this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
254 points (86.1% liked)
Technology
59454 readers
3687 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
As someone from Latin America. FUCK!
It’s literally what everyone uses for business, family/friends groups. Don’t know if any country around here is an exception, but we started using it because greedy telecoms were charging so much money for SMS at the time. So, it was a great way to circumvent that.
Then Facebook bought it when it was already established, so it’s improbable that people will move away from it.
This is one of those times when I’m glad we Luddites in the US still use mostly SMS/MMS. I have managed to avoid anything Facebook/Meta and I would have been pissed if the messaging app that all my friends and family were already using was sold to Zuck.
Aren't SMS less secure though?
Yes, although I'd argue that it's a pick your poison thing. You can use a system where the content of your texts aren't secure, or you can let Meta add even more personal information to the dossier it has on you, your friends and the family dog.
Fair enough, it's sad that there isn't a popular alternative without the drawbacks of both
Sure, but it's 10x easier to use the age-old open standard that everyone uses for general communication, that let's be real, the powers that be probably know I'm heading to my buddy's house before I say the "be there in 10" text. If you need to have more private conversations, there are better means for that.
I think unlimited texting was a thing in the US since like early to mid 2000s. It was never the case down here (probably still isn’t, since nobody uses it).
In fact, by the time cell phones became ubiquitous down here, it was around the time smart phones were launching. So with regular SMS being expensive, everyone just started using WhatsApp. I think back in the day the app was $1.
It’s kind of fucked-up that Zuckerberg has so much power over people’s businesses, study groups, family communications, neighborhood watches, et al. He could put ads on WhatsApp tomorrow, and people will probably take it, because humans are stubborn and like familiarity in general. I could stop using it today, but I would not be able to participate in a lot of things in society.
You can see it now in Reddit and Twitter. They’ve been completely entshittified and people are still there. In fact, we got people on Lemmy wanting to brigade and participate in r/place and give engagement to that shit-sipper Spez, so he can use the metrics on his damn IPO.
I've seen a lot of discussion about why most of the rest of the world uses messaging apps instead of texting, so I understand. And messaging applications are objectively better in almost every way. But the threat of enshittification is always present when people choose a corporate walled garden. Hopefully some of the new EU regulations on account portability will make lock-in less of a concern.
Except New Zealand! Although FB Messenger is more dominant here, plenty of us still use plain old SMS, and I'm really grateful for it.