When your boss asks you to join the whatsapp group, what do you say or do?

How do people deal when you start a new job or such and your older boss has a group chat on WhatsApp and assumes everyone uses it, then they ask you to join, but you cannot think in the heat of the moment or can reference arguments from here or put across every reason possible so you are begrudgingly forced to use it.

I frankly hope WhatsApp dies out, but I can’t see how unless a legal ruling happens or something changes in that department.

I did ask my boss (ironically in healthcare) about switching to signal or using group option in google messages. But as said, I am working with older co-workers who may not want to switch or such. My boss even tried to prove it by asking another co-worker if they would use Signal and the co-worker’s response was if nobody is using Signal then it’s pointless.

It’s irritating how I or any one of use here have to use some crap just because it feels that others don’t move with the times. Even to something that is simpler and just as good. I understand change does take time. But why did we make WhatsApp the defacto standard? You can’t even be listening to the radio any more, with the present saying “WhatsApp me on…” and I’m like why not just text? You know something that works and has worked, and thanks to RCS can now send pictures? It’s as if social media managers just follow whatever every other social media manager does and dont hire people who have actual technical experience and knows how social media systems work.

Even when you point out how bad WhatsApp is and that fact you have yet another app to tame and manage, as well having to turn off the auto download of media and the fact now your messages are spread across a load more messaging services like XKCD 1810 as well having to log in every so often and also new group members don’t see past chats unlike telegram. Remember how everyone was annoyed about new Facebook terms in 2021 and now people are complaining about the meta AI? Facebook could butcher WhatsApp so badly that people would still use it as if it’s the only and last thing on earth.

It’s so frustrating how we have better technology and resonance that just works, but people who have no idea of how things are going or are, as well as old habits, get in the way. I don’t know if It’s going to be easier to create a group chat using google messages as most people are on android and iOS does support RCS. Ideally Signal is the way to go, but nobody is on Signal or even heard of it and thus do not use and well you are stuck in this vicious cycle of how to overcome the networking effect.

Do you just flat out refuse, create a signal group chat and invite others over? Or use a burner number? My boss had a lookup about WhatsApp and said you don’t need Facebook to use WhatsApp, and it’s encrypted. Which we all know is a lie. It’s frankly terrifying how Facebook propaganda and marketing can lure people into a false sense of security. I got talking to a relative who visited Poland after the USSR fell and a lot of younger people at the time said you either move with the times or become a taxi driver, as many older people were so used to how the previous system worked that they could not understand or fathom the new ways of working.

I keep as little as I can anyhow on WhatsApp. But do you try and play the long game such as rank up the corporate ladder so that you can then say we are on Signal or such and take an attitude of move the times or get left behind or quite what? Or do we try and fight the legal option by getting WhatsApp split from Facebook. WhatsApp itself wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t tied to Facebook, who also have messenger. So they are the same thing.

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I use WhatsApp for non-work related things, but when someone at work asks if I can join a whatsapp group I usually just say I don’t have it since I don’t wanna accept its TOS. Never had a problem with that so far.

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If your company provides you a work phone, work number with data package and a written request from your manager to use Whatsapp for business, sure, it will be okay

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Nope, it’s on our own personal phones regarding shift pattens

that only works so far when it is forced upon you

This is how most people think unfortunately. There is zero regard for anyone’s privacy, they just want something popular which works and feels intuitive. I’ve even had ignorant people insist that I must share private details about myself over a phone call rather than a Signal call. I tried explaining why Signal is better but they didn’t care, phone calls were more familiar to them and therefore the “safe” option.

I doubt your threat model is severe enough to warrant causing issues at work by refusing to join WhatsApp and trying to fragment the group chat over on Signal, assuming you could even get others on there to begin with which sounds like it wasn’t a success. My advise is to give in for now and if there’s any coworkers you can bring on Signal, you’re free to keep trying. If you don’t mind spending money on harm reduction, you can totally use a VoIP number or a burner number and use WhatsApp in a dedicated GrapheneOS profile while forcing a VPN or Tor to always be on in said profile.

Unfortunately RCS isn’t adopted across all messengers. I still have some conversations on SMS (maybe they’re on outdated phones?) and funnily enough, more privacy-conscious people using VoIP services like JMP.chat and MySudo can still only use SMS.

