I got a new job. whatsapp group (20 people) is migrating to signal because I don't use it.
I understand that it may be problematic sometimes but this was very smooth. I didn't even say anything.
A: what's your number for the whatsapp group Me: I don't have whatsapp because of facebook. B: ok, we have to use signal then A: ok
And that was it. Life can be very easy sometimes
At first from the title it seemed like they changed app to avoid you
yeah, that was funny. Creating a group without OP wasn't enough, they had to change apps lol
That's exactly what I thought as well from reading the headline. It definitely could have been worded better.
I wouldn't be surprised if that's how it plans out.
A regular group chat and another signal one for when you specifically need to talk to OP.
yeah, some title gore going on here.
Before Signal made the boneheaded move of removing SMS support, it was so much easier for me to pitch the idea of using Signal to my friends and family, most of which eventually did make the shift from SMS to Signal messages for reasons like ease of use when it came to group chats, sending images/videos, voice clips, etc.
But now? Now it's one of those embarrassing moments where I hear back from people basically all saying "your tech recommendations are usually on point but uh, what happened with Signal???" because the app just abruptly stopped supporting SMS and ruined the seamless appeal. SMS support was the perfect way to ease people into shifting towards Signal messages and now the only damn people I know who still know Signal are my most privacy-minded friends/family, while everyone else has switched back to WhatsApp.
Clearly I'm not bitter...😅 But I mean like, come on. I had the most notorious luddites in my social circle make the switch to Signal and they loved it. The shift from SMS to Signal messages was so smooth so many of them didn't even have that "I miss [SMS stuff]", plus they LOVED that Signal could be used on their laptops in addition to their phones. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh this annoys me so much.
I totally agree. And to make matters worse, one of their arguments was that supporting SMS was taking resources away from developing other features. But what mind blowing features have come out since they dropped SMS? Usernames, I guess, which they were working on anyway. New app icons...
Why did they remove SMS support?
Think it was related to the messages being insecure and signal didn’t want people to be confused.
If your using signal your messages should be secure. SMS messages aren’t secure. It may have been clear to you when Signal send an sms or an encrypted message, but they need to cater to everyone.
They expected to get a marginal number of additional users from vendor lock-in of existing Signal users
I have a feeling B wanted to use Signal, but expected it to be difficult to make others shift. When OP gave the opportunity, B came in and swyped it right away,
Exactly my thought as well
This headline sounds a lot funnier if you assume "it" means Signal, like I did.
Fuck this one guy in particular.
Still, you were lucky that your colleagues are aware of alternatives and will use it (I hope). I wonder though if people will migrate because of you. Its tough to encourage others to communicate Signal while majority use Messenger or Whatsapp. Their reasoning for that is the most friends and family member are on mainstream solutions.
Signal is an interim solution imo for most people, which I also recommend. Not too extreme, not to "geeky", which introduces them to alternative app world.
What did you do to offend them?
I first read it that way too.
If i ever get a job and have to use whatsapp, im using to use all those stupid stickers in every message i send
Pretty much the entire world, except the US and Canada, is WhatsApp based. Every job chat, every message you send, it's all WhatsApp. Heck to pay for parking or to get immigration visa services from the government, it's mostly WhatsApp. And yes you can send stickers.
Sometimes Lemmy loses perspective that the way 300ish million people do something is not that relevant to the other 7500 million.
Popularity has little to do with quality. And that applies to iMessage as much as WhatsApp, Facebook, or any of the other communication channels that dominate due to network effects and switching costs.
The former Soviet Union, China, Korea and Japan are big exceptions to this though
Most of southeastern Europe uses Viber as the "default messaging app", so it does vary by region.
I don’t know what pretty much „the entire world” you’re talking about but Im pretty sure whatsapp has no official uses in this little known continent called Europe.
😎🤙
Why would a workplace need a group chat? Aren't there any enterprise tools in place to achieve that?
