To put it simply, I need a messenger app to talk to other people. Most people I talk to are not programmers or very tech savvy.
Putting them on Signal requires me to convince them to download an app from the play store, with thr same name. The app is very similar to messenger or whatsapp and they're used to the functionality already. So many of my friends made an account so we can talk.
Anything more involved and they stay on meta's garden. Any successful messaging app needs to prioritize "normies" to get users.
This is exactly it. Signal was promoted in my country because it was not big tech.
People hated Facebook but still wanted WhatsApp. Free, no ads, no Silicon Valley. Privacy or anonymity are irrelevant.
Yet another person confusing "allowed" vs "required"
When I was in middle school, all of my friends used XMPP. None of us pre-teens were especially tech savvy.
Before the smartphone era, non-tech-savvy young people were still pretty tech-savvy compared to modern computer (= phone) users, who rarely step outside a few corporate phone apps and have even lost the concept of the file and the directory. You can't expect the same curiosity and willingness to make an effort from normies today as back in the XMPP era.
I feel like all that is true sometimes, then my 9-year-old neice shows me what she's been doing in Minecraft.
Well I bet you didn't have to convince them to leave messenger back then.
It's not that they are not capable of figuring out something more complex. It's that it's hard to convince non-tech savvy friends to switch apps and it becomes much harder if the alternative needs setup or feels unfamiliar .
did we know it was XMPP though?