WhatsApp still struggling to catch up with the 1990s
Will that app ever live in THIS century?
I only noticed today that, a few weeks ago, Facebook announced:
- “the rollout of a limited public beta test for WhatsApp’s updated multi-device capability”
- this will “take smartphones out of the equation”, by allowing users to use WhatsApp also on “up to four other nonphone devices simultaneously - even if your phone battery is dead"
Backward. WhatsApp is unbelievably backward
The statements above, and basically that whole announcement from Facebook, may, no: MUST be summarized as follows:
“In July 2021, WhatsApp has reduced of a tiny bit the technological gap that has always existed, and still remains large, between itself, and that MUCH MORE ADVANCED APPLICATION THAT IS EMAIL!"
This is unbelievable, really. Email has been “multidevice” on has many devices as one wanted, with as many separate accounts one wanted, attachments etc…, since literally before Mark Zuckerberg was born. More than a decade before.
Moving from stuff like email, or IRC, to stuff like WhatsApp has been such an incredible step back that it is really depressing how many humans fell for it without hesitation.
Then again, at this point WhatsApp may reach feature parity with email in just one or two more two decades. Maybe I shouldn’t worry anymore.
Who writes this, why, and how to help
I am Marco Fioretti, tech writer and aspiring polymath doing human-digital research and popularization.
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