Except for social network effects (larger user base), what are WhatsApp's advantages vs Signal?
But I simply find the whole chat ecosystem so depressing. A few years ago at least I could chat with Google Talk people via Jabber. It is really absurd that instant messaging is not federated like email. Of course there is one explanation: while Email was invented in the 70s at research institutions with goals beyond profit, IM already started in the 90s with companies trying to capitalize their user-base with vendor lock-in... (ICQ, MSN, etc.). Sad, sad, sad.
As you said, we in Europe are kind of forced to have WA installed, but at least you don't have to use it as your primary client if you don't want to. You can even deploy it to an Android VM and go completely headless, if you feel the need.
Haven't used WhatsApp for months and then only for a few days to talk to someone from US.
My friends were heavy WhatsApp users but we changed one group after another to Telegram after WhatsApp were brought.
Telegram is far from perfect though so I hope to move to Matrix within a few months.
As I understand it, in order to have real end-to-end encryption (the real stuff, not some marketing term) each device has to generate a long set of keys and with each message sent, they cycle through to the next key. If WhatsApp is doing what it reports it's doing and it actually is end-to-end encrypted then the web application needs to use your phone because it needs that set of keys. I'm not sure if it specifically sends through your phone or if it sends via the webapp, but you have to use the keys in the correct order or the device you're contacting won't be able to decrypt the next message.
There's no particular reason that that has to be two phones though - could be desktop, wifi tablet etc.. That limitation is a result of a 'product' decision where your identity on WhatsApp is a mobile phone number. That decision was a big part of what allowed WhatsApp to scale quickly (people didn't need to create an account, just install the app and start messaging people whose numbers they had).
It can be done, but it shouldn't be done if you actually care about security or privacy.
- That desktop browsers can be less secure
- That software can work around that
- That mobile can be more secure
- That mobile can also be false security as "0 days" are currently in the wild and mobile phones are typically always online
- Etc.
If you truly want security, there's a really compelling argument for live-booting a distro like https://tails.boum.org/ and then rebooting when you're done. On the other side there are compelling phones such as the Libre 5 (assuming there are no current 0 days).
However whatsapp currently assumes that each user has one (primary) device and only handles encryption and delivery to one device. It isn't impossible to fix (example Matrix) but it does require effort and slightly more server resources (you need to store messages for longer on average)
The joke is that it used to be. FB Messanger and Google Chat had XMPP hooks so you could talk to whatever other platform, Slack used to have an IRC integration, MSN/AIM/ICQ never tried too hard to get stop reverse-engineers from putting their protocols into all-in-one messengers... Then businesses realized the value of locking in users and becoming walled gardens.
If I say to a friend "I'll message you on WhatsApp" they will be like "ok great".
If I say to a friend "I'll message you on Signal" they will be like "What is that? Oh I have to download something? Don't you have WhatsApp? Screw it just send me a text."
So you can't really say "Apart from larger user base why do people use it?". It's like saying "Apart from an inability to breathe, why don't people live underwater?"
All people who are important to me migrated. Some refused for a long time for no reason, but in the end installed a separate app alongside WA.
But I get your position: Judging by the amount of unfair usability and amount of third parties involved in any co.uk-domain, it appears to me that the common folk gives a shit about it over there. However, I wont get any site a visit who does the above. There are alternatives to gain information.
"larger user base" is an understatement; the difference is several orders of magnitude.
(on a personal level, I don't enjoy using WA, but it's necessary here unless you only communicate within a bubble of tech workers)
WA and Telegram have a pure web client when you want to quickly have access to your chats without installing anything.
If you decide to install the standalone clients you'll find that Telegram is vastly ahead of Signal. You can change the spellchecking language and add dictionaries, you have a lot more options for formatting messages (code blocks etc...), it deals better with multimedia content like inline audio, it's a lot faster and less resource-hungry.
The only reason I still bother with Signal is because I know that, in theory, from a security perspective it's the better of the three. In practice it's by far the worst though.
That's a weird thing to say. How is anything objectively ugly? It is a matter of opinion after all.
Basically they offer you a drastically reduced price to only access WhatsApp, mostly text message without media at that. Compared to the data plan that can access the whole internet it is very very cheap to use just WhatsApp.
The cheapest WhatsApp bundle on the most popular network (Econet) is currently at around 51cents to text the whole week (65MB of data) vs the $13 for 8gigs. Granted the 8gigs is for a month but $13 is a big amount in this part of the world, and with regular data there's the aspect of discipline to not use all that data on youtube and other data hungry apps/websites.
- Share live location. If I need to meet up with somebody, or let someone know how far away I am and when I'm arriving, I use share live location. "Share for 1 hour." In Signal you can share your location at a moment in time but it doesn't update.