There also isn’t a clear advantage of RCS over WhatsApp since it’s currently unencrypted on most messengers (only E2EE on Google Messages?) and RCS metadata is most likely being tracked by governments and ISPs in addition to unencrypted message contents being wide open to interception. As it currently stands, you’re basically choosing between guaranteed E2EE with more metadata sharing versus occasional E2EE (unlikely in big group chats) and potentially less sharing of your metadata depending on how evil each participants’ government and ISP is.

Realistically - yes I will. There’s many Whatsapp groups here; work, neighbourhood, church, parents from school, family members etc. You might be able to convince smaller groups to move to Signal but you can forget it for the big ones. So either you get Whatsapp or you’re excluded.

At least Whatsapp has several advantages over most other alternatives, such as SMS, RCS, iMessage, Facebook Messenger, Line/Kakaotalk/WeChat, Viber, Telegram and so on:

  • E2EE for messages by default (even if your metadata is leaked this is already better than e.g. Telegram or SMS which are not encrypted!)
  • Works absolutely fine on degoogled Android phones like GrapheneOS or LineageOS (unlike RCS or Facebook Messenger for example they don’t need any Google apps or services)

I mean, it could be much worse. If you just use it for that one group chat and don’t give it any permissions it doesn’t need (like all your contacts) then perhaps you can live with it?

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Thank you for the advice, I have got a dedicated sim card just for WhatsApp and will use in a dedicated profile, if/when I get a pixel phone.

I don’t give any permissions for contacts, can be very hard to avoid.

I also have my profile picture as saying message me on Signal and status saying I’m on Signal.

So how do we fight this problem? We all know WhatsApp is crap, but do we counter the networking problem? Do we play the long game and go the legal route to get WhatsApp broken up from Facebook and rank up in whatever jobs so that you can say we are moving to Signal? Much like how people force you onto WhatsApp. Or quite what?

Nope, it wasn’t as I don’t have quite enough negotiating knowhow strength or such. All it is shift patten requests, in public healthcare, which Facebook should be kept as far away from.

Wasn’t there some EU mandate to make it interoperable with other messengers? What happened to that?

Your boss is right, you don’t need a Facebook account and it is E2EE.

It has not been implemented fully yet. While there are plans to do so, WhatsApp still remains separate from other messengers

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I would join the WhatsApp Group without fuss. WhatsApp is not very good for privacy but that’s not your boss’s problem. That’s the WhatsApp development team’s problem.

Countering the problem means somehow convincing the WhatsApp developers that “Advanced Chat Privacy” or whatever they call it should be opt-out and not opt-in. That metadata protective measures and notification infrastructure choice are necessary, and innovative spam/abuse-mitigation is possible despite those measures.

I didn’t expect someone with that username to have that take. I think it should be their problem if they’re requiring employees to use WhatsApp on their personal devices with their personal numbers.

Meta isn’t too stupid to make WhatsApp private, it seems like their business model revolves around it not being private. It might be hypothetically possible to try and come to a compromise (like what Google tried with The Privacy Sandbox) but it may always require some degree of privacy invasion and I really don’t think this company could care any less about improving things. Even in the best case scenario, it’d certainly still remain proprietary.

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Thank you for your help. But isn’t WhatsApp closed source? They could literally be making it all up.

This is seriously needed. Not sure how it would work. Would it mean that other messenger apps for example google messages, beeper etc be able to link up with WhatsApp group chats without needing a WhatsApp account? Not sure how it will eventually work out?

They’ve had audits before, but yeah you can’t personally analyze their code, which makes it worse than Signal for example. But that doesn’t mean it’s not E2EE. We don’t list it because it’s not as good as other options, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad necessarily.

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Ah! Certain information has come to light. So TLDR is that in terms of security, WhatsApp is more secure than SMS. RCS with encryption is just as good, or not quite as good. But Signal is miles better than WhatsApp?

Whether the tool or medium meets the needs of the person is always going to take priority. I do not expect people in their day to day lives to prioritise software choices based on privacy properties when they are probably not even exposed to opportunities where they can understand the possible trade-offs and long-term implications. I have every expectation that the capable developers who know their software is going to be running on billions of people’s phones should try to make that experience secure and private where possible.

I am not really sure what is meant by this but as far as I’m aware, WhatsApp was not end-to-end encrypted with fingerprint verification and optional encrypted backups a decade ago. On some level WhatsApp as a company do not want the pressures or liability of having full continual passive access to message content.

It’s a lot more complicated than Signal > WhatsApp > RCS, as I explained there are trade-offs. In my opinion, until encrypted RCS gets wider adoption (which should be improving this year), WhatsApp would be my preference between the two.

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I ask him to setup slack.