A few years ago, my uncle was gifted an iPhone when he retired. Recently, he received a notification from WhatsApp saying that the phone’s operating system is no longer supported, and WhatsApp wouldn’t run on it anymore. He tried checking for an operating system upgrade, but none was available. He asked me what he should do. I gave him two options. Either dump the phone and buy an Android phone, or dump WhatsApp.
He dumped WhatsApp. I still can’t stop admiring the decision he took. How many others do you know who’d have done the same?
[Update: There’s a third option. I’ve noticed that it’s possible to use WhatsApp from the PC or Mac without installing it on the phone. This can be achieved via an emulator like BlueStacks5 (and by using the official apk) or via Android installed on PC (it’s advisable to check both license agreements before doing such a thing). Anyway, my uncle says he’s much more relaxed after uninstalling WhatsApp]
I don’t use WhatsApp either. Right from the time I realized that WhatsApp can send messages only to another phone that has WhatsApp installed, I knew that it was a very silly proposition. It’s like going backward into the stone-age of technology. Earlier, the app couldn’t even be used on a PC unless it was first installed on the phone (along with some invasive permission requirements).
Why it’s a problem
We can send emails between GMail, Proton Mail, Outlook etc. We can make phone calls and send SMS’es between various phone service providers. We can use the internet irrespective of which ISP is providing the service. Even inter-bank transfer of money is possible. Messaging apps however, decided to build their own private silo. Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, and so many others. Signal’s blog speaks of why they think adaptability is one of the reasons that requires such a silo. I don’t buy that argument though. Sure, adaptation, federation and freezing of protocols does come into the picture, but even common people know that it just requires cooperation and planning to design a solution that’s usable universally.
It’s not just a matter of security and privacy. I know someone who was bullied badly because everyone in their group used WhatsApp, and he didn’t. A guy who does not use WhatsApp, spent a month getting in touch with his pre-university classmates one by one, after fifteen years of leaving college. One of them suggested creating a WhatsApp group. When he said he does not use WhatsApp, the classmate created the group anyway. Everyone joined the group and ignored the guy who brought them together. The bullying and social isolation was because those people chose to be backstabbing jerks. It was not really because of WhatsApp. However, it does point to how technological silos can bring out the worst in people. For more insight into how people end up like this, see the Stanford prison experiment, the Milgram experiment, the Asch experiment, the Robbers cave experiment, and this amusing conformity experiment in an elevator.
Solutions
Earlier, XMPP was meant to be able to allow communication across various software. Now there’s some work on RCS ongoing. If people need to send messages within WhatsApp, it can be end-to-end encrypted. But if they want to send a message from WhatsApp to Signal, they can be informed that there’s a slight chance that the secrecy could be compromised, but the message can be decoded, and re-encoded on an intermediate server and sent anyway. Having such interoperability is better than operating in isolated silos. Let’s hope technology providers can build software that unites people. Meanwhile, if an app requires you to dump your phone which is still very much usable, would you really consider wasting money to buy a new phone, or do you think tech companies need to do better on the security, stability and planned obsolescence front?
I didn’t like it when I was required to stop using my very-much-usable 3G phone, in order to buy a new phone just to be able to use 4G. There is hope though, with modular smartphones (especially Google’s Ara) coming into the picture. Even a modular laptop is available in select countries.
As for messaging app creators, I really hope you pull your socks up and move technology forward instead of backward.
ps: If managing multiple messaging apps is an issue, there are apps which can help manage all of it.
