I remember switching to WhatsApp many years ago, mainly because it had no ads and encrypted chats, while other apps were constantly crammed with ads and features I didn't need. Now I feel like I'm slowly going back to that old path. Sometimes it really feels like no app can really stay clean for long.
FOSS and open protocols are the answer of course. Signal is unimpeachable enough for me, but for the true believers there is Matrix with a bunch of third party clients.
Once you internalize the how and why (such as "forks are good" and "the more publicly auditable code the better"), there's really no going back and for the rest of your life you prefer FOSS even when you can't use it.
That's why I think that for some future generation there will be a FOSS equivalent of the waves of democracy that spread across the world starting in the 18th century. Once a country becomes democratic and people understand the benefits, they never really want to roll that change back. Our current generation is probably not going to double down on the "right to fork," but once an individual gets it they get it for good, so I feel it's just a matter time before a sea change occurs, even if we're all dead when it happens.
- on one side there is the increasing number of features in WhatsApp that nobody asked for and that make the experience worse and worse, I agree. Yet, on the other side of the world a 1B people in China use WeChat for so many things beside communicating, so I understand Meta's appetite to become the West WeChat. Still I hate it.
- on the other side there is the business model of WhatsApp. Or the complete lack of it. It's 100% unrealistic that a global, always on, high availability, high security service is free. These things are expensive and they need to be monetized.
It's either ads, either fees on extra services they are providing through the app, either a monthly subscription. Now, I think nobody would pay for WhatsApp and they would lose their market immediately if they went that route (for many good reasons). They tried hard to position WhatsApp as WeChat, failing at that (for many good reasons). Ads is the only thing that is left IMO.
True, but they are a much smaller service. I remember that WhatsApp was designed to be lean and very efficient so that it would run on a small number of servers.
But this it different from a highly profitable service. Let's keep in mind that Meta payed 19B for WhatsApp in 2014. They need a juicy ROI.
I wonder how it scales. It is an order of magnitude smaller but it's not exactly "small": I read it had 70M users in 2024. If you can relay messages between 70M messages without storing metadata, it feels like it shouldn't be too hard to scale, right?
Not sure if they get enough donations, but assuming they do: with 10x the number of users, if they get 10x the donations, it feels like it may work.
> Meta payed 19B for WhatsApp in 2014. They need a juicy ROI.
I think they paid for the metadata (I know that back then it wasn't E2EE but they moved to the Signal protocol in 2016), and now they are just enshittifying.
I have seen criticisms of Signal's crypto stuff (which I just disabled) and trademark, but I don't get it. It's okay to not use the crypto stuff (I personally don't like it) as long as it doesn't clutter the UI. Sponsored content says "for those who like this feature, they will now see ads". It's pretty different from saying "if you don't like the feature, don't use it", IMHO.
>so I understand Meta's appetite to become the West WeChat
Revolut will probably get there first
>It's 100% unrealistic that a global, always on, high availability, high security service is free. These things are expensive and they need to be monetized.
Do you have any information how much whatsapp costs per user per month? Threema seems to be doing fine with just one 5$ forever.
I have no numbers. I remember that it was designed to be very efficient and easy to maintain, but this was before Meta bought it. Things probably changed, and keep in mind that they need to return of the 19B investment in 2014, so they are probably aiming at much more than just covering the costs.
Coworkers convinced me to switch to whatsapp a few years ago (like 2023 or so). The reason, tho was as old as the internet is! They wanted to see the pictures of our cats we have at our workplace, which I liked to take with my phone. Later on WhatsApp became (sadly) handy for other tasks as well but also as a good way to stay in contact with friends, living further away! :D
