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I thought WhatsApp users went to Telegram after the Facebook buy out?


Telegram isn't end-to-end encrypted, all of your conversations end up in plaintext on their servers. That's a no-go for a lot of people.


Literally everyone in Europe uses Whatsapp exclusively


No, not literally everyone, I'm in Europe, I don't use it, my family doesn't use it, my friends don't use it, nearly nobody in my city uses it, in fact most people in my entire country don't use it.


What country is this and what is the app you use instead?


Most users don't even know that happened.


Depends? I remember WhatsApp being bought by Facebook (and subsequent privacy issues) being in the news a lot in the Netherlands.

Most people either don't care or everyone around them only uses WhatsApp for chat making it difficult to switch.


Only the ones that don't understand the difference between transport and end-to-end encryption.


Just because whatsapp says it's end-to-end encrypted doesn't mean that they don't have access to your (locally generated) keys.


Sure, WhatsApp could roll out an update that sneakily exfiltrates your local encryption keys and/or messages any day, or might have already done so. That's the case for most apps (yes, even open source ones, since at least the Apple App Store does not allow for deterministic builds.)

It's theoretically possible to improve on that, by e.g. providing a way to double-check all client-to-server communication, but that's extremely difficult to do without at the same time weakening the encryption (since it requires either deterministic encryption and/or leaking keys via a debugging interface). I believe Threema has done something like that at some point.

Telegram however wouldn't even need to, since practically all messages are already available to them server side.


Or the vendor of your smartphone.


Not all of them. I use WhatsApp purely to talk with one friend in another country who is only willing to use WhatsApp to communicate.


So you also use Whatsapp.

Maybe the 'other' people you know also just use it the same way you do, for that one international friend.

Whatsapp usage is quite prevalent in SF.


> So you also use Whatsapp.

Of course, as I said.

> Maybe the 'other' people you know also just use it the same way you do

I'm confused about what you're responding to here. What other people? I didn't mention anyone else. That one friend happens to be the only person I know who uses it. Or at least the only person I know who has asked me to use it.

I didn't assert that nobody else uses it. In fact, I was providing an example that not everyone has abandoned it.


Everyone I know in SF uses whatsapp


Signal.




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