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.