I'd be surprised if many of them didn't just come back. It's kind of hard to give up talking to your friends or being part of some group who communicates in a whatsapp shared thread
Anecdotal: my tight group of 12 tech-unsavvy friends very trepedatiously migrated to Signal after the terms update and I said I'm bailing on WhatsApp whether you're coming with me or not. As soon as the group came over, I got tons of "wow, I like Signal better!". Then the outage happened and I was worried, but everyone stayed and I strongly doubt will go back. Though some do keep WhatsApp for other friends, I think our litte migration will actually cascade into more.
I'd agree with this - so many of my non-tech friends are now on signal and seem to like it. The traction that Signal is getting right now feels like its the classic word-of-mouth organic growth that snowballs quickly. I bet their engineering team is getting stretched right now.
> I bet their engineering team is getting stretched right now.
Last week servers were unstable for about 24hrs. But they did grow by about 10x in approximately a week's time, so that's not entirely surprising. I think it's more surprising that they've been so stable so far.
How technical is that group? My family isn't and they've noted a few times that Signal feels sluggish(therefore not enjoyable) to them and missing stuff they enjoy on WhatsApp, like statuses.
A group of my tech-unsavvy friends were enraged by the privacy policy update and decided to move from Whatsapp too, but decided to move to telegram instead, in spite of me warning that telegram is not encrypted and that if privacy was your concern you should consider signal. I bet they didn't read the privacy notice update and I wouldn't be surprised if they got their information from some Whatsapp forward that misinformed them about the actual contents of the privacy update, ironically.
Turns out there's a lot of misguided and uninformed people too perhaps worse off now than when they used Whatsapp in terms of privacy considering telegram isn't end to end encrypted.
I agree few people are going to switch immediately and permanently, but I reckon they've created a long-term drain on their userbase. The policy change prompted me to finally download Signal (as apparently it did a lot of people), and while I'm currently using both side-by-side and will continue to for the foreseeable future, given the choice I'll be suggesting Signal from here on out.
The shift over the last few days is that where WhatsApp was seen as the default way to communicate, Signal now became the default. I'm still on WhatsApp but reduced my usage by 95% in favor of Signal now that most of my thread or individual users switched to Signal. It will take time but hopefully WhatsApp will become irrelevant in the long run.
It was very entertaining seeing all my group chats move one by one to Signal now that there is a critical mass of users that agree that it is the right choice. I tried to make it happen in the past and it was too much a pain to convince people that Signal was way better than WhatsApp.
That's why ToS and privacy policy must be readable for John Doe. If it isn't clear what will happen with users' data, rumours and theories will grow. That will hurt your business like WhatsApp just shows (although I'm not sure Facebook will care all that much, to them it's just a drop in the bucket).
I think Facebook would be unwise not to care, and whatever else they may be I don't think they're unwise.
All of their products trade on enormous network effects, so I think they'd be very aware of maintaining that barrier to entry for new competitors. They've stumbled badly on that front here, and once competitors gain a foothold it'll be hard to keep them out.
> Network effect is the moat that is insurmountable according to those that believe big tech should be regulated like a utility.
The network effect in messaging apps is significantly lower than it is in other cases because people are not going to carry two brands of cell phone in their pocket but they very well might have five different messaging apps on their phone.
> It seems less clear that the market can deliver a solution for people that post untrue things on the internet.
It seems less clear that anything could do that ever.
I think the major threat to WhatsApp is not their ToS debacle but by national governments of countries like India or Australia. I imagine if Indian govt asks them to not enforce this ToS and WhatsApp does not oblige then comes a scenario where it can be blocked and all the govt needs to do is ask its citizens to start using Signal because except for the network effects, there is nothing in WhatsApp that can not be match feature wise in Signal.
I'm not sure I agree, but I certainly think it's possible that that's the bigger threat.
I don't think it changes the calculus, though. WhatsApp will be concerned with all serious threats to their market share, and I certainly would disagree with the position that diminished network effects isn't up there.
I agree. However my point was not to blame the US or take a position on virtue of the blocking of tiktok. Instead, want to point out a distinction: the US was the original proponent of the open web that most of the west would then follow.
China never hid its intentions to control information to its wishes.
China can do whatever it wants , but ultimately it is the US that sets the tone for the web. Arguably China did fire the first shot, and deserve to be condemned by it, but until recently most western countries would stand by the open web principle. I think the US (rightly) has said, we won't tolerate abuse any longer.
Ergo, this has given cover to other countries to question the wisdom of the open web. Its no longer the communist / authoritarian govts that can tap into this.
In other words, the web fragments when free countries decide its acceptable to block back the communists / dictators. I refrain from saying whether it is a wise move, I only posit that it looks inevitable at this point.
I can't edit my original post, but I think this would be more fitting: "USA fires back with the first shot among free western democracies".
I don't think the Indian government wants everyone to use signal where all end-to-end convos are encrypted and Signal will refuse to open a backdoor for the Indian government. They would basically lose everyone at that point.
Pay by text message. Integration with businesses. It’ll take a while before Signal is going to be sharing your details with businesses, since they’ve worked hard not to have your details. FB wants more of them. They don’t have my CC or account data yet...but wait.
I’m moving people to Signal too, but FB has a very good hand here.
Facebook has had 6 years already to integrate payments or businesses into Whatsapp, and they haven't. They haven't even added the ability to message someone without first entering them in your contacts.
They're not going to make it into a WeChat equivalent anytime soon.
And if somebody gives you their phone number by another channel? For example there's a number on a classified ad, you want to ask if it's still available. Or a restaurant takes bookings via Whatsapp. I don't want to add them to my contacts, I just want to book.
Payments are not available in most countries, including countries where private communication are all on the platform.
And their businesses offer is extremely basic and doesn't have any penetration, even in places where 100% of people have the app. Why can't you search a business by name to contact them; why don't businesses put up a link on their website/Google Maps to start communicating with them? Why can't I scan a QR code on their ad and message them?
Where I live Whatsapp runs all private communication, and yet in 6 years Facebook hasn't even tried doing more.
My point is that they are obviously intending to go after both business and payments. If there is a gap it’s not because they don’t want to go there. If you’re judging them on what you can use now then you’re discounting a massive intent for change and a lot of money to make it happen.
Feel free to revisit this in 24 months. Facebook cannot afford to leave WhatsApp in an easily copied state.
They don't read terms because they are painful to read. If they just showed some small pointers highlighting the terms instead of long legal jargon, people will start reading them.
Privacy policies are unenforceable because social lock-in means you can't leave even if you eventually decide the new policies are bad for you.
I don't want Facebook to get my list of contacts, but I also don't want to lose touch with my extended family. Guess which one is more important to me?
Of course you can still contact them, but it will be harder and people will include you less in their conversations.
Whatsapp does a lot more than what regular sms does, including working video calls across platforms, working multi-person chats with file attachments, etc. Don’t say e-mail does this, it doesn’t, as you will need more than a phone number that you already have.
Here everybody asumes that you have it, if you don’t, you’re on your own. As an example, my communication with my car insurance company over an incident I’ve recently had is happening over Whatsapp.
Belief that you depend on Facebook to stay in touch with your family is so misguided and sad.
No matter where you live in the world, you don’t need Facebook, not at all, not one bit. It requires absolutely zero extra effort to stay in touch to exactly the same degree, see all the photos, send all the messages you want, with dozens and hundreds of other global services that all your contacts, even tech-phobic grandma, already can super easily interact with.
I have never had a Facebook account, yet I still keep in touch with all the many contacts in my network from high school, college, past jobs, global extended family, immediate family, OSS project acquaintances, etc. etc. - all with zero Facebook.
This utterly false myth that Facebook is necessary, or even the slightest bit important or even useful, to keep in touch very closely with all the photos, comments, etc., really needs to die.
You can completely delete Facebook on a whim right now, and 100% of all that stuff is just as immediately, easily achievable right away with zero loss or deficiency from removing Facebook.
Whilst I agree with the sentiment, I disagree with the message.
If I don't message my sister via Facebook she won't see it. She doesn't do email for private stuff and she's not going to install another app.
If I don't message my mother via WhatsApp she's not going to get it. She doesn't understand what the fuss is and WhatsApp is already complicated for her.
I'd love to be able to message people with zero extra effort but the fact is it's a non-zero amount between us and in the end I'm the one who has to go the extra yard.
I know this because I've not had a FB account in over 7 years now. Facebook's not necessary but it sure as hell is easier.
I really feel comments like these come from people who haven't successfully actually quit Facebook. There's a real heavy cost to not being on Facebook and most people don't feel the dependency because they've convinced themselves they can quit at any time.
How exactly do you think Facebook are telling me this lie?
You realize that I am speaking from experience not hypothetically; I don't have Facebook and there's been a marked decrease in both the number and frequency of messages from my family who rely on it.
I really wish this wasn't the case. The vendor lock-in with Facebook is really significant and I think those of us who leave the platform have to acknowledge that.
The sad part is that people tell this lie to themselves and resolve not to put forth any attempt to stay in touch, just accept “falloff” by others as evidence of Facebook lock-in. Facebook doesn’t even have to tell us this lie and use propaganda to convince us - we tell ourselves the lie!
Speaking as someone who never had Facebook, I’ve experienced zero loss of connection with anyone in many networks of family, friends, colleagues, etc. Just a simple email thread to share stories and photos here or there, phone calls, SMS text chats or other apps. It’s so easy and seamless to stay in touch with no part of it involving Facebook.
A lot of people have had success moving their friends to signal, and that I think that is very encouraging. Well done to you, and certainly I'm trying to do my part as well.
Why should our communication belong to one company? Makes no sense to me. Therefore start using signal and try to spread the word. E-Mail is an open Standard. Instant messaging can be too!
Signal is hosted over centralized servers, I don't think it's that much of a break from the status quo in terms of control.
That's not to say it's not the best out there. As a company, Signal is a million times better and more deserving of our trust than almost any other option on the market, but if we want to break out into open communications, the Signal protocol needs better decentralization.
In theory I like the idea of decentralization but in practice I haven't seen it work out well. For example email didn't become prolific until large centralized players became the dominant force. I see federation/decentralization being better as a late feature in software. Through centralization you can move a lot faster, which in the case of Signal is extremely useful. They wouldn't be able to provide the product they have with decentralization. That's why Moxie has been against decentralization. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't see chat apps as having an unbounded number of features. As I see it once Signal moves into more of maintenance mode then we can talk about federation, by allowing outside servers being able to communicate to the main Signal server. But for now it seems better to focus on getting people to the platform and if we're talking about it from a privacy and security point of view, this is the higher priority. Decentralization doesn't provide much more security while Signal is still trustworthy. There's bigger fish to fry right now.
For what it's worth I think you are wrong. Decentralization is a complicated technology that needs a lot longer to mature than I think most people realize. But once it is mature - and we're getting close, imo just a few years left - it'll move way faster and more efficiently than the centralized world ever did.
In many ways it feels like decentralization is the same as discovering the internal combustion engine before modern alloys existed. We have to invent a lot of extra stuff to make decentralization practical, and we will, but the vision definitely started many steps ahead of the technological progress.
You may be right, and if it turns out that you are I'll happily change my opinion. But it seems like you agree that currently centralization is the way to go for an app like Signal. Honestly I'd love to see Signal decentralized, but I don't think it is the right move right now or in the near future. But given what you said I still don't think it means it is the right time to call for decentralization. Signal doesn't have to be the leader in advancing decentralization technology. They are already leading in secure and private communication and I don't think such a small group can be experts in too many things. They got their niche and I'm happy someone is doing it.
I'm curious though, why do you think decentralization will move faster in the future? What advantage do you see in that? I've always seen decentralization as lagging in updates because it is more difficult to get users to update and software can't exist in isolation (software rots).