Small companies and startups like to save money
Cannot access work intranet (Teams etc.) from personal phones. Don't have work phones. They all use WhatsApp so reluctantly, so do I.
In these companies, does anyone check the licenses in details to make sure using them is ok for the company?
Meta will get at least the metadata: meaning they will record who was in which call connecting from where.
For example, if one member is visiting a client, Meta may be able to infer the relation between the 2 companies.
If any of the people in the room click "report", then the discussion is sent for review without the encryption protection
I'm pretty sure their user agreement translates to "you agree to let us do whatever the f*ck we want with the data you're purposely disclosing to us".
And last but not least: if Meta decides to wipe the archives, any info get lost?
There a reasons large companies ban unauthorized apps to talk about work.
I would never join a group chat like that. If they need to get ahold if me after hours, they can call me.
BTW Teams doesn't live on Intranet. There's no reason they wouldn't be able to open up Teams to BYOD beyond incompetence.
Emergency team chat when there is a outage of corporate systems
Chat for social work stuff like team building or off-site gatherings.
Being about to shit talk about corporate stuff off the reservation is nice.
It can be a big sms group chat, signal, discord, whatever your team likes.
I used to work for a small PPI claims management company. Our accounts team had a WhatsApp group for social discussion outside of work.
All of our internal work comms were handled through Slack.
I wish my family was that easy to change, and there are only five of us.
In all my years of not using WhatsApp this has never happened to me lol. At best I've gotten some people to message me individually on Signal but not entire groups
Do you have a vacancy?
Sure and then Santa gave everyone free librebooted thinkpads.
Misread the post title, thought everybody jumped and left you all alone.
Wow, congrats.
my workplace only IRC and xmpp for work related chat
That sounds pretty based
dream team
Damn...
You must be really good
People dont install Signal for me, especially feo groups. They use arguments like "yeah, and I also might have reasons not to use Signal like I do with Whatsapp"
Kinda disrespectful to put a line against a data selling app and comparing it to "nah, I just dont wanna"
To be fair that does take effort
Heck yeah! I got a small work group to use Element instead of slack or discord once. I was so proud of them. Kudos for you.
For a second I thought you meant you don't use Signal, so they all went there on purpose to avoid you.
For people wondering how to do this in your own lives, have two phones. Have a phone that you install work stuff on, including proprietary apps like WhatsApp. Just tell the people around you hey you can contact me on WhatsApp, but I only see it when I'm at my desk during business hours. I do use more privacy focused platforms on my personal device that you can reach me anytime, such a signal or simple x or matrix. And you'll find a lot of people are very flexible as long as you give them some reason, and you're not being unreasonable yourself.
Having two phones absolutely sucks. Didn't work for me at all.
I disagree. I absolutely love the fact that I can just turn it off after office hours and throw it in a corner during holidays and weekends. Sure, it's a bit cumbersome to take two phones with you, but it's also cumbersome to take the laptop and everything with you all the time. Just put it in the same bag and you're good. Good to note, my employer provides me with a phone, so I didn't need to buy a second one. It also means that if I switch jobs, I just return the phone and still have my personal device.
But if it doesn't work for you, by all means, don't do it. For me the good outweighs the bad.
It's only a minor hassle, lots of people manage it easily
Have you tried embracing the dope boy chic?
There is an app on f-droid called "shelter" that gives you access to Android Work Profiles. This is a sandboxed area of your phone that makes it function like a second phone. You can install apps that are only accessible from within that sandbox. You can install a second, sandboxed copy of an app. You can shut down all your sandboxed apps simultaneously.
I have a bunch of bullshit, garbage apps I very rarely use installed in my sandboxed "work" profile (Facebook, restaurant apps, and some other assorted trash apps) so they won't harass me at random.
Shelter is great, and work profiles are an amazing tool to have.
My intention with having two phones, one always at your desk for work items, is to set coworkers expectations that your not available on corporate systems 24/7. If they want to reach you outside of business hours, they will need to use better platforms. This demonstrates your being reasonable and using Whatsapp (or whatever) to be on the main platforms, but you have a real motivation to use the better platforms (like signal, etc)
Good recommendation!
