Gergely Orosz Sep 7, 2023 Paid

Yeah, no, I’m right. This is always how it starts, and these new Channels “partners” will definitely be a revenue stream in the future if they aren’t already. Your view is naive.

I also find it crazy that people don’t understand the value of privacy. Telling people that Nissan wants to sell information about your sexual activity seemed to wake some of my social circle up. But only in the context of Nissan, which almost certainly doesn’t have that data. Meta almost certainly does.

What sort of roadmap are you looking for in Signal? It does everything I need it to do, personally.

Ew. Thanks for pointing me to that. TIL.

Unofficially, yes probably. But officially Facebook only upped the ante on user data connection from WhatsApp more recently according to their privacy policy. Sorry, “Meta”

Is it? How do you define enshittification?

Because adding paid promotions to something that never had them is always the beginning “making things worse” -ificaton.

The rest of this story is very predictable following Meta’s track record with social media. Everything will go to shit from a UX perspective now that they’ve decided to put ads in the app. That is how this works.

I feel like this thread has been bombarded by the Zuckerberg defense brigade.

You mean they’re adding ads but it’s cool because we don’t have to click on them? You’re right, this will never be made more intrusive, and it’s definitely not an anti-feature.

Turning a messaging app for myself and friends into a data farming social media app full of paid promotions is absolutely the definition of enshittification.

I fully support the push for open protocols. It’s insane to me that most walled garden messaging apps are largely a wrapper for XMPP.

Signal supporting SMS would be nice, but I certainly prefer web based protocols over MMS for sending media. The less compression there is on the photos and videos I share the better.

Other than being forced to use WharsApp due to their market dominance, I have no desire to use anything proprietary or closed source.

Signal is my top choice open source option, because it’s easy for my family and friends to just use, and it’s one of a very small pool of messaging apps that is verifiably private and secure.

If you log into the app, you’ll see promoted content from celebrities and organizations. What do you think drives those promotions?

It’s either direct paid promotion, user data being sold to ad firms, or a combination.

Signal is great!

I remember when it was trash in like 2013, but it’s been something I recommend to family and friends since at least 2020. UI is clean, modern, and uncluttered IMO.

Not sure I’ve ever seen Signal push anything crypto related.

Telegram is “pinky promise” secure with a closed source encryption mechanism. I love that it was created by the guy who created VK and fled Russia when the oligarchy wanted control, but that was years ago. Signal is fully open source, including its encryption.

They store no information on users, not even metadata like phone numbers, and this is documented in the blog posts they make when governments get mad about it after their requests for user data can’t be filled.

The fact that you need a phone number to sign up bothered me early on, but over time I’ve realized how helpful it is from a UX perspective. Friends and family want to be able to connect to their contacts directly – not ask for a username.

No, this is absolutely how it begins

Monetizing the app

This is the beginning of monetizing the app after they started collecting user data a few months back. The more aggressively they decide to monetize, the more aggressive they’ll be about pushing promoted content. Remember when Instagram had no ads?

That’s how this works. And they’re certainly not going to choose to make less money off of their app over time with the market dominance that they have. Why would they when users will continue to use it?

We’re gonna have some juicy legal battles when Hollywood start leveraging generative AI more and more

Pretty sure I first read this headline in 2012. I’m glad the DOJ finally woke up

The fact that this is the only new “innovation” worth writing an article about is sad. Technological progress has declined so much over the last decade as Big Tech has consolidated the market. Doesn’t help the every minor leap gets turned into a subscription these days either.

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