Sure, you can potentially innovate faster, but unless you've got a good way of enforcing your changes on the whole network, one of two things happen. Either you either end up forking the network into multiple islands or building some crazy complex "negotiation" mechanism where two random clients need to agree on what features they support before they communicate.
We saw incompatible islands appear in decentralised systems before (this tends to not be good for users), and we've also seen how any implementation of "protocol/feature negotiation" is basically a disaster for security. I don't currently see how any truly decentralised system is lowering either of these costs.
WhatsApp never used to be e2e for everyone, but they were able to make it universal relatively quickly because it's centralised. All of the poster child decentralised protocols (SMTP, XMPP etc.) are still not e2e for everyone despite decades of effort.
I think in practice it won't be so much about agreeing on a protocol but rather new apps just parasiting off of the data models of the most popular and successful apps.
The thing about decentralization is that it forces the data to be available. So for example Facebook can't stop an alternative app from having full access to Facebook groups even if they want to.
So the big successful apps most likely end up deciding the data model and feature set, and everyone else just borrows that, and if they extend or add features those features won't appear on every interface. Which is okay as long as the common core (determined by the big app) is all there.
XMPP is mature. I think that the downfall is the complexity coming from having almost everything defined as an optional feature on a protocol level, and at a very fine granularity at that. So an implementation has to cope with situations where any other party it wants to communicate with may have an oddball collection of supported features. Plus, some server operators added their own peculiarities on top, like wanting to federate with some servers and not others and so on. The user facing result was a user experience with seemingly random inconsistencies. For example, user A can send a message to user B while user B is offline, but not to user C because C's server doesn't support offline message storage.
> For example email didn't become prolific until large centralized players became the dominant force.
What? Email was massively popular before gmail even got into the game. It was popular when Microsoft bought hotmail. It was so popular I remember a dial-up ISP (Juno) offering a free email-only dial-up account.
Email was one of the only easy to convey selling points for early Internet.
Online shopping was a shitty Wild West and most web pages consisted of some basic info and a visitor counter. But being able to send a “love letter” across the country in seconds was amazing!
I think the GP was saying that email was already popular before Hotmail entered the picture. I agree with the claim that it didn't need centralized players to become popular.
I don't think this is accurate though. I wouldn't call the internet popular when it was just nerds on it. At least not in the context of what we're discussing (communication clients). That's not popular until the masses join. It is clear that the masses did not join until there were large centralized services like AOL, Netscape, Yahoo, and Hotmail that provided email services. I am fundamentally disagreeing with the premise that email became popular before large centralized players provided the services.
And you’re wrong. Email was the main selling point to get non-nerds online in the late 90s. It was how we got my mother in-law online, my uncles, and my non-techie friends.
email is federated, Signal is not, it may not be a company but it still is one entity that is pretty much in control of the communication and contact discovery...
> Why should our communication belong to one company? Makes no sense to me. Therefore start using signal
...this would make the problem you identify worse. Signal is one company.
> E-Mail is an open Standard. Instant messaging can be too!
It can be, but Signal definitely isn't.
Email and instant messaging don't actually differ in terms of what they're doing. They differ only in the social perception of what you should use them for. Why not use, say, Delta Chat, which is a messaging app frontend that delivers its messages by email?
They differ a lot. Email is more like a letter and is a killer app unto itself, chat has proven to be a thing that gets bolted on to something else. No chat client to date has ever been able to stand alone, and none of the early leaders ever amounted to anything.
Hell, Yahoo had entire verticals like ocean shipping self organizing around Yahoo Chat back in the day and never figured out how to monetize. Slack is going to be another salesforce widget.
I don't understand what you're saying. They're both asynchronous delivery of written messages. There are no length limits on either. There are no technical differences between them.
And they're both monetized exactly the same way, as part of a more comprehensive suite of office productivity offerings. People don't pay for Yahoo Chat the exact same way they don't pay for Yahoo Mail.
Sure there is. Email is an open standard, enabled by other other open standards. Things like authentication and service location are dictated by implementation. As a user, I can email anyone on the planet and retain those communications. My employer retains some email dating as far back as 1992, in native format.
Chat is almost always a closed loop. There are usually large implementations, and as a user I can only message within one. There are some exceptions to that. Chat always gets kicked around as corporate strategy changes. At work, I’ve probably used a dozen incompatible Microsoft solutions as their strategy meandered around. Jabber was the big attempt to make chat like email, and it failed.
Email still runs the world, despite its many flaws.
Email is a set of standards, sure. Instant messaging is a concept. Email is an implementation of that concept. There is already an open standard for instant messaging; it's email.
An app that aggregates all of your different social networking apps (think AIM, but for social networks). When you talk with your friends, each of your messages get sent to different social networks -round robin style- this only gives each social network a portion of the conversation.
Your friends must, of course, also use the same tool to stitch the conversation back together.
Social media aggregators intended to post messages to many clients have been tried before, but they have consistently failed because the social media companies, notably Twitter, changed their APIs to frustrate the possibility.
There used to exist applications like this, at the time (i.e. the 90s) when apps didn't have automatic updates. What happens now is that the same company that runs the server and makes the official app updates them both at the same time to change the protocol, causing the app that supports all of them to break until they update it to support the new secret protocol. Then people stop using it because it's breaking all the time.
Seems similar to spread spectrum radio signals, also known as frequency-hopping. By hopping from frequency to frequency in a way that only the sender and the receiver know, you can avoid both obstacles and eavesdropping.
I have really bad news about how federated email is in practice. It turns out if gmail rejects you as a source of “spam”, you’re dead as an email provider.
Matrix is far closer to being "the email for instant messaging" -- Signal-like double ratchet encryption by default for private rooms, federated in a similar way to email servers (but much simpler to manage as an admin), much nicer group chat UX, simpler identity key verification (it has Signal-like QR codes but it also has emojicode verification which is nice if you're not in the same place when doing verification), has an open specification, multiple client implementations, a couple of still-in-progress alternative server implementations, it even has bridges (which have pretty decent UX) to other social networks like IRC, Slack, Discord, and so on.
Signal is far from an open standard. I use it and am quite happy using it, but with the knowledge that Moxie has publicly said many times that he does not believe in federation or third party clients (and will implement client blocking as well as using trademark suits if the problem gets big enough). And it's fine to have that opinion, I just disagree with it and you shouldn't sell Signal as something the lead developer has said they're explicitly against.
For folks saying (read: hoping) that Signal may become federated in the future -- I think it's a much safer bet to just use Matrix since it's already federated and has at least equivalent privacy guarantees (or even larger if you self-host your own server) and hope that Signal will peer with them in the future (which I personally think is about as likely as Signal becoming federated itself -- namely, it's very unlikely either way). But you do you.
> Moxie has publicly said many times that he does not believe in federation or third party clients (and will implement client blocking as well as using trademark suits if the problem gets big enough)
Well that's a shame - I wonder if, given moxie is a member of the HN community, he'd clarify what is meant by that. I had a quick search and didnt find anything.
[1] is Moxie saying that he is against third-party clients using Signal servers (meaning third-party clients cannot communicate with Signal users). [2] is Moxie saying that he is also against federating with other Signal servers (and implies that they use their trademark aggressively to stop the term "Signal" from being used by third-party apps).
Given how explicit he was about this at the time (and the lack of comments to the contrary in the past 5 years), I honestly don't think any clarification is necessary. That's his opinion and while I may disagree with his opinion, we shouldn't pretend that he is likely to change it in the future (or to imply that isn't his opinion on the topic). If you feel strongly that you want decentralised instant messaging, use Matrix (or something like it) rather than hoping Signal will become something Moxie has said he is against it becoming.
Moxie Marlinspike gave a talk at 36C3 about the issues of decentralized systems and why Signal decided to not go that direction.
In short, his argument was largely chat ecosystems are constantly evolving but decentralized protocols tend to ossify. Thus, decentralized protocols will ultimately not be able to keep up with the demands of the users.
Lots of people point to email as an example. I'd like to also point out the phone system and its codecs as another example. Most phone calls behind the scenes are using SIP to handle connectivity. SIP is codec agnostic, you could technically use any kind of codec in the RTSP stream. Its a very decentralized protocol, and highly extensible. And yet it seems like almost every time you try and place a call, the only codec anyone else supports is G.711, a codec released in 1972 and hasn't had a major update since 2000. We're slowly seeing G.722 adoption now that the patents have run out (HD voice on cell phones) but even then this is spotty. Meanwhile every other chat platform out there has moved on to more efficient and higher quality codecs because all it took was the chat platform owner to push one version update out.
The decentralized communications network is only just now finally adopting and rolling out a _33 year old_ codec. Sure sounds like a win for decentralized systems!
Why would Matrix have potentially larger privacy guarantees than Signal when self-hosted? As I understand it, when communicating with a user on a different homeserver, those chats are mirrored to that homeserver.
Because Signal has one (set of) servers which contain all messages sent through the Signal network. With Matrix if you are communicating with only a handful of people that either self-host or otherwise don't use Matrix.org then the largest homeservers don't even have a copy of your (encrypted) message history. In order for Matrix to be equivalent to Signal in this aspect, every single Matrix user would have to use Matrix.org (which isn't the case).
Right, the homepage definitely isn't built for regular people right now. The process for getting started seems to be:
go to matrix.org > click "Try Now" > get redirected to element.io > click "Open in your browser" > allow it to use IndexedDB > create an account > start messaging
I have tiny grievances with every step of this process: matrix.org is filled with too much jargon; "try now" sounds like some kind of trial; redirections to totally different websites are scary; the relationship between Matrix and Element isn't clear; the stock photo-ish background on app.element.io is a bit tacky; asking for browser permissions on page load is rude; the account creation page makes the "edit homeserver" button fairly prominent but doesn't tell us what it does in plain language; I should have been told that you can invite people by email before I clicked "send a direct message"; adding an email to invite asynchronously pulls up a "terms of service" dialog.
There's a lot to love about Matrix, so I hope it becomes easier for people to get started with it.
FWIW I just tell most people to try Element. I can tell them about Matrix later. You can link them to https://element.io/get-started which is fairly good and skips a couple of steps.
The UX still isn't "great" or "delightful" but I have had people sign up and find be by email or matrix ID with no problem.
No one is forcing to use you WhatsApp or the others. You have free will. These apps come and go and you can even come up with your own app and make others use it. Free market for you my friend.
Isn't [1] (one of) the patches fixing the issue? The solution doesn't need to be a server patch, in fact it appears it was a client-side patch to handle 508 errors properly as well as doing exponential backoff.
The reason it was a DDoS was that every single Android Signal client in the world was retrying the API without an exponential backoff. If you intentionally try to DDoS the API yourself, then that's just a DDoS and you don't need a custom Signal client for that.
I wonder if it's really lost users, or conversations. The article only cites download numbers declining in the various app stores.
Lots of people seem to have downloaded Signal or Telegram, but how many deleted WhatsApp? I don't plan on deleting it and I'm going to approve the new T&C or whatever it is, but I'm quite happy to migrate to Signal for my contacts who use both.
Presumably losing x% of conversations is just as bad as losing x% of monthly users for Facebook, so maybe this is moot, but it's still lazy journalism.
Call it toc insensitivity, or habit of last 20 years, but as soon as I saw that new TOC when I opened whatsapp about 20 days ago, I didn't even look at the button text, just clicked it as soon I read app.. of Approve. Wonders of auto pilot brain.
WhatsApp worldwide usage is estimated to be more than 2B+ users. Even if this article is accurate, it doesn’t really mean much. In the HN bubble lots of people have migrated to Signal with all of their contacts but outside of that bubble nothing much seems to be happening. Note that I’m not agreeing with these changes, I’m just observing reality.
