I’ve been seeing this more and more in comments, and it’s got me wondering just how big this issue really is. A lot of people feel trapped in apps like Discord, WhatsApp, and Instagram, but can’t get their friends to leave.
It’s really annoying when you suggest trying something new, whether it’s a different app or just not using these platforms so much but sometimes it can feel like no one wants to go first.
So I’m curious, what apps do you feel most trapped in? And have you tried convincing your friends to leave them? What happened? Is it an issue for you, or are you just going along with the flow?
Looking forward to hearing if this is as common as it feels!
People can’t be convinced of anything, it’s a losing battle to try. The only way to get people to change is to live a certain way and if people admire it, then they ask you about it and you share.
So for example-I’m a minimalist and I really wished my sister would declutter because her place is overcrowded. But instead of trying to convince her, I just shared what my life normally was like. Eventually she asked me for help decluttering, and she felt a lot better about what I helped with. Now we share cleaning and organization tips.
For me, I just put in my insta bio I left for Pixelfed and to come friend me there.
I’ve told my friends I’m off insta because I’d rather be on a platform where I control my feed that’s ad free. And that I rarely see my friends content on insta so it doesn’t matter that much to me to have friends on there. If they get interested, great if not, I’m still happy.
People don’t typically like change. It has to feel like it’s their decision to drive them there.
Networking effect
People use whatever is most popular even if its the shittest thing such as Facebook.
Only time people will care is when it personally and tangibly affects them.
For Facebook/whatsapp watomatic can be used to remind people you are leaving or such.
I remember when Snapchat was extremely popular for messaging. One of the worst apps I’ve ever used. Just an absolutely atrocious UI.
I had my wife and best friend using signal until they dropped support for sms. Switching between apps was too much for us.
Switching between apps was too much for us.
I’ve heard this from a few people, but I have trouble understanding it. Perhaps its because I’ve never had the experience of being able to send text messages to all of my contacts in one place, but the effort required seems pretty insignificant to me.
different people act differently but that move by signal deff had a cooling effect on signal adoption. as if on purpose.
It was definitely on purpose, because privacy is more important to Signal than line-go-up adoption number statistics.
SMS is dangerous and insecure and everyone should stop using it immediately.
Sure…
Asking people to leave things means they’re losing a line of communication to friends, family, and interest groups who still use those things. It’s probably more productive to ask people to add the services you prefer rather than leave the ones they’re used to.
I’ve encountered some resistance from Americans who use iPhones and hate the idea of adding a third-party messaging app. None of them seem very interested in justifying that position.
Companies like Apple spent a lot to create a switching cost in almost every product. The “bubble” color is also a HUGE thing in the US, and is often times the sole reason for not wanting to leave iMessage.
As someone whose only apple devices are ipads, the big lockin isn’t imessage vs an SMS client. It’s FaceTime vs, Zoom/GMeet/Jitsi. Mind you, it is nice being able to use iMessage with my wife when I have internet, and then swap over to SMS quickly. Sure, my two devices don’t have a persistent conversation, but her device does.
FaceTime vs, Zoom/GMeet/Jitsi
Is the advantage availability among your contacts, or something about the UX?
Holistically it’s UX.
If my wife or others in my life who use Apple want to contact me, they don’t have to go into a specific app and hope that I’m looking at it. They can go into iMessage, click the camera, and poof, a video call starts up. The only software I use that does that otherwise is Discord, and that’s not integrated with SMS/MMS. It’s the connection too (which is just as much part of UX) - I’ve had problems with Zoom or others due to connection strength, but not with FaceTime.
The fact that it’s a “just-works” solution is important.
You can do the exact same thing with any of hundreds of different messaging apps. The only advantage is that they’re using the same messaging app, because it comes installed by default, you can’t remove it, and they don’t allow you to replace SMS with anything else. If you use an Android phone, it most likely comes with Google Messages pre-installed, which does the exact same thing.
In other words, it’s nothing to do with “user experience” and everything to do with being in a particular ecosystem.
On Android, I prefer QKSMS, actually.
I use Arch BTW
they don’t have to go into a specific app and hope that I’m looking at it
Do the others not ring your phone? I don’t video call often, but when I do it’s usually with Signal, and that definitely rings my phone.
No, my phone (Android) usually has notifications/ringers muted
This sounds like a pretty unusual configuration. I don’t imagine most people can be reached more reliably using an app that only runs on their tablet than apps that run on their phone.
