To me, this seems like a feature. Maybe this will help in the search for a secure, privacy minded messenger platform.
1 Like
I was just telling my wife that WhatsApp isn’t as secure as she thinks it is. It’s hard to get people to switch once they’ve started using something though.
1 Like
Until they get hacked and someone starts posting on their behalf. At the point, it becomes much easier…until they choose another insecure application. It’s a vicious process.
1 Like
Yes, I agree here. I think further trends like this one (with WhatsApp) will eventually degrade into a sort of tribal atmosphere on the internet, where the messenging apps we use are the ones which our tribes are running for us. These “tribal-level” servers will have only a few hundred to a few thousand users each. Each of us will be a part of several “tribes”, represented in several different apps (or multiple accounts within one app, each connecting to a server of a different “tribe”).
I think it will eventually become untenable to have trillions-of-users Messaging platforms, because they will always be targets of mass abuse somehow (both from the inside, and externally). Moderation at a tribal level will keep those servers clean enough, consistent with the values a given tribe has.
And this wild-west tribalism will not be a bad thing. It will be a good thing. The Internet was designed to have exactly this sort of spread-out, distributed nature, instead of a highly centralized, one-point-of-failure nature.
Case in point, this Discourse server is sort of like one of these tribal servers. PM’ing on this server would be an example of somewhat-private messaging.
1 Like
it already is this way in a lot of regards. The only difference being the Highlander style vibe where each tribe thinks they should be the only one instead of live and let live.
1 Like