The joke was (at least to the best of my knowledge) that nudging people to use chrome is further reinstating their monopoly, leading to a browser landscape comparable to IE days, which would not quite be the 90s, but close.
Not so much a victory considering whatsapp is in complete control over metadata. Even if it somehow lay in the interests of Facebook to give users a private instant messaging platform, the rootkits known as google play and whatever apple incorporates for complete control over the device are sure to catch any terrorists using their phones like normal people. The ship already burned to a crisp before anyone jumped out.
The digital source material is a limiting factor for achievable quality, but so is the DAC that is to translate the source material. Some cheap DACs are not meant to translate specific bit depths and sampling rate, some supply the jack with less output power, some exhibit more crosstalk, some have more limited frequency responses. So yes, second to the source material, it's the DAC that is the limiting factor for good sound.
Not pissed enough to reconsider the heavy iphone xs max investment apparently, which, in the end, might have made a difference compared to continuously feeding them money.
having the source code be open doesn't necessarily make it trustable, but it definitely has an added benefit. like op says, proprietary code is untrustable by design.
there is also the fact that I cannot take the code and compile it myself, proprietary solutions like the nvidia linux driver for example have given me headaches so many times, it would be nice if there was some form of entry to the code to at least get a vague idea of what the code is supposed to be doing. I basically have to pray for software to do what I want, when it doesn't the whole solution due to it's closedness/unadaptivity becomes useless to me.
Finally a story I can say something to. Granted, the article isn't very informative, but to me it is a nicely written depiction of what happens when you drop WhatsApp. I can imagine the decision is not a dramatic one when living in a region in which WhatsApp is less used. Where I live however (central Europe), presenting the thought of not using WhatsApp purposely gives you weird stares.
As the author states, there are no real alternatives. In theory, WhatsApp can be replaced by lots of other applications. I settled for Wire, as I would choose an application that makes use of the Signal protocol while also having an open source client + server over WhatsApp any time of the day. In practice, few want to even consider using something that is not WhatsApp. I managed to convince some close friends to install Wire alongside WhatsApp (can't have unencrypted SMS as my only communications channel), but it took some convincing and privacy aware ethics rambling (if that makes sense) to achieve that. I can't imagine any somewhat sane person wanting to bother with so much trouble when branching out to alternative solutions. This particular sentiment from the article especially couldn't ring any more true:
"At the beginning, I often felt isolated and as if I had abandoned friends. Some contacts ebbed away, while I had to withstand the odd awkward look of disbelief and discontent from others when I explained that I did not use WhatsApp."
I can understand the convenience gain by using WhatsApp over regular SMS. That convenience is hardly unparalled nowadays though, the one thing that keeps people chained to WhatsApp is it's ubiquity, in the sense that every person you meet will quite likely have WhatsApp installed (do note that I'm saying this as part of a somewhat younger demographic).
I find this quite sad. My motivation for switching was simple, I didn't want to take part in any business Facebook sticks their fingers in. Whether Facebook uses all the metadata they get through WhatsApp, and for which (possibly nefarious) purposes is irrelevant, they've been shown to make unscrupulous use of data that should be private in order to conduct social experiments and whatnot a long time ago [1]. Am I in the wrong for trying to be mindful about the usage of my, very personal, data? I really hope I am not.
First time poster here, sorry if this sort of anecdotal evidence doesn't fit the type of content that is usually posted on here.
No, it's a false binary choice presented by you in which the only outcomes are "dealing with it" (severe overreach) or the destruction of the country.