Literally all of that UX is the same and better in other apps though.
For example, every single part of your description applies to video and text conversations with my SO and friends, except we all use Signal. It “just works”, and better than Facetime because it doesn’t matter what device my SO and friends have.
With Facetime it doesn’t “just work” at all with the large number of people I know who don’t have Apple. That’s a huge disadvantage which means that Facetime UX sucks.
You just said what they said but the opposite. Both are wrong. Being in the same ecosystem is not UX. It’s not something that anyone can design around.
So you don’t consider it an impact on the experience of using a product when it either does or doesn’t function on your device? Sounds like a most basic concept of UX to me, but I dunno what you mean, maybe.
It’s not the bubble color. It’s what the bubble color signifies. ie: no rich communication services, no high quality video or audio calls, no stickers, no videos, low quality images, etc.
It’s not just that. I find SMS to be slower in terms of call and response vs iMessage. It’s like my android friends take longer to reply.
Very possible this is just latency intentionally introduced by Apple to make the experience worse. They’ve been known to do things like that.
They also intentionally degrade the quality of video feeds from non-Apple users, and intentionally degrade the quality of received MMS images.
Well pre-RCS they routed android users differently because they were not compatible. Google did something similar, but in reverse, adding back things like reactions, etc. to make android users not feel like they were getting a 2nd rate experience.
Certainly, but installing additional messaging apps on a phone has almost no cost on either iPhone or Android. It’s interesting that iPhone users seem to dislike the idea more.
The having to do something is the cost, because they have a perfectly good messaging app already, “why can’t you just use that?”
And that cost is more on Apple’s platform because Apple has been designing it that way since the beginning. It’s the whole reason android users got a different color bubble, not because they had to, but it was a way to identify the person that wasn’t using an iPhone and make them stand out. Making it almost unimaginable to switch to Android for youth who care so much about not being “out” of the group.
And Google has identified this, and put a lot of cringe-worthy effort into addressing it at their Pixel event this time around.
they have a perfectly good messaging app already, “why can’t you just use that?”
Only running on one brand of phone would be the obvious reason here. Installing an additional app seems like a slightly smaller ask than buying a different phone.
Honestly, when or if eu chat control happens I’ll just delete all of those applications and never tell anyone, I am not gonna use sms either
Why is it so hard to get friends to leave
I mean the reason is usually summed up with a single word when I make the suggestion: “Why?”. People don’t know and/or don’t care. You try and explain it and they mock you and act like you’re a paranoid conspiracy theorist.
what apps do you feel most trapped in?
Geeze, you name it. Right now I need a new job, and if you’re not looking on Indeed, you’re severely limiting your options. You can’t see anything on Indeed without creating an account and turning over ALL of your personal details, much less actually submit an application. Not to mention the site itself is just horrendous to use. If we had some sort of technological standard protocol for submitting resumes ( so you could send them the same way you send contact info via .vcf), or even OCR that actually worked, it could be a lot easier, but we don’t, so the alternative is going and typing in all of your information for every individual application, which simply doesn’t work when you’re submitting a couple dozen every day, on top of their meaningless personality quizzes and chatting endlessly with AI bots, and aptitude tests and video response interviews and and and…
I make a good % of my money for my business using FB and IG. Although I’m about to close my doors (due to unrelated market circumstances), at which point I’ll delete them. But then I will mostly lose access to all of the events that are shared exclusively on these platforms. I ask them to share them elsewhere but it’s more of the same, mocking and asking why.
When it comes to open source, Discord and Reddit seem to be the platforms of choice. Usually this means I simply ignore otherwise-promising projects.
Fortunately almost no one has ever asked me to use WhatsApp. Usually only international travelers. I usually just decline and/or ask them to use Signal.
Partially, it’s because the incumbent platforms are just much better… Discord is really good.
I have got some people to move to signal though. I don’t touch Facebook messenger.
Yeah, this is so fucking annoying. I’ve been banging on about Signal for years, but everyone except a small handful of my wisest friends insist upon using WhatsApp and Discord.
Almost everyone I know also uses Instagram, and no other social media. I am yet to meet someone in real life who even has Mastodon.
I have told people about Lemmy for a year now.