To put things into perspective, let’s assume that 25M users (as stated in the article) actually moved to Telegram - which I use and like by the way. Let’s assume they fully moved and stopped using WhatsApp (very unlikely). That means less than 1.25% users moved to another platform - and this means assuming many things that aren’t probably real.
It reminds me a bit of the articles about DuckDuckGo vs Google where many people think big changes in usage are happening while ignoring that the average Joe will keep using whatever it’s using unless there’s way too much trouble to continue using it.
The extremely positive side of this is that you can be a 'competitor' to Google, or other megaservices and steal enough customers to run a 10M+ user company and they woudln't even register you as a competitor. The internet market is HUGE.
We could also say 1M and still be a valid statement. I don’t know if that tells anything though.
Perception does matter a lot, and that’s why I used the 1% figure. It means one percent of WhatsApp users are investigating a competitor (not even deleting their account in WhatsApp, but I guess few did) and here people seem to see it as a clear tipping point to which I disagree - raw numbers don’t mean much if you have nothing to compare with.
The problem is that what makes Whatsapp sticky is the network effect. People use Whatsapp because everyone has Whatsapp.
But if you now have several millions of people who will not use Whatsapp at all, all the groups that they are in will need to migrate to the alternative (which is pretty much Signal/Telegram at this point). So those few million become few tens of millions. And once they migrate and start liking it, they may avoid Whatsapp as well, because it's far easier to just use one app, and then their groups need to migrate, and so on.
Totally agree. I had a couple groups which were moved from WhatsApp to Telegram and they work great. So I’m aware (and happy) this happens but also I’m that kind of special early-adopter user who cares about things that non-tech users don’t.
This is something I want to highlight. I know we’re not all product managers but as people working in tech we should be able to take different perspectives and understand that what matters to us doesn’t matter at all for the 99% of the people outside our tech world.
Freedom from being surveilled, fucked with, controlled and ultimately murdered in an industrial fashion that will make Hitler seem like a little girl with pigtails skipping across a meadow matters to everyone, some people just don't know it yet.
The network effect only acts if enough people in your network use it. It is subject to a threshold with a sigmoid activation. If only three people in a group of ten want to use Signal, it's different than if 7 want to switch. So right now, as most folks use Whatsapp, it favours Whatsapp far more than it favours Signal.
It also depends on your level of seniority in that group. If you are a junior member, they likely won't switch, but if you have the social clout, you might be able to get them to switch.
For the same reason, Facebook was initially open to only Harvard, then to a few other ivies, until it opened to all colleges in the USA and Canada. If your high school friend who made it to the the highly esteemed college uses the service you are more likely to switch than if it were the reverse situation. Later these people get into important positions of society and if you want to network with them, you too can use FB.
This is exactly right. Author Nassim Taleb has written on this extensively. He calls it "The Dominance of the Stubborn Minority".
A dedicated and stubborn minority can gradually impose their preferences on a majority who does not have a strong opinion on something. This why you'll order a cheese pizza if you're hanging out with friends and a single person in the group is a vegetarian.
In my own life there are many group chats that are now on signal because one stubborn 'ole grouch, namely me, insisted on it. Most people don't give too much thought to the chat app they use, so they kind of shrugged their shoulders and went along with it.
for Nassim's example to work the minority has to be exclusionary. Everything is nut-free because you don't want to kill allergic people and you can't have both nuts and no nuts in your food, so the minority in the group can force to change the behaviour of the rest.
With messaging apps you can use both Whatsapp and Signal, so even if you convince a few people to convert, Whatsapp is unlikely to decline.
The important word in Taleb's thesis is 'stubborn', not minority. The change isn't gradual but 'fractal' with one person in the group being able to flip everyone else, and they going on an doing the same thing.
On the surface it seems like people would just use two apps, but most people don’t care. So, if nobody is extremely pro WhatsApp because for example they have a non smartphone and it’s what works then WhatsApp dies.
It’s just a question of how many people are extremely pro WhatsApp and will Facebook drive them away.
But you're stuck in a world where apps are segregated that way. But if I were Google, I'd change android to make their messaging app backend-agnostic and able to send information to any app with a unified frontend. I'd ban from the store if not.
Done, nobody cares anymore, for real and features will come from Google :D We're so stuck on using 2 apps instead of 2 networks we forget mobile phone providers had to agree together to do SMS decades ago, and it went fine with dumbed down feature.
And let's be honest, the only killer feature that made me finally adopt whatsapp like 6 years ago was that it used the data plan that works on WIFI rather than the phone plan. We were all fine with SMSes before.
It's weird to hear you say that, because SMS is terrible. Unreliable delivery, delivery receipts that come back even if the recipient's phone is turned off, no media (MMS is also terrible, just try to send a video over it and watch the pixelated garbage that comes out the other side), no privacy or security to speak of, carrier interop issues (character encodings, message length, shortcode support), identity tied to your phone number, no ability to send/receive messages without being tethered to the phone (to be fair, Signal and WhatsApp also have this problem)... I could go on.
SMS and MMS are telco standards whose progress and maintenance depends on the willingness of operators to patch and upgrade their infrastructure equipment (good luck with that)
So yeah, while saddening I don’t expect SMS to make much progress as its lifecycle is tied to the worst one in the industry.
XMPP had a better chance, but unfortunately chatting service is the bait for other purposes... so an interop standard has no chance to survive without regulation.
Interesting. I guess the issues you see as a user depend on where you life / which carrier you are using?
I had more issues with iMessage delivery then I ever had with SMS in my whole life. I dont even remember a single incident with SMS delivery. And I consider your "missing media" point an advantage. Sending stupid videos from phone to phone is a disease that I dont want to deal with.
> no ability to send/receive messages without being tethered to the phone (to be fair, Signal and WhatsApp also have this problem)
Signal actually has a desktop app. It requires having installed signal on a phone before, and linking the accounts, but it doesn't depend on the phone after that I believe.
As for SMS, it works on pretty much any device and network, with the caveats that it's the first and lowest common denominator messaging service.
Back in the day when Google had "don't be evil" as their motto, they released something called GTalk. It was a desktop instant messaging app, because that was before the smartphone era.
They based it on the decentralized protocol Jabber (or XMPP) and even open their servers to others. Meaning you could discuss with people using other servers than GTalk, just like email.
Google closed their servers to federalization, rebranded GTalk to Hangout and made bad decision after bad decision (but always in the direction of closing up instead of supporting open standards), lost the fight for messaging despite controlling the dominant mobile OS.
tl;dr I have no faith in Google to (1) do the right thing for open standards and (2) manage to get any sort of market share on messaging
>Google closed their servers to federalization, rebranded GTalk to Hangout
rewording your sentence:
Google stop volunteering time & resources on efforts that help others make money, and focused on only Google making money. I don't own any Google (AlphaBet) stocks, but if I was a shareholder, and someone would have told me that "we have a line item that is -50m on our statement, but hey, it is good for the competitors", I would like that line item gone.
I have faith in Google that they will try their best to make money. They may lose 1 here and make 50 there, but that -1 will be gone after a certain time. And this is a good business decision. Otherwise they would have one cash cow and 100 losers and they would be a break-even business, which is not a Business because Business = profit.
I get it, capitalism is fucking us up. The open standards we take for granted today were created by hippies researchers in the 20th century. That's not happening in today's world.
That's how messaging worked on Maemo/MeeGo on the Nokia N900 and N9.
You just added a bunch of accounts and all you messages and conversations (SMS, Skype, Jabber, etc.) were in one unified place.
Its still effectively this way on modern SailfishOS but as new IM services are effectively app based silos with no public API this system needs, you are not really able to make use of it.
> With messaging apps you can use both Whatsapp and Signal
You can have both Whatsapp and Signal installed, but everyone in a conversation needs to have the same app. So why not both doesn't apply as neatly as you assert.
Sure, but that assumes you only have one group. I'm in only 2 really small groups, both on Signal, but I keep Whatsapp because there are a few people I can only talk to there.
It's also a backup mechanism in case Signal fails (like it did when the exodus happened)
That's true, but the people I talk to on Whatsapp are not (usually) in the same country as me, and cross-border SMS tends to not be included in a basic package. Especially now that UK has left the EU, that's definitely not going to be cheap. Add to this that cost increases with message length in SMS - over the internet it's basically flat if you have wifi or data (up to a point at least... :D )
You can have both of them installed at the same time, so anyone refusing to join a Signal conversation is just going out of their way to be a pain to deal with.
Eh, I already have enough messaging apps myself (4 right now), so adding more at this point is a hurdle I'd like to avoid. I can imagine others having similar feelings.
I'd pick a different classification. It's more like these groups:
1. Uses whatsapp out of momentum. Doesn't want to use anything else, but might if people really push them; i.e. open to transition to group 2.
2. Will use whatever. Some people in this group want to stop using whatsapp, but won't break contacts to do so. Some people in this group would prefer to stick with whatsapp to avoid the burden of a switch, but won't break contacts to do so. This is the vast majority of switchers.
3. Die hard whatsapp users. Simply refuse to switch to another app, because it's a hassle, and/or because they begrudge other people making a mountain out of a molehill and asking them to do anything. Might oppose yet-another-app; or might actually want to stick to whatsapp because they actually like the simplicity of the network effect.
4. Die hard non-whatsapp (likely signal?) users. Refuse to use whatsapp, likely due to privacy concerns or distrust of facebook.
I don't think most people trying to switch away from whatsapp are in 4. Anecdotally, I people I know asking to switch are clearly in 2, and are largely losing to those in 3. Only 1 person I know claims to be in 4, but I'm not really sure that'll stick if the exodus doesn't keep momentum. Because of the existance of the bulk of humanity which barely cares about this, and some of which will get annoyed at the suggestion - I suspect group 3 is much, much larger than 4, and that suggests this exodus will fall flat. The only real chance here is that since this is all about closed groups that network effects aren't so huge, so a considerable exodus without actual terminal velocity is possible.
Interesting, I think your classification adds some nice colour to the situation.
To me the biggest question, does 2 grow bigger than 3? When X% of people have Telegram, Whatsapp and Signal installed, then it becomes a non-issue to have Signal only sticklers.
> The only real chance here is that since this is all about closed groups that network effects aren't so huge, so a considerable exodus without actual terminal velocity is possible.
This is my experience so far. I think you're right that the network effect is very fragmented and micro. In my case the few active groups that I value have migrated, the rest don't care and could email me or sms me and I've seen sufficient migration to Signal, signalling that moving from 1 to 4 might be viable.
Yeah, I experienced this myself when - some years ago - I attempted to transition to Signal. In all the groups I was in, there was at least one person from group 3, who outright refused to move. It scuppered my efforts...
I'm in the delicate position where 6 yearsago I started using Telegram and told a friend and now he doesn't want to move because I "should have told him to use signal and I have moved all my friends to Telegram and they wouldn't understand and Signal desktop has memory leaks and I don't like it anyway".
I agree. I've been using Telegram for quite a few years, and back then I used to be more of an early adopter and tried to make my social circles to switch to Telegram and one circle did, the tech circle. The other circles didn't care much about the features that Telegram had as much as the contacts they had on Whatsapp.
So now with that amount of people switching trying out Telegram, could mean that at least 2-3 people on a non-tech social circle might be using Telegram which might end up convincing the whole group to switch because of features (polls? utility bots?) or any other benefit they might find.
This is correct, there is a magic percentage number on what the tipping point for such migration/adoption numbers is - its I believe pretty low, like 7% or so if I remember right.
Yeah the network effect of WhatsApp is much stronger to me than, for instance, Facebook. A substantial amount of my “conversations” with friends and work-related are WhatsApp. I’d say to the degree that nowadays (in singapore) I’ve recently noticed new contacts (eg someone I buy something from on an online market) will say, “what’s your number where I can WhatsApp you?” Used to be “where do I [call, sms] you?”
