35 comments

[ 5.8 ms ] story [ 39.9 ms ] thread
TLDR: yes, governments in favor of Chat Control legislation want to make absolutely sure it doesn't apply to them.
Meanwhile in Spain I use WhatsApp to contact the municipality, the GP uses it to send my blood results and package delivery drivers ask me to share my location. I hate it.
Would you rather they used Teams? Or what would be a better alternative? Phone / email?
Some secure online portal would be nice for the GP or municipality.

The delivery issues can be solved by introducing a standardized address system for Spain but that would take decades to roll out. Some people I know don’t even have an address, they just use the land registry number. Or just the name of their village + surnames, which is typically good enough for the standard mail (but not good enough for DHL/UPS/DPD packages, their drivers want your location via WhatsApp)

The 2016 coup attempt in Turkey was organized entirely on whatsapp. All of the conversations were recovered from multiple phones too.
I don't understand why they put this up like it's working in their favor. Their website doesn't explain anything extraordinary that makes them different from the average chat app, except that it is europe based.
What would possibly differentiate a chat app?
It works reliably and without surprises. Messages are not lost. No weird errors.

Features: easy to switch devices, including PC. File transfers. Video sharing. Audio-to-text conversion out of the box.

I'm not reading anything in this article that seems to pretend like it's working in their favour?

It's just an article from a company about their industry, companies do that all the time for brand recognition, building trust (showing expertise in their domain), and educating potential customers about why they might need this sort of product (lead generation).

If anything it is highlighting the pointlessness of any new messaging platform. Companies can and should lock down to the platform that comes with their subscription for everything else - and for all personal matters that is locked down with network effects by sms, whatsapp & wechat.

You could maybe make the case for a federated - email like - messaging service for inter company / party communications. Matrix basically ...

Why would they need anything different? If they offer the same features as other chat apps, they can simply aim to compete on price (and/or on other non-functional attributes like performance, reliability, UX, social connection, etc).
At least for the financial institutions on this list, I can say they have no other choice. Regulation forces them to log everything to avoid insider trading, etc. Any communication outside of their internal systems can't be logged and is therefore a compliance risk.
Been a sackable offence for over a decade in finance, I can not fathom why other sectors have been so slow to enforce some basic standards.

Recording every call, message (and in my office - thing you said at your desk) is mostly used for conflict resolution - when counterparties disagree you go to the tapes and see what was said. From there my word is my bond, it is done.

"ban personal messaging apps at work"

What does that even mean? I doubt you can forbid the usage of personal messaging apps except in very exceptional cases (like a court room).

On the other hand: Using personal messaging apps for work related information is a no-go anyway because of confidentiality agreements basically everyone signs.

Finance - no personal devices in the office and no personal (or unauthorised) messaging apps on your work devices.
I've seen this too in a meta moderation center. They were real sticklers for this. Even personal headphones were not allowed.

I don't think this is legal in EU but for that kind of low-level work they tend to get away with that.

Last thing anyone wants is exfiltration of the content meta moderates ...

I see no EU regulation that would give employees a right to play with their phone on the job.

No but being reachable by family is important for example if someone is a parent.

However this company was super abusive anyway. Putting pressure on people to work nights and weekends etc. It was a subcontractor.

In the end meta replaced them all by AI moderation and fired thousands of people in one go.

Using personal messaging apps for work, for example, sending work related messages through WhatsApp or Telegram instead of using the proper corporate/official app.

You can forbid your employees to use non official apps to send work related messages for privacy, compliance, security and other reasons.

Colleagues often setup WhatsApp groups etc so not on company slack/ms teams which will be monitored/loggged
Of course, the consequence is you end up communicating for work on something like Teams instead of an usable chat app.
I refuse to install that malware on my phone. Upshot is that I don't get bothered by coworkers after hours.
Like zoom where you chat disappears when the meeting is closed?

Or how about slack, that live in an alternate reality where outlook calndar doesn't exist?

Teams will spam your outlook calendar :)

Slack is actually the best I've used for actual work comms so far. But then I mean communication, not calendar spam.

I'm living a glorious Outlook-free life at work. I'm glad that I don't need any of that crap. Maybe Slack is right to push people away from the Microsoft shitware that businesses stick to.
True, Teams is a horrible tool. I wish we had something better but our company insists on keeping everything within the MS ecosystem.
I'm surprised any company allows work to be done over employees personal apps/devices/numbers. If a colleague/boss contacted me about work via my personal number they'd be quickly told to never do it again.
It's not at all uncommon. I didn't have a usable work phone number for years given that, even when I technically had a desk, I was never there. I always used my personal phone and, for that matter, laptop for that matter.
What? 75% people use personal chats for work? I've never seen this in my over 20 years working in the UK, Poland and few other countries.

Personal messaging apps were always banned everywhere I worked.

I have not for couple of years, but before covid I've worked in a well-known Polish company that was trying to force everyone to use at first HipChat, then some awful OSS chat. My team set up discord then.
Birdy chat is that front company which Meta allowed as third party client for WhatsApp?
Our company does the same. We are not allowed to use whatsapp for any work-related stuff.

This is for several reasons, mostly security and data-loss prevention. On Teams we can monitor with purview what happens with personal data, which is mandatory here in europe under GDPR.

But we don't block people from using it for personal purposes of course.