Not really. I have none of those apps or alternatives. and I don’t know anyone I want to chat with on Discord, WhatsApp, Insta, or other. Not that I’m antisocial, I just have no interest. Lemmy is about as close as I want to get to anyone. Before, it was Reddit, but they have tanked as a place to search for knowledge.
so refreshing to find likeminded people here.
Also, it’s so refreshing to find real people here.
I’m also older than Methuselah, so that might be a factor. Back when the internet was young, it was interesting talking to real people. However, in today’s timeline where I have to slog through all the bots, all the assholes, all the individuals with an agenda or ax to grind, I just find it tedious.
Because everyone else they know is there. If the people they follow and interact with moved to Mastodon or switched messengers to Signal, you’ll see how quickly they will move. It’s hard to convince someone to sign up or install a new app if it’s only you they’ll find there. I was able to switch my family over to Signal and they literally use it only for family group chats, because they don’t know anyone else who uses it. And they were a little easier to convince because they’re family. I won’t be able to convince people with less close ties to me like friends, acquaintances, and neighbors.
I convinced my friends to get Discord so we could communicate as a community without Facebook. Now I have figured out it is just as bad. I tried Matrix and couldn’t figure out how to log in before I heard it’s enshittification is underway.
Endhittification is often the result of an established centralized platform that got that way via giving unfairly good deals because they had a lot of investment becoming suddenly greedy and controlling to make that money back. Matrix, meanwhile, is just a protocol. It quite literally cannot be enshittified unless the protocol is updated to do something a certain way that benefits the developers over the users, because a user can simply switch providers. Even though the org that develops it is also a provider and I hear they’re going freemium, that is a service that costs money to render. I’m not surprised they need more money to offer hosting and maintain the software behind it. Unless the protocol is being modified in a way that hinders or scams us or steals our data, saying matrix is enshittifying is like saying email or HTTP is enshittifying.
So then it is still worthwhile to try to host a matrix server? Cool. I guess I need to get the login part figured out so I can try it first. I think DBZer0 has one I can try. Thanks for explaining. I am in a hurry to try it now so my friends have yet somewhere else to go.
Discord is a hard one because it has some uniqueness to it.
It has bots, text channels, voice channels, and hundreds of thousands of people can join it if you need to.
A lot of my college clubs use it and there are a few thousand students in our biggest ones
It’s not unique, it’s just XMPP + Mumble.
I used to play with a large community and every time a new game would come out we’d always setup forum software, an XMPP (chat software) server and a Mumble server for that game. This was pretty easy to get done because we were all working in tech, but if you were an average gamer it wasn’t something that you could handle.
Discord packaged the text, voice and forum software into one application and they handle the server hosting. It only costs all of your privacy and $10/mo.
Maybe I’ll give this a shot when I have some free time.
You say it’s not unique and then list the ways it’s unique by packaging up multiple different services into 1.
Totally agree it’s a privacy nightmare but you discredit the service too much. There’s a reason it’s widely adopted the way it is, and it’s not because it’s the same as everything else.
It isn’t unique, it provides text, voice and video chatting. These are not new services to the world of technology.
What makes Discord stand apart is that they require that your chats, calls and streams are not private and, in exchange for people giving up their private data the users only have to install one piece of software instead of two. It is like a company giving people a ‘free’ phone as long as they or their advertisers can listen into the calls, read the texts and look at the videos on the phone.
The only thing that Discord does is to package the software in such a way that you can’t access it until you give them information about you and then they gate features behind you identifying yourself with a credit card and a phone number.
What are some good alternatives to discord?
matrix works pretty well as a discord replacement, it’s sometimes unreliable when you’re using a selfhosted instance but I’d wager it’d work smooth enough for a non techie if you turn off end to end encryption
if you turn off end to end encryption
isn’t that the main reason to use it though, privacy?
These are just opinions, but here are the two I know about (I don’t use WhatsApp)
Discord: It’s not just you. You would have to get their other connections, all their servers, and all the connections from those servers to switch. Frankly speaking, Revolt isn’t ready for that to happen. You are one person. I’m sorry, but if I have 1 friend vs. all of my servers and friends, I’m not going to make a meaningful change for the one person. And tbh I’m more likely to be the one than the many. What I would suggest is to try and put yourself between the two services, help to build the communities you want to see, then invite people over.
Instagram: Same issue as Discord. The fediverse doesn’t have the variety of content, the wide range of users, or half the stuff to engage with.
