American? When you need to talk to people across borders you need something like WhatsApp. SMS doesn't cut it.
I'd rather use Signal but whatever.. I'm being practical. Everyone I know is on WhatsApp.
The moment when I hear someone talking about SMS it is almost always an American. Can’t recall the last time I sent a text message to someone like that, wouldn’t surprise me if it was 10 years ago (for context: am Dutch)
For most of us Europeans, SMS is like using smoke signs or pigeons
It's not just the US, but you gotta realize that SMS has advantages. It isn't better than any other protocol, but it has the major benefit of not being tied to internet connectivity. There are a ton of places where data signals aren't as reliable.
It's universal, in that every carrier I've heard of has it. So it should work no matter what carrier you're on.
It will work right out of the box with any phone you buy because it's carrier based. You don't have to install anything else to use it. You don't have an extra login, no need to remember another password.
It's simple. You type, and that's it. No attachments (that's mms), no stickers, no junk. This makes it fast and easy for anyone to use.
And, you don't have to convince anyone else to install anything.
Obviously, there's benefits to data messaging, I'm not saying there aren't. I use other messaging way more than SMS, and have for maybe a decade now, though what I've used has changed over time.
But, yah, we yanks tend to value it more than the other countries where it's still important. That goes back to the pricing when data became a thing. Anywhere that data was cheap but sms merered, adopted things like whatsapp. Anywhere that sms was cheap, but data expensive used SMS by default. Iirc, Canada is the other big SMS focused nation. I think there's one or two in SEA, and the same in south America. I don't recall any of Europe having been sms focused, nor Africa.
TBH though, I tend to not get why anyone cares what another country uses within its own system. Like, if the EU did away with SMS entirely, it wouldn't prevent the US and Canada from having SMS. And if we did away with messengers via data (as dumb as it would be), y'all would still be fine.
The only time it matters is for international, or directly cross border communication. But there's multiple standards for that kind of communication anyway. Me and you aren't going to exchange phone numbers to use SMS, nor are we likely to use whatsapp together. If we struck up a friendship, we'd figure out what platform we both like, and use it. Since this is lemmy, I suspect it would be matrix or signal or maybe telegram.
Fair points, but it's also completely insecure, which is hugely important to a lot of people.
That "lot of people" probably represent less than 1% of the population. "Normal" people don't use alternatives to SMS because they're more secure, they used them because otherwise they wouldn't be able to communicate with their friends.
You're on a platform where the privacy and open source crowd has a big stronghold, normies don't give a crap about that.
Heck, I'm very tech literate and the only reason I've got an alternative installed on my phone is because I've got two friends with whom it's become a meme that we use anything but SMS, everything else I do via SMS/MMS/RCS.
1% if the population is a lot of people, and encryption is becoming more and more important to "normal" people, otherwise WhatsApp etc. wouldn't be making such a big deal about it as a feature.
If you're using WhatsApp only because you need to pay for SMS or all your friends who have to pay for SMS use it, is privacy such a big deal to you?
The only reason I ever had it installed was because I became friends with people from other countries that had to pay for SMS when we didn't, they would have otherwise used SMS because it's a no brainer to just use the tech that doesn't require data and that's available by default.
Absolutely! Like I said, other protocols have their own beneft, and that's a huge one. It's why SMS for me is limited to really bland stuff when I can't get data signal in a store. Even that, I tend to keep my phone off in stores, but when you're doing "emergency" shopping for someone else, you kinda have to give up a little personal preference
Yeah, it's an excellent fallback due to its ubiquity.
Those are interesting points. I think I’m unaware of how many places there are without a proper data connection. I guess The Netherlands being this small has its benefits! Granted I haven’t traveled everywhere in the Netherlands but whenever I travel somewhere I have a proper connection.
While you are right that sms is the simplest form of messaging a phone can provide, I think nowadays everybody, their parents, and their grandparents know how to WhatsApp, but that might be limited to the Netherlands?