I have no issue using telegram or signal, it’s just that the default choice is becoming/became whatsapp.
Cant stand Zuckerberg, but he does have an eye for products that can really explode in growth.
Exactly. At the time of the acquisition it was already the
"default" messaging service in many countries.
The fact that the acquisition happened has more to do with regulators being asleep than Zuckerberg being awake.
As far as I can recall, the EU regulators believed Facebook's lies about not being able to link WhatsApp and Facebook accounts, which Facebook promptly ignored a few years later. They were fined €110m ($134m) [0]. The maximum fine would have been $276m at the time. Still cheap IMO.
This quote reads like a joke now:
> Today’s decision sends a clear signal to companies that they must comply with all aspects of EU merger rules, including the obligation to provide correct information
I wonder if the move will be that straightforward. A group of like-minded, privacy-aware people might move away from WhatsApp when one user advocates for it, but I am not sure a couple of people leaving a large group of average users would be enough to cause the rest to migrate.
Also, human have limited amount of attention --- if Telegram/Signal cannot make it to the critical mass soon then average users who had been convinced to try the alternatives might eventually revert back to WhatsApp because maintaining multiple chatting channels can be quite annoying at times, especially considering majority of their contacts might still be on WhatsApp and it is just easier to post there.
Well me too and... Even before this recent WhatsApp fiasco I noticed that some parents are using Telegram at the school where my kid goes. Out of 24 kids in my kid's class, there are 3 families which I know for sure have Telegram (I don't have contact with all of the parents so I don't know).
And I think Telegram is reporting more than, what, 500M users by now? If it's true, it's definitely a sizeable dent in WhatsApp's market share. It may not be 2B+, but 500M is quite something.
The thing is: users are not loyal at all. Telegram or Signal or others are a click or two away: it's neither hard to find/install nor to use.
I really wouldn't be surprised to see a bigger shift some day once more people begin to realize that "WhatsApp = FB" (many don't like FB but have no idea WhatsApp belongs to FB).
> many don't like FB but have no idea WhatsApp belongs to FB
When you start WhatsApp the splash screen says "WhatsApp from Facebook" so I would be surprised if people really didn't know that the two companies were related. Instagram is the same, it says "Instagram from Facebook".
>let’s assume that 25M users (as stated in the article) actually moved to Telegram
Oh the irony of a knee jerk reaction fleeing an end-to-end encrypted messaging service to a messaging service that only offers opt-in encryption that more often than not doesn't get used. There was never any proposal to remove encryption anywhere, only add a new feature that, by the very nature of it, didn't lend itself to practical end-to-end encryption.
There's nothing wrong with it if, and only if, people understand that's the choice they're making.
Here we have an exodus driven by *privacy* concerns surrounding the new policy. Users fled from WhatsApp to other services with the intent of keeping their conversations more private. The subset of those who switched to Telegram made their conversations strictly *less* private, achieving the opposite of their goals.
There's "I'm plotting criminal activities or planning to overthrow my government" messaging which requires secure encryption.
And there's "I don't particularly want to be followed round the intarwebs by adverts for piles ointment, because I mentioned my itchy arse in a message to someone" which requires respect for your privacy.
I reckon most of us are happy enough with the latter in daily use. And, when we do need to plot an overthrow of the government, we can always flick the big "secret chat" switch. I think Telegram just about gets the balance right; sacrificing some default secrecy for ease of use, seamless sync across all your devices and 'fun' things which are likely to lead to wider adoption --whilst also allowing you to switch on the more secure stuff, as and when you need it.
> Users fled from WhatsApp to other services with the intent of keeping their conversations more private.
That's not strictly true. Users fled whatsapp to keep their messages away from Facebook. It could be a concern for privacy or a concern for not letting Facebook (specifically) monetize their conversations.
People who leave a service when the terms change in a way that negatively impacts their privacy are clearly choosing based on privacy reasons though (mostly anyway, some might be leaving because their friends left).
Except that the terms of service didn't change in a way that negatively impacted their privacy - they were taken in by misinformation that was left to spread unchallenged because the mainstream media had an axe to grind against Facebook. The net impact of which is that their conversations are now less private and they don't even realise it.
Beware of the malicious PR campaign carried out by Facebook. The terms did change in a negative way, it’s enough to read them to see it. Even for EU users. Later, when Facebook realized this time things would not be ignored, they started their PR campaign. First the claimed that in EU there would be no changes, then (first time I see it in the linked article) they claimed that there were no changes anywhere in the world. At the end of the day what matters is what is in the terms, not what the spokesperson claims. And in the terms there is no opt-out from sharing data with Facebook.
The terms did not change in a malicous way, because they were already malicious. There never was an opt-out of sharing data with Facebook:
> Specifically, users had 30 days after first seeing the 2016 privacy policy notice to opt out of “shar[ing] my WhatsApp account information with Facebook to improve my Facebook ads and product experiences.” The emphasis is ours; it meant that WhatsApp users were able to opt out of seeing visible changes to Facebook ads or Facebook friend recommendations, but could not opt out of the data collection and sharing itself.
I get some trust from the fact that Telegram is the chosen platform for drug dealers and terrorists around the world. The metadata in Signal actually got people in trouble...
Whatever flaws Telegram got, it seems less impactful than getting mined by facebook and the practical design failings of Signal.
Telegram's clients are also FOSS. Anyway, I am not advocating for Telegram. Just stating my trust feelz with Signal and Telegram. I wouldn't use either for anything where my mere association would be a risk.
I think this may have been resolved now. However the issue remains that you cannot delete signal contacts and legacy groups, which means anyone who gets a hold on your phone number (without a pin) or phone, or account access to third party involved, got evidence for communication between you and a possible incriminating entity.
> Contacts must be blocked in order to be removed from your Signal Contact List. To learn how to block someone, click here.
You either have the contact in your contact list, or block list... I hope that's obviously supporting my claim.
Some of these meta data leaks may have been changed and are a result of my old account, however Signal lost my trust. (And lost sympathy over Moxy Marlinspike's opinions and presentation over time, e.g. the hangover/drunk "centralization: good" CCC talk, the F-droid drama, ...)
I shared the same opinion, before I saw all of my acquaintances (which are as removed from the HN bubble as you can find) install Signal en masse in a matter of two weeks.
It's purely anecdotal of course, but I never expected this type of reaction to happen so massively and so fast.
Yes, I’ve seen this over here in The Netherlands as well. Just about every day I log in and can see another non-tech acquaintance having joined signal. It’s been at least 50 over the past few weeks, it’s really weird.
Agree. This has been the interesting thing to me: that so many non-nerd friends have popped up on Signal. Totally fascinating that the shift is happening to a group who are typically not that bothered about the presence of FB. I'll have to ask them about their motivations in more detail...
I think there was a lot of miscommunication/misinformation shared around. Honestly, even now I'm not entirely sure what the whole thing entails. It's a change of policy that was already in effect, but you have to accept it now? What exactly is now being shared? Being in Europe, there was a lot of talk about how it didn't apply, and yet we still have the message?
I'd not be surprised if a lot of people got "FB (evil!) wants to read everything or they will close your account". Given how often I have received "share this message 10 times or WhatsApp will delete your account" from relatives, I think it also plays into this fear of losing access to your contacts. And it was all over the mainstream news, with the alternatives readily available (and their own shortcomings often not described).
You are looking at it merely from a percentage point of view. 1.24% at Facebook's scale is _massive_. It is not a drop in the bucket, and Facebook is especially worried because it could be a trend. Today it's 1.24% but how many people would switch tommorow?
You would be surprised.. I have had two family groups switch to Signal, I never once mentioned switching over because I thought no one would agree. The switch was suggested by people not technologically savvy.
This is so funny. That is what happened to me. I’ve been on Signal for a while and suddenly the whole extended family switched over. The switch to signal is real.
> In the HN bubble lots of people have migrated to Signal with all of their contacts but outside of that bubble nothing much seems to be happening.
I’ve had a ton of non-tech people show up on Signal suddenly. I asked one of them why everyone is signing up, and he said because he doesn’t trsut WhatsApp.
Did millions of users uninstall WhatsApp? I don't think so. The most downloaded app figures by App Annie shows exactly what it says, which app was downloaded the most during that period. So as long as WhatsApp stays in the phone and if it receives a single message from hundreds of contacts a user has; WhatsApp didn't loose that user.
So the correct title IMO is 'Signal, Telegram gained millions of users'.
This is the first time I have seen about dozen new Signal contacts; but the question is how many of those dozen contacts are initiating messages through Signal and receiving messages in Signal from the newly signed-up users?
I have sandboxed WhatsApp in a separate machine and receive its messages through email[1] and I still receive WhatsApp messages from the aforementioned contacts.
Things would have changed if WhatsApp locked out the profiles(incl. me) who didn't accept the T&C on Feb 8; but now with that gone I don't think there's really going to be any change.
Did Skype lose millions of users only when those users uninstalled Skype on their desktop, or long before that when those users started installing WhatsApp on their phone?
Most people probably can't remember the exact moment that Skype was no longer relevant.
Fair point, but I don't think Skype & 'mobile first' new generation chat apps like WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram, Signal etc. belong to the same category.
> Most people probably can't remember the exact moment that Skype was no longer relevant.
When smartphones became the go-to compute device for many.
Yes Skype was made available to smartphones too, but like many other 'mobile first' applications which replaced traditional desktop software Skype was pushed down by the chat apps.
Yes, you're right that desktop and 'mobile first' apps are a different category, so that at first, it would seem like the comparison between Skype and WhatsApp is a category error.
But I suppose it's also fair to say that Signal is now a good example of a 'privacy first' app, a new category that WhatsApp equally don't seem too interested in.
I think the analogy still holds both ways: exact uninstalls are not important once the communication starts moving elsewhere, and 'mobile first' and 'privacy first' are categories that companies ignore at the cost of losing millions of users.
> Most people probably can't remember the exact moment that Skype was no longer relevant.
What do you mean? Skype is being used more now than this time last year. It has just been renamed. The first few versions of Teams would even call themselves "Skype" when connecting to PulseAudio.
Teams is an evolution of SkypeForBusiness, which isn't exactly Skype -- consumer Skype still exists. (Teams for Families sounds like it would be the Skype replacement, but it's derived from standard Teams)
Legit question: What are the alternatives to Skype?
Although it's become much less relevant for IM purposes, it's still my to-go application for ad-hoc video calls with friends and family. Mostly because (a) it has an actively maintained desktop client, (b) it is offered as a standalone service, (c) it is home-user friendly (won't splash you with meeting and calendar buttons like zoom).
FaceTime, Facebook messenger/instagram video calling, Google hangouts or whatever their new chat and video app is called, and since 2020 Zoom as well got a lot of home user adoption.
Signal now has video calling through their desktop application.
(a) its actively maintained
(b) unsure about requirements of "standalone service", but its stand alone as its only a chat service
(c) its just a messaging client, no calendar/meeting kind of stuff
Other than that I've had good success with web-focused services like Google Meet and Jit.si. There isn't a desktop app but to an extent that's been a win. All you need to do is email/text a link to your chosen friends and its all in their browser using web standards (or semi-standards, no plugins at least for modern FF/Chrome/Edge). No accounts, assuming they have a modern browser there's no software to install, just click and go.
Thanks for the pointer to the Signal desktop app! It looks pretty close to what I had in mind.
As for the definition of a standalone service: One that doesn't tightly integrate with other offerings/ecosystems. Skype is kind of ok because other than connecting with your MS account, it doesn't promote other offerings. Also Microsoft's business model is not based on collecting and selling your data, at least not in the same extent as Google/FB.
