“WhatsApp is dead” – What do you use now?

Surely everyone has noticed the furor surrounding WhatsApp in the last few days and many newspapers and magazines have also reported on it (e.g. here: WhatsApp is dead: When your favorite app becomes a data octopus and the alternatives - digitec).

My question now; will you switch to another messenger? If so, which one? If no, why not?

It would be exciting to find out where most people will move to, if at all :-).

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Dominik

Signal - for around 2 years now….

The biggest disadvantage for “normal people” is that switching to a new device is quite complicated. Manual copying from backup directory. Nothing automatically via the cloud. It’s just for safety reasons…

At the same time, I also have Telegram active, where more and more messages are currently arriving: “Contact xy is now also using Telegram”

But I think that >90% of WA users are interested in what the WA terms of use say…

Conclusion: WA remains top dog

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….keep on rockin' 🤘🏼🤘🏼🤘🏼

Threema really seems to have a problem with criticism, whether appropriate or not… 😅 Please note the comment column within the post on Digitec:

In this sense, “To speak is to judge. To remain silent is to have judged.” 🙃

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Personally, I don’t like Threema’s UI.

What’s App really has another advantage:

it is easy to use for young and old. Don’t think many will change.

Then you wouldn’t have to use Google as a search engine anymore (I haven’t done that for years, for example).

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In addition to WhatsApp, I also use Threema. I don’t think many people will switch off from WhatsApp either. Unfortunately, it has to be said. The topic is relevant right now, in a few weeks hardly anyone will be talking about the new regulations on WhatsApp. The biggest problem, however, is and remains switching to another messenger… what good does it do if friends, acquaintances, companies, etc. don’t use it?

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@suisse that would be nice if iO could still be used. That was actually the first messenger I used and I really missed it when it was canceled.

Maybe that would be an opportunity for Swisscom to bring it back to life? 😂

But as most people here have noticed, I unfortunately also think that WA is not losing any users. At least on Signal and Telegram I don’t have any more contacts than before. But I always ask myself; Most people are afraid that the government is spying on them with SwissCovid, but not with WhatsApp and Co.?

But yeah, it remains to be seen. So far, thank you for your opinions. 🤗

@ThomasS Is it still lying around somewhere? Or is there even a part of it as an open source project? 😜

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Dominik

Personally, I still have hope that many people will use Matrix. But it’s not like that 🙂

https://matrix.to/#/@thomas:tuxone.ch

Basically, I communicate in the family via matrix. You have to set it up once and you can register x devices, everything synchronously.

95% of the environment currently comes in via WhatsApp. And for some I also offer Signal, SMS or iMessage.

I also set up the bridge in Matrix for Whatsapp and Signal.

And all the rest can remain stolen from me. Neither Threema nor Telegram nor do I know what to install. If you want something, you can probably get in via WhatsApp 🙂

The same topic is collaboration in general. For each fart you install either Teams, Zoom or Adobe Connect, to name just the bigger players. The corporations don’t know jitsi…

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I’ve been using Telegram for a long time. I also tried Threema, but only one of my 200 contacts has it and I can also chat with that person via Telegram.

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@ThomasS would still be really cool if you could still use the old messenger 😆.

@Tux0ne Matrix looks very safe and simple, but it is rather complicated, especially for the masses.

Apparently there is also integration into other messengers. Have you ever used this?

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Dominik

Yes, the Whatsapp and Signal Bridge is integrated.

So I can also use these services via Element Client. So web, Android, iOS, PC, Mac whatever I feel like.

Basically, a federation server for the family, club or company can be set up quickly. And if someone wanted, they could still communicate through a public server like Matrix.org’s.

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I asked some of my WA contacts whether they wanted to switch. The majority didn’t read the information properly, but accepted it because they wanted to write a message immediately and wanted to be disturbed by such information.

That’s actually the problem that no one takes the time to think about what this information even means.

Today WA has returned for another 3 months and wants to communicate better.

I also assume that there won’t be a big departure from WA out of sheer convenience.

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Don’t panic - it works perfectly. I simply told my contacts how I could be reached again and properly deleted and uninstalled WhatsApp - about 3 years ago. This works, dare you👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻 Nobody needs WhatsApp/Fratzenbuch😉

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@Tomcat wrote:

Don’t panic - it works perfectly. I simply told my contacts how I could be reached again and properly deleted and uninstalled WhatsApp - about 3 years ago. This works, dare you👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻 Nobody needs WhatsApp/Fratzenbuch😉

I didn’t even have to share this because I was never reachable on WA and FB. Nevertheless, everyone who wanted or needed to always found me.

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7 months later