I can’t speak for the rest of Europe but we used to have all kinds of deals to make sms cheap, you could send 1000 messages for 10 bucks. Slowly but surely the internet connectivity as we know it today came around, and while there were still limits on the amount of SMS you could send in the early days, I’m pretty sure we haven’t had those for a while! Maybe we’re just too used to WhatsApp now.
99% of the SMS messages I receive are delivery confirmations and 2FA login codes. I never send any.
I send SM's to my kids when they're on the go, as they religiously disable gsm data and only use wifi, which means they regularly don't get my WhatsApp messages.
Before they got their own smartphone I was scared that their data plans would cost me an arm and a leg, but it turns out they're extremely stingy with their data 🤷♂️
GSM data? Is this 2005? Ahahahahahahah
Why do they they disable data?
An irrational fear of suddenly using all of it up. Before they got their phones, we drilled it into them to be conservative in their data usage. It's not that they complain that they have too little data, or how annoying it is that they have to leave it switched off to conserve it, they somehow are convinced that it is pointless to leave it on. We have mentioned numerous times that we'd be fine with upgrading their data plan, but they don't want to. It's like us in the nineties dialing into our ISP to download e-mail. Weird. Cheap. But weird.
Saves battery too if on a trip.
I think there is plenty of SMS usage in Europe.
It's easy as a technically savy user to lose sight on what less proficient users are using.
Yes, my parents both use perfectly fine their WhatsApp but they still send/receive a lot of SMS.
For context, I'm in France.
That’s interesting. I know a lot of people who WhatsApp with their grandparents though. All you have to do is install it on their phones once and then their phone becomes “the WhatsApp” in my experience
Yeah, same here. In Germany WhatsApp is extremely dominant. I tried to move to Threema, but only a couple of people are using it in the end, even after discussing the whole Facebook thing. Some people are also on Signal, but again, only a few. In the end, especially for groups, I still have to use WhatsApp.
You do know SMS can cross borders too?
I hope you don't mean about SMS.
Any messaging app is vastly superior to SMS
The only built in messaging app on my phone is "Messaging" that only handles SMS/MMS
if you mean the Google "Messaging" App: No, it doesn't only handle MMS/SMS. It does also RCS.
Oh really? Do you know the versions that support it?
https://support.google.com/messages/answer/13508703?hl=de&ref_topic=9459217&sjid=3803875772375299619-EU
I was under the impression that all Messages-Apps on smartphones that aren't completely outdated will do RCS.
This refers to "Messages" (com.google.android.apps.messaging), not "Messaging" (com.android.messaging), which comes with AOSP.
featureset and costs - most messaging apps don't support markdown to the same extent, sms and mms may cost extra depending on your carrier and contract, etc.
not defending whatsapp but rather the concept in general - use signal/discord myself depending on the situation
Fratures like sending location, quoting messages, formatting text etc.
And also encryption (ideally E2E) and maybe privacy (depending on the messenger).
But see, his messages either go through apples servers or googles servers.... what could be the harm in that?
I'm talking about telegram signal and matrix clients
The messaging thats built in is unencrypted SMS. For more advanced features like group chats, sending media, voice notes, encryption, cross device support etc, an encrypted messaging app like Signal, Session , Matrix or even Telegram is better
What is the other person has a phone with different app preinstalled? What if you change your phone?
My wife has an iPhone, I have an Android phone, our kid has Android, his wife has iPhone... there have been zero problems using the native apps singly or in groups.
In fact, I had more problems trying a low-rent provider (Mint) than I ever did the various stock messaging apps.
I have Android, my wife has iOS, I can chat with her singly and in group chat with other family members, I don't see a need to complicate things with another chat application.
It's just the default app that came with my phone. Encryption isn't important to me unless someone really wants to snoop on who may or may not have forgotten to buy toilet paper. LOL. We aren't talking trade secrets here.