Web-focused services work ok if you're comfortable with the web. But for parents, grandparents etc., I feel that a standalone client with a simple interface is more foolproof.
Maybe they don't totally lose the user but if their usage decrease, that user loses value to them.
I didn't totally delete my Facebook account either, but as I haven't posted in years and don't have the apps installed, I don't think I contribute much more to their bottom line than someone without account.
> In the HN bubble lots of people have migrated to Signal with all of their contacts but outside of that bubble nothing much seems to be happening.
I live in Mexico, most things happen through WhatsApp.
I was surprised by how many of my non-technical friends migrated to Signal and Telegram. Non-techies were sharing fake information about the new policy. The word around was that the new policy would allow facebook to spy on all your messages and photos. This scared off a lot of people and many of my friends at least download Signal or Telegram.
Well, it means a lot for me. Until now I had to use WhatsApp because of a few groups I had there, now I was able to remove it because all my groups migrated to Signal.
For most of those, I didn't even have to initiate it, it was proposed by a less techy member than me.
It's actually possible the real drop in users (or usage) might be more. Facebook took the front page (the whole effing page) of every news paper in India last week to alleviate fears. It's only comparable to DDG articles if Google also similarly had to put ads about how Google respects privacy because of an Exodus.
Facebook was already pushing out long video ads on Indian TV, even before this fiasco. Indian consumers are seemingly more valuable; there are a significant number of users who use WhatsApp for business (customer support & sales). WhatsApp has also started a mobile payments platform in the country.
Sri Lankan here (that island under India). You would assume that this would go right over our heads, but a lot of people here are concerned and when I finally installed Signal, I noticed many people already there. Some of them, I never expected to see outside of WhatsApp or Viber.
While in general I agree this is small, you could add “so far” to the end of the title and it changes the tone somewhat. These not-inconsiderable losses are continuing, and the question is whether it will get to a tipping point where network effects kick in or not. Every large change had to start somewhere. But I think we’re in agreement that we need to see more evidence to say with any certainty that the tipping point is going to be reached.
Might be a bit more than you think. I’ve been using signal for some work chats, as it is a fully functional app no one I knew was using, so it made for a nice silo.
Since the term change, I’d say maybe 10-20% of the contacts on my phone have installed signal. It notifies you of new contacts. I don’t know if they’re chatting, and no one has actually used it to message me, but the group I’m seeing is far beyond some technical niche.
I suspect these effects might also be very regional.
Some anecdotal evidence from my end is that with the change of terms nontechnical friends are much more open to use other messengers if I say I don't want to use WhatsApp. Previously I was sort of regarded as the guys who was making a fuzz out of nothing, now people just say OK let's try. I suspect this is because it made it to mainstream media, so there is more general awareness.
It seems also that the people moving now are more the nontechnical audience. For example my partner who is completely nontechnical and using what others are using, just told me last week that suddenly all her acquaintances are popping up on signal.
> It reminds me a bit of the articles about DuckDuckGo vs Google where many people think big changes in usage are happening while ignoring that the average Joe will keep using whatever it’s using unless there’s way too much trouble to continue using it.
I don't think that this is an apt comparison. The functionality of IM is virtually unchanged for the past 20 years or so, and can easily be replicated. This makes jumping between different IM much more frictionless than switching a search engine.
There is not much of a network effect on search engines. Nothing is stopping you from using DuckDuckGo instead of Google, it doesn't matter what the "average Joe" uses.
But this is different. If all your friends use WhatsApp, you have no choice but to use WhatsApp. An chat network where you are the only one is useless.
A message I received from telegram on Jan 12 2021 says it has more than 500 million active users. “Telegram surpassed 500 million active users. In the past 72 hours alone, more than 25 million new users from around the world joined Telegram. Thank you! These milestones were made possible by users like you who invite their friends to Telegram. ”
“Even if this article is accurate, it doesn’t really mean much” millions of users (to start) moving away from a platform does matter; it matters for those users and could evolve into a larger movement in time.
“Let’s assume they fully moved and stopped using WhatsApp (very unlikely)” why is this “very unlikely”, I’ve uninstalled WhatsApp, I will never install WhatsApp again, ever. I guess I’m part of the “very unlikely” group.
It’s not just the numbers, it’s who they are. Having a good portion of the tech/media scene move to Signal, even if it’s just conversations and intent, shifts the needle. Impact is more influential than most other segments.
I do worry about the move to Telegram. I’ve seen large law firms and privacy experts defend WhatsApp in comparisons to Telegram. I could easily see WhatsApp get those users back.
They should have been nice, instead of communicating agree with their terms or go and delete your account.
It's a lesson. No matter how big you are.
1. Communicate for understandability.
2. Don't take your customers for granted.
3. Change is hard, nudge them towards it instead of a push.
I don’t think they really will lose any users, and in fact this whole saga is a big loss for privacy. FB will see that there is a lot of discussion but at the end of the day no real loss is users or traffic and so realizes it has a large moat and so don’t have to do anything to improve privacy.
I tried really hard to move people away but they always come back to it, particularly for groups across continents WhatsApp is really entrenched.
I understand why FB needs to do this, but the execution was so out of touch it's bizarre. My elderly parents called me and were alarmed that WhatsApp is threatening with removing their account unless they agree to share their data. They wondered if FB will be able to track their transactions or perhaps even get into their bank accounts. After years in the tech industry, I've learned that my parents' feedback is a good predictor for how well my messaging will be perceived by the wider world. I would have assumed that at FB they would do something similar (or rather, that their testing is 100x more sophisticated), so it's bizarre that they would miss the mark with messaging and with their prediction of overall success when it came to something so strategically important and sensitive.
This more or less describes Facebook's entire corporate ethos at this point. Almost all of their products are now clearly driven by PMs who are so focused on random metrics that they make various awful tweaks to the UX, all of which are clearly intended to drive some metric.
Case in point 1: Instagram replacing the "notifications" counter with a link to their "shopping" function that no one wants or uses.
Case in point 2: Trying to add a GIF on Facebook messenger opens up another entry point to Rooms, the video chat. No one is going to start a video chat from the keyboard, Facebook. (Then again, I'll bet 0.5% of users accidentally started one, so the metric is up! Ship it!)
I think when it comes to your point 1, they deserve a bit more credit - the prioritization of Shopping is a reaction to the threat of iOS 14-related loss of targeting capabilities. The only viable long-term response is to keep the entire user flow within the app, from click to checkout. While hiding the notifications will impact some engagement metrics, nothing is as important right now as achieving the above goal.
The notifications counter isn't _gone_, just moved to the top right on the home page next to the Direct Messages button. I didn't and still don't like the change but it's not catastrophic.
All of Facebook’s moves have been tone deaf for quite some time, perhaps intentionally so. I think they see themselves as too big to fail. It also seems like there’s something factional going on, the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing.
My personal theory is that FB managers have been seeing complaints for years without a lot of follow through, and this has led them to believe that customer complaints were either overblown, or that they were too important for people to actually quit.
That or product got tunnel vision again. Wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened.
I did a semester of contract law at University and what they were trying to say is that in Software, we have the problem that we all got bamboozled by idiotic lawyer departments that apply to everything the same recipe.
It would be much better for everyone to give good willing contracts, more open and well-intentioned, that the current model of unenforceable but scary lock-everything clauses. It would however probably mean a change of business model.
Whatsapp could say "we'll never profit from you data, we'll only give them to law enforcement after review of the request and we delete all after 5 years", 3 lines and easy to enforce in front of a judge. In truth, none of those auto-approved contracts nobody reads can fully be trusted to be enforced by a judge. The excuse of "I misunderstood it and just clicked anyway to talk to my children" could very well be a defence. You can't say "if you breath, it means you accepted this contract of 2000 lines of legalese".
One day I suspect, at least the EU, they'll think of doing something where you can't deny service for non-respect of a new contract and will have to offer a multi layer service for each contract level. That sounds rational and I can't believe a company can lock me out of an email service or whatever just because I can't accept a contract change I don't even understand.
Well the crap implementations of the EU privacy regs brought in even more legal popups. It's like a website EULA. Sorry to say this, I know I'll be downvoted but it's the truth. They should've said no popups, popovers, notifications or otherwise annoying dialogs in the directive.
Anecdotally, my entire EU rolodex has shifted from WhatsApp to Telegram and Signal over the past month.
Now, my friends-and-neighbors lean heavily towards the software industry, so this most likely does not translate immediately across WhatsApp's entire EU user base.
On the other hand, software people tend to be on the leading edge of new trends in technology.
Europeans tend to care a lot more about privacy than their American counterparts, and I doubt that Facebook's rather ham-fisted approach towards EU markets and their associated regulators is going to play well in the medium-to-long term.
This feels different. My non-tech friends, who I've been badgering to switch to Signal for years with no luck, suddenly just all started agreeing to switch.
Same situation in my circles two weeks ago, but the hype has died. Folks are back on WhatsApp. Some even moved to Telegram, which is a downgrade from WhatsApp, in terms of privacy. Signal's ranking on the app charts has fallen as well, that it's below the top 10 list.
I'm not an expert in antitrust, but I feel like this gives Facebook a stronger defense against governments trying to break up the company.
"Look at all the other messaging options out there with millions of users! If people don't like our decisions, users have shown that they can easily leave us for our competitors."
Anti-trust isn’t as simple as “look how easily users can switch”. Microsoft got busted despite how easy it was to get another browser because they leveraged their position of power to push IE.
Before this, not many people had a reason to even think of having an alternative to whatsapp. Now, that conversation has begun and more folks are installing alternative chat apps. It's not an exodus, it's more of a transition. The main point is, the average Joe has realized there are other options beyond Whatsapp and is more willing to now explore them.
Which average Joe? I have 100+ friends on whatsapp, I asked some if they are planning to use another app and not even one knows what's going on. I assure you, 99% of the userbase click whatever popup comes blindly.
Besides the terms update, the recent Facebook censorship in the USA has pushed many people to migrate away from WhatsApp just because it is owned by Facebook. BTW, I deleted by WhatsApp for this reason and convinced my family group about it too.
My wife and her family also migrated to Signal for yet another reason. The audio quality of the voice calls is much better.
I joined Signal and maybe 5% of my contacts are on signal as of right now. I don't think the critical mass is there yet, but I hope more people make the switch. I effectively cannot use Signal unless my main contacts are on it, which they aren't. The best thing I could do is try and convince all of them to move to signal so we can group chat on Signal instead, but it's a hard sell, despite the fact that most of the people I actively talk to are in tech or academia.
I think many people are probably fine with moving from Android messenger or WhatsApp, but it is going to be extremely hard to convince the Apple folks to stop using iMessage (or whatever they call it). Apple has also been working hard (e.g. green texts) to ensure that people stay on or convert to iMessage.
The short of it is group chats lose functionality when even 1 non-apple user joins, and apple works hard to make sure you can't use imessage on other devices.
It's so frustrating. I want to like apple and their approach to privacy, but then they do stuff like this that alienates non-apple users.
Anyway, imessage is like a caveman compared to messaging apps like Kakaotalk and LINE. Those have more features and I like group chats on them much more than I do on imessage. Not that I had a choice; I don't think I ever got my Korean friends' actual numbers because everyone uses Kakaotalk.
Disappearing messages can always be snapshotted arent they? I fail to see their point ?(earnest question) by snapshotted, either with system snapshot or another phone?
Besides all the other reasons already mentioned, its security model is somewhat dated. For example, it does not use forward secrecy, neither for chats nor for 1:1 calls. (Group calls do have forward secrecy.)
That said, I still use it over Signal when I can – cross-device messaging is very hard, UX wise (which device receives the notification, does "mark as read" properly sync across device, how is the behavior of a device coming back online after a while etc.), and Apple has almost perfected it at this point.
