WhatsApp's rise and recent PR efforts highlight a class of business models that I call "user domestication".

As Seirdy notes:

It just keeps getting more relevant. WhatsApp, GitHub, Twitter, Reddit…each disaster worse than the last. The companies in charge know that the users will just take it after having their autonomy taken first.

  • idle@158436977.xyzEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    Can confirm. I still have WhatsApp installed because otherwise, I can’t talk to certain friends.

    • corristo@programming.devEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      I was forced to stop using WhatsApp a while back because they simply stopped supporting my phone, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to buy a new one just to use WhatsApp. I came to the conclusion that anyone that doesn’t bother reaching out e.g. via SMS isn’t a real friend anyway, and indeed it hasn’t affected me personally much. There are some people I’ve lost contact with completely now, but we didn’t have proper conversations when I still had WhatsApp anyway, so not much was lost.