Kevnyon

How Meta was ever allowed to buy WhatsApp without triggering anti-trust laws is beyond me

It was still called Facebook when they bought it.

In my region in Europe, it really is. EVERYONE uses WhatsApp. I’m not sure the last time I saw someone use SMS, its all WhatsApp. iOS, Android, its all there.

There’s nobody on Signal, that’s the problem. If I want to miss out on all of my group conversations, work conversations, messages between myself and others, then yeah, I can switch. But if I want to receive any messages at all, I have to keep WhatsApp installed.

I guess the biggest thing to be scared about would be fomo for most

I don’t mind missing out on some things, but I would mind missing out on literally all of the things. Everyone is on WhatsApp and trying to convince people to switch to a different app when, from their perspective, their current app has over 99% uptime, their kids, their family, their extended family, their friends, all are on WhatsApp. Its the same for me, its everyone. Its just a different situation in Europe.

I wish I could do this, but trying to convince people to ditch an app they’ve never had problems with and where they all have their family, friends, work groups and school groups already mashed together, how do you convince them? Its not even about me convincing my friends or family, its about everyone else doing the same and when everyone has so many contacts in WhatsApp, that number starts to snowball real quick. Its just not feasible to try and explain this to someone who literally doesn’t care. I mean even though I myself know what Meta is and how Zuck is complete asshole, I still can’t switch off of WhatsApp because nobody I know is on Signal and I’d just be alone there. What’s the point? WhatsApp is pretty much the first app anyone installs on their phone (regardless of platform), they’re not gonna switch now.

I agree and I think the cost of paying admins would far exceed that of server costs. Nobody would do it unless they could support themselves with it and that’s a lot of money that you’d have to scrape together to be able to pay multiple admins.

I can afford it too, but I won’t pay for it on general principle when it costs more than Prime and Tidal combined.

Since I am not that familiar with AWS and its pricing, I am not sure. Two years ago on this instance, an admin commented on this thread that it cost 180€ per month to run the server. So that’s at least 2160€ per year and that’s not including the labor and there’s only so much volunteer work that anyone is willing to put in, as is evident with the shutdown of lemm.ee, which cited a lack of volunteers as one of the issues that lead to the shut down.

Yeah, had to move back to this instance because of that. I think that just shows how hard it is and how much funding it actually requires.