It does not mean they use Signal. Because of the bubble, many of my friends have installed Signal, including myself, but continue to use Whatsapp.
I personally use whatsapp only for very close people and I don’t want to break the chat history so switching to any other app is a bit disconcerting.
I have installed Signal and do not use it because none of my friends are on it yet. A critical mass is required before I can start using it. You can't migrate group chats from platform X to Signal until everyone in the group is on Signal. This isn't bad news really, as long as people continue installing Signal, eventually I'll be able to start group threads on Signal. I guess it is only a matter of time, assuming more people continue downloading Signal. I think the easier sell is to just get people to install it -- they don't have to use it right away. Then the early adopters can start group threads and chats as they become possible, which will start the shift from other platforms to Signal (assuming people continue installing Signal, of course).
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 121 ms ] threadLast week servers were unstable for about 24hrs. But they did grow by about 10x in approximately a week's time, so that's not entirely surprising. I think it's more surprising that they've been so stable so far.
It was very entertaining seeing all my group chats move one by one to Signal now that there is a critical mass of users that agree that it is the right choice. I tried to make it happen in the past and it was too much a pain to convince people that Signal was way better than WhatsApp.
All of their products trade on enormous network effects, so I think they'd be very aware of maintaining that barrier to entry for new competitors. They've stumbled badly on that front here, and once competitors gain a foothold it'll be hard to keep them out.
If a new TOS policy with a bunch of legalese can damage the moat I would say the moat is pretty vulnerable.
It seems less clear that the market can deliver a solution for people that post untrue things on the internet.
The network effect in messaging apps is significantly lower than it is in other cases because people are not going to carry two brands of cell phone in their pocket but they very well might have five different messaging apps on their phone.
> It seems less clear that the market can deliver a solution for people that post untrue things on the internet.
It seems less clear that anything could do that ever.
I don't think it changes the calculus, though. WhatsApp will be concerned with all serious threats to their market share, and I certainly would disagree with the position that diminished network effects isn't up there.
The US govt fired the first shot with tiktok. Whatsapp / fb seems to be aloof thinking they are inmune from the fractured web
Google, Facebook and Twitter have been blocked in China for at least a decade now.
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma...
China never hid its intentions to control information to its wishes.
China can do whatever it wants , but ultimately it is the US that sets the tone for the web. Arguably China did fire the first shot, and deserve to be condemned by it, but until recently most western countries would stand by the open web principle. I think the US (rightly) has said, we won't tolerate abuse any longer.
Ergo, this has given cover to other countries to question the wisdom of the open web. Its no longer the communist / authoritarian govts that can tap into this.
In other words, the web fragments when free countries decide its acceptable to block back the communists / dictators. I refrain from saying whether it is a wise move, I only posit that it looks inevitable at this point.
I can't edit my original post, but I think this would be more fitting: "USA fires back with the first shot among free western democracies".
I’m moving people to Signal too, but FB has a very good hand here.
They're not going to make it into a WeChat equivalent anytime soon.
https://www.whatsapp.com/business/api
https://www.whatsapp.com/payments
Payments are not available in most countries, including countries where private communication are all on the platform.
And their businesses offer is extremely basic and doesn't have any penetration, even in places where 100% of people have the app. Why can't you search a business by name to contact them; why don't businesses put up a link on their website/Google Maps to start communicating with them? Why can't I scan a QR code on their ad and message them?
Where I live Whatsapp runs all private communication, and yet in 6 years Facebook hasn't even tried doing more.
Feel free to revisit this in 24 months. Facebook cannot afford to leave WhatsApp in an easily copied state.
I don't want Facebook to get my list of contacts, but I also don't want to lose touch with my extended family. Guess which one is more important to me?
Facebook seems indispensable in finding the people you're after, but maintaining contact doesn't seem to require it.
Or is it their updates posted to the entire world that you're after?
Whatsapp does a lot more than what regular sms does, including working video calls across platforms, working multi-person chats with file attachments, etc. Don’t say e-mail does this, it doesn’t, as you will need more than a phone number that you already have.
Here everybody asumes that you have it, if you don’t, you’re on your own. As an example, my communication with my car insurance company over an incident I’ve recently had is happening over Whatsapp.
No matter where you live in the world, you don’t need Facebook, not at all, not one bit. It requires absolutely zero extra effort to stay in touch to exactly the same degree, see all the photos, send all the messages you want, with dozens and hundreds of other global services that all your contacts, even tech-phobic grandma, already can super easily interact with.
I have never had a Facebook account, yet I still keep in touch with all the many contacts in my network from high school, college, past jobs, global extended family, immediate family, OSS project acquaintances, etc. etc. - all with zero Facebook.
This utterly false myth that Facebook is necessary, or even the slightest bit important or even useful, to keep in touch very closely with all the photos, comments, etc., really needs to die.
You can completely delete Facebook on a whim right now, and 100% of all that stuff is just as immediately, easily achievable right away with zero loss or deficiency from removing Facebook.
If I don't message my sister via Facebook she won't see it. She doesn't do email for private stuff and she's not going to install another app.
If I don't message my mother via WhatsApp she's not going to get it. She doesn't understand what the fuss is and WhatsApp is already complicated for her.
I'd love to be able to message people with zero extra effort but the fact is it's a non-zero amount between us and in the end I'm the one who has to go the extra yard.
I know this because I've not had a FB account in over 7 years now. Facebook's not necessary but it sure as hell is easier.
You realize that I am speaking from experience not hypothetically; I don't have Facebook and there's been a marked decrease in both the number and frequency of messages from my family who rely on it.
I really wish this wasn't the case. The vendor lock-in with Facebook is really significant and I think those of us who leave the platform have to acknowledge that.
Speaking as someone who never had Facebook, I’ve experienced zero loss of connection with anyone in many networks of family, friends, colleagues, etc. Just a simple email thread to share stories and photos here or there, phone calls, SMS text chats or other apps. It’s so easy and seamless to stay in touch with no part of it involving Facebook.
Viral growth and shrinkage means this is one case where being the change you want to see can have immediate effect.
If you can, try it. If it doesn't work, you can always go back to WhatsApp in a few months.
That's not to say it's not the best out there. As a company, Signal is a million times better and more deserving of our trust than almost any other option on the market, but if we want to break out into open communications, the Signal protocol needs better decentralization.
In many ways it feels like decentralization is the same as discovering the internal combustion engine before modern alloys existed. We have to invent a lot of extra stuff to make decentralization practical, and we will, but the vision definitely started many steps ahead of the technological progress.
I'm happy for disagreeing opinions.
> But once it is mature
You may be right, and if it turns out that you are I'll happily change my opinion. But it seems like you agree that currently centralization is the way to go for an app like Signal. Honestly I'd love to see Signal decentralized, but I don't think it is the right move right now or in the near future. But given what you said I still don't think it means it is the right time to call for decentralization. Signal doesn't have to be the leader in advancing decentralization technology. They are already leading in secure and private communication and I don't think such a small group can be experts in too many things. They got their niche and I'm happy someone is doing it.
I'm curious though, why do you think decentralization will move faster in the future? What advantage do you see in that? I've always seen decentralization as lagging in updates because it is more difficult to get users to update and software can't exist in isolation (software rots).
Right now the cost outweighs the benefit but the cost is decreasing and the benefit remains.
We saw incompatible islands appear in decentralised systems before (this tends to not be good for users), and we've also seen how any implementation of "protocol/feature negotiation" is basically a disaster for security. I don't currently see how any truly decentralised system is lowering either of these costs.
WhatsApp never used to be e2e for everyone, but they were able to make it universal relatively quickly because it's centralised. All of the poster child decentralised protocols (SMTP, XMPP etc.) are still not e2e for everyone despite decades of effort.
The thing about decentralization is that it forces the data to be available. So for example Facebook can't stop an alternative app from having full access to Facebook groups even if they want to.
So the big successful apps most likely end up deciding the data model and feature set, and everyone else just borrows that, and if they extend or add features those features won't appear on every interface. Which is okay as long as the common core (determined by the big app) is all there.
Technology is ready, what's missing is the goodwill of the biggest actors.
What? Email was massively popular before gmail even got into the game. It was popular when Microsoft bought hotmail. It was so popular I remember a dial-up ISP (Juno) offering a free email-only dial-up account.
Email was one of the only easy to convey selling points for early Internet.
Online shopping was a shitty Wild West and most web pages consisted of some basic info and a visitor counter. But being able to send a “love letter” across the country in seconds was amazing!
I'm sorry, but is Hotmail not a large centralized player?
Decentralization is hard to build a business around.
...this would make the problem you identify worse. Signal is one company.
> E-Mail is an open Standard. Instant messaging can be too!
It can be, but Signal definitely isn't.
Email and instant messaging don't actually differ in terms of what they're doing. They differ only in the social perception of what you should use them for. Why not use, say, Delta Chat, which is a messaging app frontend that delivers its messages by email?
Hell, Yahoo had entire verticals like ocean shipping self organizing around Yahoo Chat back in the day and never figured out how to monetize. Slack is going to be another salesforce widget.
And they're both monetized exactly the same way, as part of a more comprehensive suite of office productivity offerings. People don't pay for Yahoo Chat the exact same way they don't pay for Yahoo Mail.
Chat is almost always a closed loop. There are usually large implementations, and as a user I can only message within one. There are some exceptions to that. Chat always gets kicked around as corporate strategy changes. At work, I’ve probably used a dozen incompatible Microsoft solutions as their strategy meandered around. Jabber was the big attempt to make chat like email, and it failed.
Email still runs the world, despite its many flaws.
An app that aggregates all of your different social networking apps (think AIM, but for social networks). When you talk with your friends, each of your messages get sent to different social networks -round robin style- this only gives each social network a portion of the conversation. Your friends must, of course, also use the same tool to stitch the conversation back together.
I've read many times that the former is very much dying but I'm not seeing it in the channels I frequent.
Signal is far from an open standard. I use it and am quite happy using it, but with the knowledge that Moxie has publicly said many times that he does not believe in federation or third party clients (and will implement client blocking as well as using trademark suits if the problem gets big enough). And it's fine to have that opinion, I just disagree with it and you shouldn't sell Signal as something the lead developer has said they're explicitly against.
For folks saying (read: hoping) that Signal may become federated in the future -- I think it's a much safer bet to just use Matrix since it's already federated and has at least equivalent privacy guarantees (or even larger if you self-host your own server) and hope that Signal will peer with them in the future (which I personally think is about as likely as Signal becoming federated itself -- namely, it's very unlikely either way). But you do you.
Well that's a shame - I wonder if, given moxie is a member of the HN community, he'd clarify what is meant by that. I had a quick search and didnt find anything.
Given how explicit he was about this at the time (and the lack of comments to the contrary in the past 5 years), I honestly don't think any clarification is necessary. That's his opinion and while I may disagree with his opinion, we shouldn't pretend that he is likely to change it in the future (or to imply that isn't his opinion on the topic). If you feel strongly that you want decentralised instant messaging, use Matrix (or something like it) rather than hoping Signal will become something Moxie has said he is against it becoming.
[1]: https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco... [2]: https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...
In short, his argument was largely chat ecosystems are constantly evolving but decentralized protocols tend to ossify. Thus, decentralized protocols will ultimately not be able to keep up with the demands of the users.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj3YFprqAr8
Lots of people point to email as an example. I'd like to also point out the phone system and its codecs as another example. Most phone calls behind the scenes are using SIP to handle connectivity. SIP is codec agnostic, you could technically use any kind of codec in the RTSP stream. Its a very decentralized protocol, and highly extensible. And yet it seems like almost every time you try and place a call, the only codec anyone else supports is G.711, a codec released in 1972 and hasn't had a major update since 2000. We're slowly seeing G.722 adoption now that the patents have run out (HD voice on cell phones) but even then this is spotty. Meanwhile every other chat platform out there has moved on to more efficient and higher quality codecs because all it took was the chat platform owner to push one version update out.
