Flipping the kill switch: I survived 72 hours without US tech
The EU wants to decrease reliance on American technology. Here’s what happened when a POLITICO reporter tried to live and work without it.
https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-digital-sovereignty-experiment-living-without-us-tech-for-72-hours/Open linkView original on piefed.zip
29 replies
I'll never understand the hold whatsapp has on people
The network effect: If everyone you ever message is there and stays there, it's hard to leave...
Yeah, it’s pretty clear from a sociological perspective: what’s the point of a messaging app you cannot use to message anyone?
I swear sometimes Lemmy people need to go out a bit more often.
I think it's more that Lemmy folks assume a lot of universal context from what they know. So maybe get out more and need to interact with humans, but also experience more of the world.
Some American that only uses iMessage will have no idea what entire continents of people use Whatsapp more than anything else, including to just make calls.
Fr omg, it's like they can't comprehend having a social life
I'll never understand the hold any of these apps have on people.
Go split your emails over 3 different clients and open only some in 1 and others in another.
For me it's no big deal but centralisation feels good in lots of circumstances.
It's not even whatsapp specifically. I used to live in a place that only did Viber. Which is just Whatsapp with ads, themed purple. Everyone was on it, and people on whatsapp were maybe 50/50 at best. But without Viber, you didn't exist and couldn't message anyone and expect a response.
It's physchology I think.
People who feel they need to have regular communal celebration of their every thought and act really struggle to consider losing a few contacts who refuse to move to better alternatives. People who are happy to recieve the same ego strokes through fewer closer peers are ok with the move.
Same with leaving Facebook, Twitter, etc..
Personnaly use it for work too so it's not even just a social thing
With messaging apps unless the new app does something new they want, people won't even think about it. Here in Spain the only other app is telegram because it has a bunch of extra things, if the new app does the same why bother. A year ago I installed Signal, only three of my contacts were there and no one else has appeared since.
Edit: I just checked, now I have 8 contacts on Signal. Yay! Maybe there is hope
Here (Netherlands) basically all our family and friends app groups moved to Signal. Only some groups with parents of the kids’ school class, or colleagues, stubbornly keep clinged to whatsapp. For most cases, some negative news items about whatsapp/Meta/zuckerberg with regards to privacy and/or Zuckerbergs Trump-fetisjism, created enough momentum to move at least half of the group to another app (signal in this case). Afterwards, FOMO usually does the job in getting the other people over as well.
Some people actually have a social life and that often requires texting people that aren't just your close friends you could convince of switching to Signal
The only American software I run is FOSS. I've got no problems with FOSS devs of any country. American corporations are the swollen sore on your lip you keep biting. Get rid of them and the world's your oyster.
I might have to steal this. Eloquently put. :)
I kinda feel like all dumb phones have to do is ship with an Signal client, the lack of WhatsApp was apparently the driving reason why the reporter went back and I think its more reasonable to expect friends to move to Signal than to SMS. (Its also really unsecure)
There are a couple of community made clients I wonder how hard it is to implement the signal protocol.
Signal is American too though
True, but it’s not owned by privacy enemy and trump slave Zuckerberg, or a similar big tech bro
I mean tbh it feels like the EU is putting more pressure on private chats than America does, at least right now. I am not sure how things are in Asia. I think the bigger problem is their reliance on AWS if Bezos or some friend of his does not want Signal to be a thing they can probably just switch it off fairly easy.
It's open. Just compile your own client. Though it's be allowed on the Signal network. So you have speed up a server too. American and open isn't a problem.
To be fair, I recently discovered RCS messages. Very cool. I've been using those quite a bit recently and with many people I do not need Whatsapp anymore.
You can't use RCS without Google, though.
Can't use WhatsApp without Meta. What's your point?
The point is not relying on US tech. It's in the title.
The person went back to the smartphone in order to use WhatsApp. I feel RCS is a better option as it doesn't strictly need Google, the reason why it is google is that google has developed the only application which supports RCS.
I am confused as to why they went with a dumb phone. Why not go with a non american degoogled android phone? Or to even go a step further, get a sailfish OS powered phone.
The narrator did not want to buy things just for an experiment.
Notice this sentence (emphasis mine):
Pardon me if I am being presumptuous but the title seem to imply that the author was going to use somewhat equivalent non US alternatives rather than rummaging through what they already own.
To use an analogy, it is as if you have an article titled "I survived 72 hours without eating processed foods" and the author opted not to buy non processed alternatives and just work with with whatever they have at their home. Then you learn it was a couple of onions and a tomato they had in the fridge. If they say they were starving by the end of the experiment, it does not really paint an honest picture of how hard it is to get by without processed foods.
I believe the title and the article were written by different people