Whatsapp sucks article update

2022/11/whatsapp-sucks/index.md

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 # WhatsApp sucks. Why? And what should be done about it?
-**This article is obsolete and going to be replaced soon:** while this is still a good article many things have changed with the passing of time and this post also has some phrasing problems.  
-So, if you live outside the U.S., there's a very high chance that WhatsApp is the main messaging application that you and every other person uses, but I have a question:
+If you live outside the U.S., there's a very high chance that WhatsApp is the main messaging application that you and every other person uses, but I have a question:
 
 ## Why is WhatsApp a thing?
 See, the way people used to send messages in the 90s and the early 2000s was SMS. Almost every phone had an SMS client, and if you wanted to hang out with a friend you just had to open your SMS client, and send the message, simple but very effective; there was a problem tho: back then, SMS had a cost, we're talking about ~0,50€ per message if your carrier plan didn't cover them, and the simple mention of MMS would strike fear into any phone user (I tried that too, I still consider it the best way to waste 48 cents, per message of course).
@@ -18,10 +17,10 @@ With this question being answered, WhatsApp had and still has a lot of advantage
 
 ## Problems
 But WhatsApp also has big problems that you shouldn't underestimate.
-- **It creates a vendor lock-in:** by using messaging apps people create a big lock-in, both for yourself and for the others; to send or receive messages people just use WhatsApp and if you don't have a WhatsApp account they can't text you until they change client (pretty much every messaging app can't send and receive SMS messages, doesn't it sound intentional?), and this forces you to install WhatsApp, which can be very uncomfortable and in some cases even impossible if, for example, you don't have a smartphone. Nowadays people just take for granted that you have WhatsApp and for example, when I sent an RCS message to my mom (gonna talk about RCS in a bit) and we got back to home she asked me "Why do you use SMS instead of WhatsApp?", and a similar thing happened with a classmate of mine. Fortunately when I explained why I don't use it everyone seemed to understand, but that's not always the case.
-- **It's centralized:** what does it mean? Well, when you send a message it goes into a WhatsApp datacenter that delivers the message for you. Didn't understand? Put it in this way: you send a letter to your grandma, but instead of sending it to her you send it to your friend that then sends it to your grandma accordingly. Not only it's unreliable, but you also can't know what happens in the process, and I wouldn't be surprised if the data will eventually get sold, because that's what Meta does afterall (and then all the earned money will be wasted in all the Metaverse shit).
-- **Third-party clients? Fuck that:** if you want to use WhatsApp you have to use the official application. Wanna use something else? You get banned. Why is this a problem? Because the clients, especially the Android one, have a lot of problems, and considering that you can't fix them, it can be really frustrating. Not only that, it also can be a privacy problem because every client is closed-source and let me tell you, I wouldn't trust a client that asks for the system call log permission if the service already has one.
-- **Never give to a big company your messaging infrastructure:** think about the vulnerability we discovered recently, a similar one happened in [2020](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/gadgets-news/whatsapp-reveals-six-security-issues-that-could-have-got-its-users-hacked/articleshow/77925426.cms), [2019](https://www.ft.com/content/4da1117e-756c-11e9-be7d-6d846537acab), [2018](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/10/whatsapp-bug-let-hackers-hijack-accounts-with-a-video-call-reports.html) and yes, even [2017](https://telegra.ph/whatsapp-backdoor-01-16) (prior to that """e2e encryption""" wasn't implemented). Doesn't that sound intentional? Well, it's because **IT PROBABLY IS**. Meta can always add a backdoor, stop supporting your OS, restrict you or spy on you at any given moment and you probably can't do anything about it. Wanna leave? Good luck at not missing a lot of contacts and your group chats. Giving your messaging infrastructure to a big company can, and probably is, very dangerous.
+- **It creates a vendor lock-in:** by using messaging apps people create a big lock-in, both for yourself and for the others; to send or receive messages people just use WhatsApp and if you don't have a WhatsApp account they can't text you until they change client (pretty much every messaging app can't send and receive SMS messages, doesn't it sound intentional?), and this forces you to install WhatsApp, which can be very uncomfortable and in some cases even impossible if, for example, you don't have a smartphone. Nowadays people just take for granted that you have WhatsApp, and usually when they see that you don't have an account or don't use it, they assume that you aren't reachable in any case instead of using SMS which should be the last resort for everyone.
+- **It's centralized:** what does it mean? Well, when you send a message it goes into a WhatsApp datacenter that delivers the message for you. Not only it's unreliable, but you also can't know what happens in the process, and I wouldn't be surprised if the data will eventually get sold, because that's what Meta does afterall (some people got surprised and even scared when in 2021 a Privacy Policy update announced that WhatsApp data was going to be shared with Facebook, as if they didn't fucking do this already).
+- **Third-party clients? Fuck that:** if you want to use WhatsApp you have to use the official application. Wanna use something else? You get banned. Why is this a problem? Because 1) the clients, especially the Android one, have a lot of problems, and considering that you can't fix them, it can be really frustrating; 2) OS and hardware support is completely on the hands of Meta, meaning that they can decide whether if to keep supporting an operating system on a certain version or discontinue it and cause a lot of phones to become e-waste in the process: that's what happened with Nokia S40, Blackberry, Symbian, Windows Phone, KaiOS and that's still happening time to time when older Android or iOS versions become obsolete. All the builds also have timebombs in them which makes using older versions basically impossible.
+- **Never give to a big company your messaging infrastructure:** Meta can always add a backdoor, stop supporting your OS, restrict you or spy on you at any given moment and you probably can't do anything about it. Wanna leave? Good luck at not missing a lot of contacts and your group chats. Giving your messaging infrastructure to a big company is very dangerous.
 
 ## What should we use?
 What if there's an open protocol, that can send high-resolution medias, doesn't have fees (apart from your data plan) and has all the advantages that WhatsApp has. That's right, the answer is RCS.