The decentralized communications network is only just now finally adopting and rolling out a _33 year old_ codec. Sure sounds like a win for decentralized systems!
There's a lot to love about Matrix, so I hope it becomes easier for people to get started with it.
The UX still isn't "great" or "delightful" but I have had people sign up and find be by email or matrix ID with no problem.
Is Signal even open source? Where is the server code for this patch: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25803010 ?
[1]: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/commit/c95f0fce6...
1) Downloads are not usage.
2) One month _in one country_ is not a pattern.
3) If we believe WhatsApp has two billion users, "millions" - while subjectively significant - is objectively minor (at this point).
Lots of people seem to have downloaded Signal or Telegram, but how many deleted WhatsApp? I don't plan on deleting it and I'm going to approve the new T&C or whatever it is, but I'm quite happy to migrate to Signal for my contacts who use both.
Presumably losing x% of conversations is just as bad as losing x% of monthly users for Facebook, so maybe this is moot, but it's still lazy journalism.
They'll go and tell the people in their groups, which in turn they'll tell theirs.
By this point they all have signal and/or telegram, and they've set it up themselves, parents included. Again, they are spreaders.
It's not like whatsapp is disappearing. But you can bet they're losing millions of accounts.
To put things into perspective, let’s assume that 25M users (as stated in the article) actually moved to Telegram - which I use and like by the way. Let’s assume they fully moved and stopped using WhatsApp (very unlikely). That means less than 1.25% users moved to another platform - and this means assuming many things that aren’t probably real.
It reminds me a bit of the articles about DuckDuckGo vs Google where many people think big changes in usage are happening while ignoring that the average Joe will keep using whatever it’s using unless there’s way too much trouble to continue using it.
Perception does matter a lot, and that’s why I used the 1% figure. It means one percent of WhatsApp users are investigating a competitor (not even deleting their account in WhatsApp, but I guess few did) and here people seem to see it as a clear tipping point to which I disagree - raw numbers don’t mean much if you have nothing to compare with.
But if you now have several millions of people who will not use Whatsapp at all, all the groups that they are in will need to migrate to the alternative (which is pretty much Signal/Telegram at this point). So those few million become few tens of millions. And once they migrate and start liking it, they may avoid Whatsapp as well, because it's far easier to just use one app, and then their groups need to migrate, and so on.
Edit 1: Added Telegram as an alternative.
This is something I want to highlight. I know we’re not all product managers but as people working in tech we should be able to take different perspectives and understand that what matters to us doesn’t matter at all for the 99% of the people outside our tech world.
It also depends on your level of seniority in that group. If you are a junior member, they likely won't switch, but if you have the social clout, you might be able to get them to switch.
For the same reason, Facebook was initially open to only Harvard, then to a few other ivies, until it opened to all colleges in the USA and Canada. If your high school friend who made it to the the highly esteemed college uses the service you are more likely to switch than if it were the reverse situation. Later these people get into important positions of society and if you want to network with them, you too can use FB.
A dedicated and stubborn minority can gradually impose their preferences on a majority who does not have a strong opinion on something. This why you'll order a cheese pizza if you're hanging out with friends and a single person in the group is a vegetarian.
In my own life there are many group chats that are now on signal because one stubborn 'ole grouch, namely me, insisted on it. Most people don't give too much thought to the chat app they use, so they kind of shrugged their shoulders and went along with it.
With messaging apps you can use both Whatsapp and Signal, so even if you convince a few people to convert, Whatsapp is unlikely to decline.
The important word in Taleb's thesis is 'stubborn', not minority. The change isn't gradual but 'fractal' with one person in the group being able to flip everyone else, and they going on an doing the same thing.
I think the stubborn minority may indeed be small, but you havent given the intolerant minority the time ineeds to grow.
It’s just a question of how many people are extremely pro WhatsApp and will Facebook drive them away.
Done, nobody cares anymore, for real and features will come from Google :D We're so stuck on using 2 apps instead of 2 networks we forget mobile phone providers had to agree together to do SMS decades ago, and it went fine with dumbed down feature.
And let's be honest, the only killer feature that made me finally adopt whatsapp like 6 years ago was that it used the data plan that works on WIFI rather than the phone plan. We were all fine with SMSes before.
So yeah, while saddening I don’t expect SMS to make much progress as its lifecycle is tied to the worst one in the industry.
XMPP had a better chance, but unfortunately chatting service is the bait for other purposes... so an interop standard has no chance to survive without regulation.
I had more issues with iMessage delivery then I ever had with SMS in my whole life. I dont even remember a single incident with SMS delivery. And I consider your "missing media" point an advantage. Sending stupid videos from phone to phone is a disease that I dont want to deal with.
Signal actually has a desktop app. It requires having installed signal on a phone before, and linking the accounts, but it doesn't depend on the phone after that I believe.
As for SMS, it works on pretty much any device and network, with the caveats that it's the first and lowest common denominator messaging service.
They based it on the decentralized protocol Jabber (or XMPP) and even open their servers to others. Meaning you could discuss with people using other servers than GTalk, just like email.
Google closed their servers to federalization, rebranded GTalk to Hangout and made bad decision after bad decision (but always in the direction of closing up instead of supporting open standards), lost the fight for messaging despite controlling the dominant mobile OS.
tl;dr I have no faith in Google to (1) do the right thing for open standards and (2) manage to get any sort of market share on messaging
rewording your sentence: Google stop volunteering time & resources on efforts that help others make money, and focused on only Google making money. I don't own any Google (AlphaBet) stocks, but if I was a shareholder, and someone would have told me that "we have a line item that is -50m on our statement, but hey, it is good for the competitors", I would like that line item gone.
I have faith in Google that they will try their best to make money. They may lose 1 here and make 50 there, but that -1 will be gone after a certain time. And this is a good business decision. Otherwise they would have one cash cow and 100 losers and they would be a break-even business, which is not a Business because Business = profit.
You just added a bunch of accounts and all you messages and conversations (SMS, Skype, Jabber, etc.) were in one unified place.
Its still effectively this way on modern SailfishOS but as new IM services are effectively app based silos with no public API this system needs, you are not really able to make use of it.
You can have both Whatsapp and Signal installed, but everyone in a conversation needs to have the same app. So why not both doesn't apply as neatly as you assert.
It's also a backup mechanism in case Signal fails (like it did when the exodus happened)
I view SMS as a fallback solution. It has plenty of benefits, i.e. no app required, works on every mobile phone ever made.
3 groups:
1. Uses Signal only
2. Uses both
3. Uses Whatsapp only
1 is the stubborn minority, 2 is slowly increasing, and 3 probably doesn't care enough to be considered stubborn, and definitely not minority.
At least that was my thought, this whole debacle reminded me immediately of the stubborn minority, so I'm very curious to see how it plays out.
1. Uses whatsapp out of momentum. Doesn't want to use anything else, but might if people really push them; i.e. open to transition to group 2.
2. Will use whatever. Some people in this group want to stop using whatsapp, but won't break contacts to do so. Some people in this group would prefer to stick with whatsapp to avoid the burden of a switch, but won't break contacts to do so. This is the vast majority of switchers.
3. Die hard whatsapp users. Simply refuse to switch to another app, because it's a hassle, and/or because they begrudge other people making a mountain out of a molehill and asking them to do anything. Might oppose yet-another-app; or might actually want to stick to whatsapp because they actually like the simplicity of the network effect.
4. Die hard non-whatsapp (likely signal?) users. Refuse to use whatsapp, likely due to privacy concerns or distrust of facebook.
I don't think most people trying to switch away from whatsapp are in 4. Anecdotally, I people I know asking to switch are clearly in 2, and are largely losing to those in 3. Only 1 person I know claims to be in 4, but I'm not really sure that'll stick if the exodus doesn't keep momentum. Because of the existance of the bulk of humanity which barely cares about this, and some of which will get annoyed at the suggestion - I suspect group 3 is much, much larger than 4, and that suggests this exodus will fall flat. The only real chance here is that since this is all about closed groups that network effects aren't so huge, so a considerable exodus without actual terminal velocity is possible.
To me the biggest question, does 2 grow bigger than 3? When X% of people have Telegram, Whatsapp and Signal installed, then it becomes a non-issue to have Signal only sticklers.
> The only real chance here is that since this is all about closed groups that network effects aren't so huge, so a considerable exodus without actual terminal velocity is possible.
This is my experience so far. I think you're right that the network effect is very fragmented and micro. In my case the few active groups that I value have migrated, the rest don't care and could email me or sms me and I've seen sufficient migration to Signal, signalling that moving from 1 to 4 might be viable.
The guy nagging people with Linux ten years ago.
Anyway.
So now with that amount of people switching trying out Telegram, could mean that at least 2-3 people on a non-tech social circle might be using Telegram which might end up convincing the whole group to switch because of features (polls? utility bots?) or any other benefit they might find.
I have no issue using telegram or signal, it’s just that the default choice is becoming/became whatsapp.
Cant stand Zuckerberg, but he does have an eye for products that can really explode in growth.
The fact that the acquisition happened has more to do with regulators being asleep than Zuckerberg being awake.
As far as I can recall, the EU regulators believed Facebook's lies about not being able to link WhatsApp and Facebook accounts, which Facebook promptly ignored a few years later. They were fined €110m ($134m) [0]. The maximum fine would have been $276m at the time. Still cheap IMO.
This quote reads like a joke now:
> Today’s decision sends a clear signal to companies that they must comply with all aspects of EU merger rules, including the obligation to provide correct information
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/may/18/facebook-fi...
I don't envision a whole continent to change to something else unless WhatsApp dies.
Also, human have limited amount of attention --- if Telegram/Signal cannot make it to the critical mass soon then average users who had been convinced to try the alternatives might eventually revert back to WhatsApp because maintaining multiple chatting channels can be quite annoying at times, especially considering majority of their contacts might still be on WhatsApp and it is just easier to post there.
Well me too and... Even before this recent WhatsApp fiasco I noticed that some parents are using Telegram at the school where my kid goes. Out of 24 kids in my kid's class, there are 3 families which I know for sure have Telegram (I don't have contact with all of the parents so I don't know).
And I think Telegram is reporting more than, what, 500M users by now? If it's true, it's definitely a sizeable dent in WhatsApp's market share. It may not be 2B+, but 500M is quite something.
The thing is: users are not loyal at all. Telegram or Signal or others are a click or two away: it's neither hard to find/install nor to use.
I really wouldn't be surprised to see a bigger shift some day once more people begin to realize that "WhatsApp = FB" (many don't like FB but have no idea WhatsApp belongs to FB).
Users aren't loyal, true, and installing another app is easy, but getting your friends and family to switch often is not.
In my case, I was one of those people really not wanting to use WhatsApp but being forced by group pressure.
But now that I can even just vaguely reference the ToS issue with WhatsApp, I find people are willing to at least try and install Signal.
When you start WhatsApp the splash screen says "WhatsApp from Facebook" so I would be surprised if people really didn't know that the two companies were related. Instagram is the same, it says "Instagram from Facebook".
WhatsApp: https://i.imgur.com/JS20lGJ.png
Instagram: https://i.imgur.com/1SWybdu.png
Oh the irony of a knee jerk reaction fleeing an end-to-end encrypted messaging service to a messaging service that only offers opt-in encryption that more often than not doesn't get used. There was never any proposal to remove encryption anywhere, only add a new feature that, by the very nature of it, didn't lend itself to practical end-to-end encryption.
Here we have an exodus driven by *privacy* concerns surrounding the new policy. Users fled from WhatsApp to other services with the intent of keeping their conversations more private. The subset of those who switched to Telegram made their conversations strictly *less* private, achieving the opposite of their goals.
