Impressive that a site like Forbes is writing about the Fediverse. A small step to helping it into the mainstream.
this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2025
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WhatsApp ❌
Signal ✅
I was pissed at Signal for dropping SMS support. Their rationalisation was kinda bs. Now I just use matrix instead, since it's decentralised.
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That's my initial thought, but what do we know about who owns it?
It's owned by Brian Acton. The original founder of WhatsApp before it was sold to Meta. I'm yet to hear of controversial stories about him. Unless him being a billionaire irks you, i think it's fine.
It’s owned by Brian Acton
No, he is a founder and a donor. It's owned by the Signal Foundation, which is a classic non-profit that seeks funding from lots of sources.
The other founder is Moxie Marlinspike who is a security researcher
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I hope that's going to succeed. And those are the platforms in demand. While Mastodon is losing users, and we've been stagnating for quite some time already... Pixelfed is currently going off the charts. We'll have to see where this leads to and if it's going to last.
One thing we need to mention is funding.
While BlueSky may benefit from venture capital, free (as in beer) open source projects where user data is not commercially exploited for revenue do not have the same benefit. They rely a LOT on donations for running the infrastructure and for the hours and hard work that people are putting in.
Yeah I think this is a very important point.
I think people will need to learn to accept that there is no such thing as "free". The current social media sells you to advertisers, taking every bit of data they can get.
So for independent and privacy focused social media, we're going to have to accept we have to pay for it.
I've moved to paying for my email, my file storage, my VPN and my password manager - all for privacy and security. I pay for subscriptions for streaming to avoid advertising. So I would pay for social media.
In the early days of the internet, people accepted paying for things but then the "free" model came along. The fediverse will need to persuade people to pay for it. That may limit it from being the big everyone social medial, but it could be able to become the high quality version of social media that people pay for.
I know ads are very hated here, but I wouldn't be against an ad at a reasonable cadence to increase sustainability. Then create a pro version that gets rid of ads that's like $2-5 a month or $30 a year. The real problem is the exploitation of this system like Reddit/Insta feeding an ad every other post. Or Twitter charging nearly $13 a month for a check mark.
The sync app got so much hate for having ads during the original migration, but a lot of us here are devs and we should definitely get paid for our effort and be able to maintain our infrastructure without our of pocket money.
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Good point. Theoretically surmountable because Wikipedia.
But donors are going to have to be convinced that social media is a social good.
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My only issue is having WhatsApp in my circle is a must.
Friends and families are more than happy to text or call. But the numerous contractors and engineers I work with and request their service, to them WhatsApp is a must to send photos of issues or videos of faults.
They don't have email? It's like the 1980s when only nerds had email.
I know. But most of these engineers are on the job and on the road 99 percent of the time. And a quick WhatsApp message is all they want.
MMS?
MMS are sent by mail protocol between operators 🤭
I don't understand how it's worse for the guy in the truck though. I've never used Snapchat so I'm likely missing something.
I don’t know, but for the context let’s say that MMS are as safe as a mail could be: « not so much or not at all » depending on one privacy needs
"Sorry, I don't have WhatsApp but you can send me those photos or videos on Signal, Matrix, SimpleX, Briar, Wire, Session, Jabber, Threema, or Line."
Signal? Isn't that the app for drugs? /s
Good luck getting anyone to download any of those😂
Yeah but you see the point? They offer us one option. We offer them ten.
"You don't have any of them installed? Well, I don't have Whatsapp installed. So one of us is going to have to go out of our way. Why should you assume that's for me to do, just because everyone else including you behaved like an unthinking herd of sheep?" That's what I feel like saying, and occasionally do actually say.
It's a difficult conundrum. Speaking personally, but at this point resisting the Whatsapp fascism has become a stubborn article of faith for me. I won't do it.
Yeah... But to them, why should they deal with one difficult customer when they have a dozen more that are easier to work with?
My point was about the social scenario, which is a genuine puzzle because most people want to have friends. I've lost some over this.
For the business context (this was the subject, true), I find that's much easier: "F*** off and send an email." Impossible? Well then that's one less customer for you. I have lots of experience of doing exactly this. Almost always the email suddenly becomes possible after all.