Kevnyon

How Meta was ever allowed to buy WhatsApp without triggering anti-trust laws is beyond me

It was still called Facebook when they bought it.

In my region in Europe, it really is. EVERYONE uses WhatsApp. I’m not sure the last time I saw someone use SMS, its all WhatsApp. iOS, Android, its all there.

There’s nobody on Signal, that’s the problem. If I want to miss out on all of my group conversations, work conversations, messages between myself and others, then yeah, I can switch. But if I want to receive any messages at all, I have to keep WhatsApp installed.

I guess the biggest thing to be scared about would be fomo for most

I don’t mind missing out on some things, but I would mind missing out on literally all of the things. Everyone is on WhatsApp and trying to convince people to switch to a different app when, from their perspective, their current app has over 99% uptime, their kids, their family, their extended family, their friends, all are on WhatsApp. Its the same for me, its everyone. Its just a different situation in Europe.

I wish I could do this, but trying to convince people to ditch an app they’ve never had problems with and where they all have their family, friends, work groups and school groups already mashed together, how do you convince them? Its not even about me convincing my friends or family, its about everyone else doing the same and when everyone has so many contacts in WhatsApp, that number starts to snowball real quick. Its just not feasible to try and explain this to someone who literally doesn’t care. I mean even though I myself know what Meta is and how Zuck is complete asshole, I still can’t switch off of WhatsApp because nobody I know is on Signal and I’d just be alone there. What’s the point? WhatsApp is pretty much the first app anyone installs on their phone (regardless of platform), they’re not gonna switch now.

I agree and I think the cost of paying admins would far exceed that of server costs. Nobody would do it unless they could support themselves with it and that’s a lot of money that you’d have to scrape together to be able to pay multiple admins.

I can afford it too, but I won’t pay for it on general principle when it costs more than Prime and Tidal combined.

Since I am not that familiar with AWS and its pricing, I am not sure. Two years ago on this instance, an admin commented on this thread that it cost 180€ per month to run the server. So that’s at least 2160€ per year and that’s not including the labor and there’s only so much volunteer work that anyone is willing to put in, as is evident with the shutdown of lemm.ee, which cited a lack of volunteers as one of the issues that lead to the shut down.

Yeah, had to move back to this instance because of that. I think that just shows how hard it is and how much funding it actually requires.

Restricted to the whole site or just that user? The user tools are pretty powerful on their own.

Its no longer a community, now its an entire instance. And boy does it show sometimes.

Why is stuff like that included not included in every plan by default? As a European, I can’t even imagine paying extra for that. If I want to hotspot my data, my operator can kiss my ass and simply allow it, I’m paying for the data anyway.

At first for sure, but after the first… I want to say maybe 8 months, I knew that it’d be declared endemic with how people were just ignoring it in 2021 and pretending like it wasn’t there anymore. That said, I’d be out of a job if those restrictions weren’t lifted, so its not all bad. But certainly can only help yourself, most people don’t do anything and I couldn’t even get a fourth shot, so I’m still waiting for a new round so I can go get my shot.

I’ll have to keep that in mind, thanks for that. I honestly had no considered some BS like that happening.

For anyone out there, I recommend giving Tidal a shot and for podcasts, I recommend a FOSS app called AntennaPod. This is the combo I use myself, I’ve been using Tidal for a bit over two years now and just recently switched to AntennaPod.

I don’t know how much I’ll need it on a desktop that’s strictly used by me, but I see your point nevertheless. The fact that its turned on by default without user knowledge and that the key is not automatically safely accessible is… That is a whole other level of dogshit, that’s just insane honestly. I’d definitely save it to drive and a stick to be sure, that’s a good one.

I’m gonna upgrade my setup at some point, so thanks for this. I didn’t realize they had some bullshit like bitlocker in there, definitely going to disable that because I cannot lose some files.

I’m having the opposite going on, post upvote swipe is still blue but comment is now orange like I set it.

It’s not about converting people close to you. In some situations, you’re asking them to install an app just to talk to you, while everyone else they talk to is on WhatsApp. I personally have to use WhatsApp for work and for personal, otherwise I’d literally not get those messages. There’s no option when, if you stop a random person on the street, regardless of what OS their phone is running, and ask to look at their phone, it’s going to have WhatsApp installed. It’s like your phone having email; who the fuck doesn’t have email? It’s the same with Whatsapp, it’s just assumed you have it.

The problem is that only conglomerates can eat the cost of running such a platform. Ads will be the end of free interne, that’s for sure.