There is something wrong with that.
There's "I'm plotting criminal activities or planning to overthrow my government" messaging which requires secure encryption.
And there's "I don't particularly want to be followed round the intarwebs by adverts for piles ointment, because I mentioned my itchy arse in a message to someone" which requires respect for your privacy.
I reckon most of us are happy enough with the latter in daily use. And, when we do need to plot an overthrow of the government, we can always flick the big "secret chat" switch. I think Telegram just about gets the balance right; sacrificing some default secrecy for ease of use, seamless sync across all your devices and 'fun' things which are likely to lead to wider adoption --whilst also allowing you to switch on the more secure stuff, as and when you need it.
That's not strictly true. Users fled whatsapp to keep their messages away from Facebook. It could be a concern for privacy or a concern for not letting Facebook (specifically) monetize their conversations.
> Specifically, users had 30 days after first seeing the 2016 privacy policy notice to opt out of “shar[ing] my WhatsApp account information with Facebook to improve my Facebook ads and product experiences.” The emphasis is ours; it meant that WhatsApp users were able to opt out of seeing visible changes to Facebook ads or Facebook friend recommendations, but could not opt out of the data collection and sharing itself.
Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/01/its-business-usual-wha...
Whatever flaws Telegram got, it seems less impactful than getting mined by facebook and the practical design failings of Signal.
I can see some benefit with Signal being open source.
I think this may have been resolved now. However the issue remains that you cannot delete signal contacts and legacy groups, which means anyone who gets a hold on your phone number (without a pin) or phone, or account access to third party involved, got evidence for communication between you and a possible incriminating entity.
> Contacts must be blocked in order to be removed from your Signal Contact List. To learn how to block someone, click here.
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007319011-Ma...
You either have the contact in your contact list, or block list... I hope that's obviously supporting my claim.
Some of these meta data leaks may have been changed and are a result of my old account, however Signal lost my trust. (And lost sympathy over Moxy Marlinspike's opinions and presentation over time, e.g. the hangover/drunk "centralization: good" CCC talk, the F-droid drama, ...)
It's purely anecdotal of course, but I never expected this type of reaction to happen so massively and so fast.
But I take the bet they are moving to Telegram in a month or two when Signal's shortcomings hit them (mainly chat history and some sync issues).
I'd not be surprised if a lot of people got "FB (evil!) wants to read everything or they will close your account". Given how often I have received "share this message 10 times or WhatsApp will delete your account" from relatives, I think it also plays into this fear of losing access to your contacts. And it was all over the mainstream news, with the alternatives readily available (and their own shortcomings often not described).
HN can't represent all of the 50 million new users to Signal.
I’ve had a ton of non-tech people show up on Signal suddenly. I asked one of them why everyone is signing up, and he said because he doesn’t trsut WhatsApp.
Did millions of users uninstall WhatsApp? I don't think so. The most downloaded app figures by App Annie shows exactly what it says, which app was downloaded the most during that period. So as long as WhatsApp stays in the phone and if it receives a single message from hundreds of contacts a user has; WhatsApp didn't loose that user.
So the correct title IMO is 'Signal, Telegram gained millions of users'.
Agree - WhatsApp didn't lose the user. whatsApp lost the usage. That's still a loss. Not a total loss but a loss never the less
This is the first time I have seen about dozen new Signal contacts; but the question is how many of those dozen contacts are initiating messages through Signal and receiving messages in Signal from the newly signed-up users?
I have sandboxed WhatsApp in a separate machine and receive its messages through email[1] and I still receive WhatsApp messages from the aforementioned contacts.
Things would have changed if WhatsApp locked out the profiles(incl. me) who didn't accept the T&C on Feb 8; but now with that gone I don't think there's really going to be any change.
[1]https://abishekmuthian.com/send-and-receive-whatsapp-message...
Most people probably can't remember the exact moment that Skype was no longer relevant.
> Most people probably can't remember the exact moment that Skype was no longer relevant.
When smartphones became the go-to compute device for many. Yes Skype was made available to smartphones too, but like many other 'mobile first' applications which replaced traditional desktop software Skype was pushed down by the chat apps.
But I suppose it's also fair to say that Signal is now a good example of a 'privacy first' app, a new category that WhatsApp equally don't seem too interested in.
I think the analogy still holds both ways: exact uninstalls are not important once the communication starts moving elsewhere, and 'mobile first' and 'privacy first' are categories that companies ignore at the cost of losing millions of users.
What do you mean? Skype is being used more now than this time last year. It has just been renamed. The first few versions of Teams would even call themselves "Skype" when connecting to PulseAudio.
Say what you want about Microsoft, but they are the (Forefront?) experts at re-re-re-branding.
-- Sent from my MS Passport.NET account.
Although it's become much less relevant for IM purposes, it's still my to-go application for ad-hoc video calls with friends and family. Mostly because (a) it has an actively maintained desktop client, (b) it is offered as a standalone service, (c) it is home-user friendly (won't splash you with meeting and calendar buttons like zoom).
(a) its actively maintained (b) unsure about requirements of "standalone service", but its stand alone as its only a chat service (c) its just a messaging client, no calendar/meeting kind of stuff
Other than that I've had good success with web-focused services like Google Meet and Jit.si. There isn't a desktop app but to an extent that's been a win. All you need to do is email/text a link to your chosen friends and its all in their browser using web standards (or semi-standards, no plugins at least for modern FF/Chrome/Edge). No accounts, assuming they have a modern browser there's no software to install, just click and go.
As for the definition of a standalone service: One that doesn't tightly integrate with other offerings/ecosystems. Skype is kind of ok because other than connecting with your MS account, it doesn't promote other offerings. Also Microsoft's business model is not based on collecting and selling your data, at least not in the same extent as Google/FB.
Web-focused services work ok if you're comfortable with the web. But for parents, grandparents etc., I feel that a standalone client with a simple interface is more foolproof.
I didn't totally delete my Facebook account either, but as I haven't posted in years and don't have the apps installed, I don't think I contribute much more to their bottom line than someone without account.
I live in Mexico, most things happen through WhatsApp.
I was surprised by how many of my non-technical friends migrated to Signal and Telegram. Non-techies were sharing fake information about the new policy. The word around was that the new policy would allow facebook to spy on all your messages and photos. This scared off a lot of people and many of my friends at least download Signal or Telegram.
For most of those, I didn't even have to initiate it, it was proposed by a less techy member than me.
I'm not saying this will happen soon, but it happened in the past several times with products with a strong network effect.
Think about AIM, MSN, Friendster, MySpace...
There are also other examples, but I consider this level of advertising by them to be very desperate.
Since the term change, I’d say maybe 10-20% of the contacts on my phone have installed signal. It notifies you of new contacts. I don’t know if they’re chatting, and no one has actually used it to message me, but the group I’m seeing is far beyond some technical niche.
Whether it dents whatsapp is another question.
Some anecdotal evidence from my end is that with the change of terms nontechnical friends are much more open to use other messengers if I say I don't want to use WhatsApp. Previously I was sort of regarded as the guys who was making a fuzz out of nothing, now people just say OK let's try. I suspect this is because it made it to mainstream media, so there is more general awareness.
It seems also that the people moving now are more the nontechnical audience. For example my partner who is completely nontechnical and using what others are using, just told me last week that suddenly all her acquaintances are popping up on signal.
I don't think that this is an apt comparison. The functionality of IM is virtually unchanged for the past 20 years or so, and can easily be replicated. This makes jumping between different IM much more frictionless than switching a search engine.
But this is different. If all your friends use WhatsApp, you have no choice but to use WhatsApp. An chat network where you are the only one is useless.
“Let’s assume they fully moved and stopped using WhatsApp (very unlikely)” why is this “very unlikely”, I’ve uninstalled WhatsApp, I will never install WhatsApp again, ever. I guess I’m part of the “very unlikely” group.
I do worry about the move to Telegram. I’ve seen large law firms and privacy experts defend WhatsApp in comparisons to Telegram. I could easily see WhatsApp get those users back.
It's a lesson. No matter how big you are. 1. Communicate for understandability. 2. Don't take your customers for granted. 3. Change is hard, nudge them towards it instead of a push.
I tried really hard to move people away but they always come back to it, particularly for groups across continents WhatsApp is really entrenched.
This more or less describes Facebook's entire corporate ethos at this point. Almost all of their products are now clearly driven by PMs who are so focused on random metrics that they make various awful tweaks to the UX, all of which are clearly intended to drive some metric.
Case in point 1: Instagram replacing the "notifications" counter with a link to their "shopping" function that no one wants or uses.
Case in point 2: Trying to add a GIF on Facebook messenger opens up another entry point to Rooms, the video chat. No one is going to start a video chat from the keyboard, Facebook. (Then again, I'll bet 0.5% of users accidentally started one, so the metric is up! Ship it!)
Walmart would be way more profitable if every item was $100. But then no one shops there anymore.
So you need to walk the line between serving your users and serving your bottom line.
That or product got tunnel vision again. Wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened.
It would be much better for everyone to give good willing contracts, more open and well-intentioned, that the current model of unenforceable but scary lock-everything clauses. It would however probably mean a change of business model.
Whatsapp could say "we'll never profit from you data, we'll only give them to law enforcement after review of the request and we delete all after 5 years", 3 lines and easy to enforce in front of a judge. In truth, none of those auto-approved contracts nobody reads can fully be trusted to be enforced by a judge. The excuse of "I misunderstood it and just clicked anyway to talk to my children" could very well be a defence. You can't say "if you breath, it means you accepted this contract of 2000 lines of legalese".
One day I suspect, at least the EU, they'll think of doing something where you can't deny service for non-respect of a new contract and will have to offer a multi layer service for each contract level. That sounds rational and I can't believe a company can lock me out of an email service or whatever just because I can't accept a contract change I don't even understand.
Now, my friends-and-neighbors lean heavily towards the software industry, so this most likely does not translate immediately across WhatsApp's entire EU user base.
On the other hand, software people tend to be on the leading edge of new trends in technology.
Europeans tend to care a lot more about privacy than their American counterparts, and I doubt that Facebook's rather ham-fisted approach towards EU markets and their associated regulators is going to play well in the medium-to-long term.
"Look at all the other messaging options out there with millions of users! If people don't like our decisions, users have shown that they can easily leave us for our competitors."
My wife and her family also migrated to Signal for yet another reason. The audio quality of the voice calls is much better.
"You won't need Facebook to use Whatsapp"
"You won't need Facebook when I'm president"
I think many people are probably fine with moving from Android messenger or WhatsApp, but it is going to be extremely hard to convince the Apple folks to stop using iMessage (or whatever they call it). Apple has also been working hard (e.g. green texts) to ensure that people stay on or convert to iMessage.
It's so frustrating. I want to like apple and their approach to privacy, but then they do stuff like this that alienates non-apple users.
Anyway, imessage is like a caveman compared to messaging apps like Kakaotalk and LINE. Those have more features and I like group chats on them much more than I do on imessage. Not that I had a choice; I don't think I ever got my Korean friends' actual numbers because everyone uses Kakaotalk.
[0]: https://www.androidauthority.com/green-bubble-phenomenon-102...
#1 being the most important to me.
That said, I still use it over Signal when I can – cross-device messaging is very hard, UX wise (which device receives the notification, does "mark as read" properly sync across device, how is the behavior of a device coming back online after a while etc.), and Apple has almost perfected it at this point.
It does not mean they use Signal. Because of the bubble, many of my friends have installed Signal, including myself, but continue to use Whatsapp. I personally use whatsapp only for very close people and I don’t want to break the chat history so switching to any other app is a bit disconcerting.
I used to pessimistically believe that's just a handful of geeks.