this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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Over-reliance on proprietary, closed-source products and services from megacorporations.
For instance, it's really absurd that people in many parts of the world cannot function without WhatsApp, they can't even imagine a life without it. It seems absurd that Meta literally has them by the balls, and these people can't do anything about it.
Also the people who base their entire careers on say Adobe or Microsoft products, they're literally having their lives dictated by one giant corporation, which is very depressing and dystopian.
Itβs worse in China. WeChat is EVERYTHING.
I don't get this sentiment. If anything happens to WhatsApp, they'll just switch to another IM. WhatsApp wasn't the first to come along, and won't be the last. How exactly does Meta have them by the balls?
In some of those countries, it's not really a choice. Like, WhatsApp is the only way of contacting a company's customer care (via chat bots that run on it), colleges and universities may have study groups on it and teachers may hand out notes etc in those groups, also apparently it's also the only way to contact even some government agencies.
it's a shame.
I know, I'm from those countries. Like I said, we used other IM apps before WhatsApp came along, and if something changes we can use a new app. WhatsApp currently leads the market due to the network effect, but it doesn't have us 'by the balls'.
(Though the most likely successor would be WeChat, which is arguably much much worse in many ways)
Do you require WhatsApp to contact certain government agencies? Do you require WhatsApp to get access to customer support? Do you require WhatsApp to get access to lecture notes? No? Then you're not from one of those countries.
Yes, yes and yes. Yes I'm from one of those countries
Which means you can't really switch to other apps then, which means Meta has you by the balls.
I suppose that depends on your definition of by the balls. Like I said, it's not difficult for everybody to switch if they piss everyone off. On average people here have 2-3 IMs installed.
That's the thing though, they have been pissing everyone off for over a decade now, going back to the days when Facebook introduced the algorithmic feed/timeline thing, and then with the promoted posts, and the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the data harvesting and ads and blatant privacy violations. They're one of the scummiest organisations out there and yet you all keep using it's products and happily whoring yourselves out to Meta. Sure you can switch in theory, so what are y'all waiting for? There's plenty of reasons to switch, plenty of decent alternatives too. The truth is, you can't really switch. You don't have a choice.
If you think you've got a choice, I dare you to uninstall WhatsApp for a month or two, and see if you're able to get by without any issues. Then you'll know why I said they they have you by the balls - basically, you're a hostage, a slave. You really have no choice, no freedom, even if you've got other apps installed. You may convince your friends and family to switch, but do you really think the thousands of companies, government agencies etc will just switch for no good reason? Will they make new chat bots for the alternative apps? Will they develop new SoPs/documentation for their internal staff, spend time and money on marketing and advertising the new way of contacting them? Waiting for Meta to do something major to piss everyone off may never happen - Meta isn't that foolish, and as people get more and more used to Meta's products and their way of doing things, they get more and more entwined into the ecosystem and they'll find it even more harder to leave. If everyone's going to wait for everyone else to switch, then no one will switch.
So many people use it, that the barrier to change to another application is high. They would need to fuck up on very large scale.
Yes, they currently have the market share, and network effect keeps them there. Nevertheless, my point was it's not a monopoly, so how does Meta have everybody 'by the balls"?
Network effect might as well be a monopoly until the network kills itself.
I take issue with the concept of one company owning an entire communications network in the first place. Federation is a step in the right direction but it's not enough yet.
I remember listening to a podcast that talked of how in the Philippines (I think it was), Facebook is the internet, because Meta/FB effectively subsidised the carriers into allowing FB access to not use up any data allowance. As a result, if all you do is go on FB, you don't pay a penny. If WhatsApp is included in this, then yeah, you're locked in with no real alternative.
Oh right. Not quite nowadays, they get subsidised from multiple companies, including Google (YouTube) and such. I hate to say this, but WeChat would probably be happy to jump in and grab some market share if Meta does something egregiously dumb
It's an issue of userbase.
WhatsApp can and will get away with a lot before it drives users to a mass exodus, when messaging should have just been an open protocol from the start.
Talk to some older folks about what it was like when there was only one phone company and the alternative was snail mail.
I was there. It was fine. You didn't need phones to be able to function in a society. Phones were something like an optional convenience that you had only at fixed places, like your home or office. If you were out and about, you typically didn't have access to a phone, unless you were in the vicinity of a payphone, so you weren't expected to be available on phone. Whereas in the countries where Meta has monopoly over, everyone expects you to be on WhatsApp, and you don't really get a choice in the matter.
Whatsapp is just a text service that gained popularity because it bypassed expensive text messaging rates, and it's superior to SMS in most ways anyways. If meta starts charging people will go somewhere else. It's odd to hear this take that people are somehow dependant on it. It's more replaceable than a pair of shoes.
That may be the case where you and I live perhaps, but these countries that I speak of, have an entire ecosystem built around WhatsApp. Many companies there no longer provide a customer support number that you can call for instance, they expect you to interact with a bot run on WhatsApp, which can further lead to chatting with an actual agent speaking to them, but that's all done via WhatsApp. Also many teachers in schools and universities share lecture notes and study material via WhatsApp groups. Doctors and medical labs may share electronic copies of your reports via it. Some restaurants accept reservation requests solely via WhatsApp. It can even handle payments now, and besides using it as a means to send money to someone, some companies have even built entire e-commerce platforms around it, using interactive bots and the payment features. So for you and I, WhatsApp may be just another messaging service, but in these countries WhatsApp is quickly turning into an "everything" platform, and it's not trivial for someone to just replace it, unless they want to go live in a cave and cut themselves off from modern society.
Wait, WhatsApp has payments too? I haven't used WhatsApp in years, so I wasn't aware they are basically becoming WeChat...
Wow, that's news to me. I didn't realize it had gone so far in some places.
This is an issue with the bourgeois character of American society and government. Monopolies are not a problem if workers control them.
And if they're managed well on top of being worker controlled, but that's usually been a mixed bag historically
There are plenty of free and open source messaging alternatives, they just don't have the branding money to make sure a user base appears. To some degree the people using the apps are choosing the proprietary option.
We collectively need to be doing more to support and promote free open source software to avoid this issue. Secure peer to peer communication protocols should be more more ubiquitous than even http.