If only everyone was like that...
@GravitySpoiled I love this, I had a very similar situation with my sports group, litte questions asked as well! Best thing was the reaction from the leader "I you are kind of right anyways, we should get rid of WhatsApp."
Problems only appeared later down the line with people complaining that they don't get notifications and it's not a habit for them to check it, so they don't see new messages.
Now tell them you just switched to matrix and see if they'll follow
Never abuse kind people. That's what breaks them.
Its a joke if that wasn't obvious.
I don't have to. Matrix is coming anyway. It's not an if but a when.
For official (internal) company communication though I will advertise matrix instead of signal. I'll report back once I've talked to the right people about it.
Nice
Matrix can be pretty unstable at times
I like Mattermost but it isn't federated
Probably they were on the edge already, but it's good that they have made the switch
What's wrong with Signal: https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/main/why_not_signal.md
TLDR: Funded by the CIA, centralized in the US and phone numbers make you personally identifiable.
I'm assuming OP didn't just accept a position with the fucking Hezbollah, so Signal probably fits his usecase
It'll be fine. If the fucking CIA wanted OP to spill the beans they'll just send an agent with a wrench directly to OP's kneecaps.
Yeah if you have nothing to hide, what is the problem with spying?!
Isn't that the guy who invented Lemmy? Reminds me of TG's founder doing the same.
It is good indeed they're actually decent people, however I'm sad they switched to a piece of shit of a software that fails to sync messages at any opportunity and delivers a poor user experience in most platforms by not being native / following platform specific UI guidelines.
Why don't you use WhatsApp?
Meta owns it, and meta is one of the large, evil tech corps.
They are probably the easiest one for most people from English-speaking countries to cut from their lives.
Because it's proprietary garbage. If there are FOSS alternatives, I'm most definitely going to use them instead of proprietary software, let alone proprietary software by companies like Meta. And since there are plenty of those alternatives: No WhatsApp for me.
Signal is so bloated compared to Conversations on Android. Also it's a walled garden requiring your ph number to register (edit: and requires owning a smart phone👎). Based in the US so not great for privacy. Marginally better than Whatsapp suppose.
Edit: and it requires a smart phone.
Signal app size 165MB. Conversations: 42MB.
I can't message someone on Signal without installing Signal or Molly which also uses Signal servers, which has to be trusted on good faith (can't run my own). Ergo a walled garden just like Whatsapp.
I can't register with just a username & password. I have to trust their PR saying they don't store my ph #.
US has some of the worst legislation when it comes to privacy; when the agencies decide they want your data, Signal will not be allowed to tell you. And don't give me the bs line that they only store 3 pieces of info about you. Unless you've built their server software you don't know what they collect am store.
Not that I will convince you to use signal, but there are desktop versions as well, so technically not required to use a smart phone.
I use Signal. It's the in thing in my circles.
The desktop version cannot be used independently; you still need to make and maintain an account on a smart phone. Also the desktop version uses crazy memory. It's a pos. I no longer use it. Also you're limited to 2 devices: one phone & one comp. I sync my xmpp chats between 3 or 4, depending.
That requires a phone ...
Surprised that happened. Very rare to see that these days.
Maybe OP works on infosec and the team was like yeah, makes sense?
Let's say I work in an IT area (but not infosec)
They only realized that when he said that? What a weird infosec team. I guess they also could use SimpleX if they wanted the most secure, private and anonymous option, but I think Signal is pretty well balanced as a messenger. Good privacy and usability.
There may have been discussions around it beforehand. I didn't ask why it went so smooth.
What you didn't realize is that your value to the company is way more than you realized.
Often times people have resolved all the rational arguments to act on a decision but lack on an emotional excuse to figuratively pull the trigger. I'd bet on someone high up had already made up their mind and you not using WhatsApp was the perfect excuse to just have the whole team finally migrate.