The rise of Mastodon has made me so much more aware of government services requiring us to use private companies’ systems to communicate with them and access services.
Sitting on a Dutch train just now I was shown on a screen “feeling unsafe in the train? Contact us via WhatsApp”.
What if I don’t use WhatsApp? (I do, but I wish I didn’t have to) I’m forced to share my data with Meta to use it.
Public systems should not require use of private services.
To be fair, if you go to their website it does say that you can also use SMS, but there’s no mention of that on the message that was displayed on the train.
https://www.ns.nl/reisinformatie/voorzieningen/veiligheid-in-de-trein-en-op-het-station.html
@Brendanjones You can bet Meta has lobbied governments to encourage its use within government itself as well as between the public and government.
Microsoft has and does, which is why its apps and document file formats remain the standard in many governments around the globe.
It's surprising where FOSS has supplanted Microsoft that communications haven't uniformly shifted away from monopolistic providers.
Allow whatever methods that allow the most people to contact them. Preferably a few. If WhatsApp + SMS get to 95% of the target population, I don't see why not. I'd personally prefer Signal for this sort of thing, but there's like 0.23% of people using it, so it seems kind of dumb to devote a lot of resources for Phil's Ideologically Blessed Methods.
@thcrt Well this screen only showed WhatsApp. I would have taken a photo but it would have been weird for the person sitting directly below it!
And yes, living in NL I’m well aware of the ubiquity of WhatsApp (“app me” ipv “stuur me een berichtje”, bijvoorbeeld). Doesn’t change the general point.
@Brendanjones Also, SMS is kind of broken (if we care about security) for "old" networks (3g and below) beause of how the SS7 system works.
It would be better if they also offered other more secure alternatives. I'm not sure what that would be, though.
Last time the SMS number was on display on wall in the train (i didn't use it, i used the online form of dutch police later).
I'm fine with meeting people where they are, but I think it's important to have a neutral option as well. Would have been nice to see the SMS number on the poster as well, I agree.
@PictoPulse356 Thankfully I’ve not seen that recently. Though I do have to say, Twitter was often the fastest way to get action on a problem. I remember multiple times when I wasn’t getting anywhere with customer support (or just didn’t get a reply at all) and a public message to the company meant immediate action.
Of course this is because it was public, and there’s zero reason why Mastodon or another open network can’t replace that ability to publicly call out a company.
@Brendanjones Fully agree. Public systems should at least try to offer a service for communication that is widely compatible. For example a publicly hosted Matrix server with potential bridges to multiple different messenger services.
But even offering mail contact with a provided public key for E2E encrypted transfer would cause less centralization.
@Brendanjones @briankrebs I appreciate that for something like that sometimes you have to meet people where they are.
What does drive me crazy is we get AMBER Alerts here for abducted children, that direct people to X links for more information, as if there aren’t an infinite number of other ways to post information on the Internet.
@Brendanjones Whatsapp has become a defacto standard. I don't like it.
So many small businesses have a phone number and next to it parentheses with "Whatsapp". Luckily, one can still text or call those numbers without using WhatsApp. So far, no one complained and has just texted me back.
But when government services require it it's a whole other level of annoying and wrong.
@Brendanjones #Tennessee Bureau of Investigations Amber Alerts show up as https://tbi.pub/alert that leads to a Facebook page, where, if one doesn't have the app or an account, one is forced to close the nearly full screen (on a small cell phone) dialog before being able to see a barely legible screen shot of a part of an infographic. Sure it looks fine on a desktop or my unfolded Pixel Fold, but YMMV.
Why not just use https://www.tn.gov/ and cross post to Facebook?
@Brendanjones Yep, this drives me mad over here in Argentina too.
Many government services use WhatsApp, and many utility companies use Twitter as the official contact portal. I hate it and refuse to use them, but at the end of the day I have worse services for it.
@Brendanjones It is not possible to avoid private services because the entire telecommunications network is private. The distinction that you are after might be regulated versus unregulated services but the reality seems to be that government services should be provided by multiple means to accommodate the wide range of ways people communicate.
it seems that the Dutch government is already doing that; they just haven’t effectively told you the options.
@Brendanjones I get it, but where would you draw the line these days? Unless they give you your phone or Internet service, you've no choice without doing it all in person and/or by mail.
What's worse for me is when they put information on a site that's essentially not viewable without an account, like X or some of FB. Especially when they have a functioning website that just links to it (they should be doing the reverse!)
But I absolutely get it.
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