1w ago

WhatsApp just launched ads for all users, here are the details - 9to5Mac

9to5mac.com

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Apologies to everyone I pressed into quitting Messenger to switch to WA in the 10s. Hopefully I'm not repeating the same error in the 20s, but with WA->Signal. 😞
- 10s were the decade of signal. In the 20s, Matrix is the better choice.
  
  As a matrix user who is using the WhatsApp bridge. I'll probably never see the ads anyways
  
  Damn I just got Delta. Am I doomed to be perpetually behind on cool chats?
- Signal is better than WA (from privacy point of view) but it's still a centralised service. I am personally a fan of xmpp but since I was never even able to convince anyone to switch from WA to Signal, convincing people to switch to a federated service is even tougher.
  On the other hand, switching messengers once every decade should be fine, I think. We did switch from ICQ/AIM to Yahoo! / MSN messenger, then came Skype, then WhatsApp. I think Signal should be good enough for this decade.
  There's also Threema, Swiss based, but it has one-time payment, so most people wouldn't like it.
I haven't used WhatsApp in years. I refuse to use anything closed source if at all possible and have lost contact with some family and friends over it. And I'm perfectly okay with that.
For people like me who just can't shake off WhatsApp, because they need it for messaging people, you can use beeper and turn off most of the permissions for whatsapp and keep whatever WhatsApp does at bay, limiting its access. UNLESS it is for calls, beeper can't take calls. It will notify you to open the whatsapp when there is an incoming call.
Beeper is built on matrix and claims "zero-access encryption", and has no ads yet.
meanwhile all the users from developing countries won't even notice a think like they didn't when meta install their shitty ai into whatsapp :(

10 comments