whats up with whatsapp groups

[sufi]

i really dislike them
Neighbourhood groups seem to arc towards snitching, and i think there's something about the low level of commitment that it takes to join or participate or leave a group that encourages crappy behaviour
but generally whatsapp groups seem to piss me off
or is it just me?

 

[Corpsey]

I'm not in any public ones, don't even know how you get invited to them?

 

[sufi]

I dunno, i try to avoid whatsapp entirely, or at least as much as possible, i fundamentally distrust putting my social life in the hands of the cali tech bros, who are wont to unpredictably fuck things up, but maybe i'm just behind the times.

 

[Clinamenic]

I don't often use WhatsApp, but there are a lot of public Telegram channels for developer/programmer communities for various open-source software. Also a bunch of them for pump and dump crypto scams.

 

[sufi]

So how does the onlineness of these groups affect the group dynamic?
I guess they are easier to join easy to lurk, easier to quit, so no big commitment to make sense or contribute in good faith

but when the group is people you know irl, how does the move to whatsapp (noone has a family or mates group on telegram do they?) affect the way you all interact

(my control offline group would be something like

)

 

[Corpsey]

I suppose whatsapp conversations are notionally protected but I wonder if future historians (assuming our planet doesn't burn) will unearth whatsapp group conversations in the future to help them explain world events

 

[sufi]

all those conversations will be leaked eventually, they may be encrypted now but fb will sell us out

 

[shakahislop]

the feeling of the 2010s

 

[shakahislop]

i kept telling everyone that moving social life communication to whatsapp was a problem, but like all these things you can't fight it alone and eventually you have to get with the programme. you don't have control over this stuff

in the social world there are lots of effects that there's not much of a vocabulary for. one is the way that mate group boundaries become more rigid and are based on who is in the relevant whatsapp group. coz that's where the invitations to things happening in real life are, and where a lot of group communication happens

 

[shakahislop]

its been a big part of the inescapability of the online. the little ticks putting pressure on you to respond. messages jutting into your thoughts as you sit on a bus.

 

[sufi]

Whatsapp has been very predatory - they have attempted to take over all the conversations formerly on SMS, voice, etc etc, even fb
and where do we end up? in some crappy app that we have no control over, no recourse to complain if they suddenly fuck it up

 

[version]

They've added another layer of obfuscation to Tory policy as they conduct a lot of business in these groups and there's no official record.