- Broadcast messages ("mass text" basically). In WhatsApp I can send a message to a list of people without the people on the list seeing each other (to them it looks like I messaged them 1:1). In Signal I would have to use a group and all the members would see each other.
This can be an extremely useful feature at times, and is also E2E encrypted with a similar model to group chats (but modified to allow for lossy delivery).
> Broadcast messages
This is one of those interesting features that many people are completely oblivious to, don't use, and don't understand why anyone needs. Meanwhile, many other people use it constantly and simply can't live without it.
What's the use case for this? "Happy New Year!"?
1. I'm on a few "mailing lists" that are delivered via WhatsApp, like "weekly one-minute sermon" type stuff.
2. I have a friends that are all into the same kind of music but don't know each other. I use broadcast to send them links to bandcamp, spotify, etc.
3. I have a broadcast list for my local friends. If I want to get rid of something or looking for something ("hey I'm getting rid of this, do you want it" [photo]) I use that list.
The fact here is that network effects play a big role in these kind of business models.
Moreover think about the fact that whatsapp was one of the first entrants, and was bought by Mark Zuckerberg. Brand is another big player when we consider and analyse that competitive landscape...
Security is one of the most important factors nowadays, especially if we consider the data breaches number, that is increasing dramatically (600% since covid-19 outbreak). But are like p2p models, if there aren't many people to create traffic, it isn't worth it (for the moment at least). And in case of messaging apps these people must be your friends! (Word-of-mouth)
Do not misunderstand me, I am 100% for security and privacy, but here users are driven by other factors unfortunately.
First screen asked me to wiggle my finger on the screen without offering any explanation. Second screen gave me a random string and told me that's my ID. Third screen asked me to add a password for Threema Safe, whatever that is. I then couldn't leave that screen at all because the on-screen keyboard covered over the next button, and the one big green button that was visible did nothing. Eventually I accidentally swiped and got to another screen that asked me what Threema Safe I wanted to use, like I have any idea what a Threema Safe is. After that it asked me to put in a username, even though I already have a Threema ID from several screens ago. Then it asked for my phone number. So now it has a Threema ID, a phone number and a username and I have to guess which of those is useful. Then it asked me to sync my contacts, I didn't do that. Finally, I got to a screen with a QR code, my nickname, my Threema ID, something asking me to Enter Code for Linked Number, and a Key Fingerprint. This thing bears only a passing resemblance to a messaging app.
Most of that setup I kind of understand, but then I'm the sort of person who reads HN. There is not a hope in hell of getting even 1% of the people I know to even make it through the setup process though.
Once inside, I apparently have one contact called ECHOECHO who, when I message them, repeat the message back to me. The messaging UI is slightly nicer than Signal and WhatsApp's though, but not as nice as Telegram's.
And yeah, it may only have 1% of users but thats's only because 95% have WA... It's a choice about freedom and you have to start somewhere. I converted more than 50% of my contacts to Threema - the rest has expensive phones but obviously no money to protect their privacy.
>(Threema) has the most secure encryption mechanism
Can you elaborate on that? How is it better than what Signal and Whatsapp use?
An awesome feature for me is this (from their FAQ): The dots are an indicator for a contact's verification level. They don't affect the encryption strength, but are a measure for the probability, that the saved public key of a contact belongs indeed to that contact.
Level 1 (red): The ID and public key have been obtained from the server because you received a message from this contact for the first time or added the ID manually. No matching contact was found in your address book (by phone number or email), and therefore you cannot be sure that the person is who they claim to be in their messages.
Level 2 (orange): The ID has been matched with a contact in your address book (by phone number or email). Since the server verifies phone numbers and email addresses, you can be reasonably sure that the person is who they claim to be.
Level 2 (blue): This verification level is only available in Threema Work; it indicates that the Threema ID belongs to an internal company contact.
Level 3 (green): You have personally verified the ID and public key of the person by scanning their QR code. Assuming their device has not been hijacked, you can be very sure that messages from this contact were really written by the person that they indicate.
Level 3 (blue): This verification level is only available in Threema Work; it indicates that the Threema ID belongs to an internal contact whose ID and public key you have verified by scanning their QR code.
You can’t just convince the majority of the users with privacy arguments or even hypothetical extra features from Signal. Only if WhatsApp would introduce something really annoying (huge ads, fees, constant technical issues) people would start to move. But even Telegram which is so much better IMHO (albeit privacy by default isn’t better) will hardly be #1 ever if nothing of the above happens.
"They trust me — dumb fucks"
to quote the man himself
But yes as an early Android adopter, I was a bit surprised I never had to pay the yearly $1.
But even if we assume WhatsApp should be multiplexing the streams on their end, unmetered bandwidth is cheap and again we aren't talking about 4k streams and hundreds of participants per call.