fulano

Whatsapp

And no, I can’t simply stop using or ask friends to move to an alternative. I’m from Brazil and that thing is so popular and mainstream, that even stores or public services use it.

Just this week, I had to report an animal abuse case to the authorities, and the official communication channel I had to use was through whatsapp.

It’s sad to see how dependent of a single proprietary service for something so important we allowed ourselves to become…

I was thinking it was something like what pidgin does on desktop, adapted for mobile, and was highly enthusiastic, but realized it works using matrix bridges and doesn’t process locally…

Well, at least it can be self hosted.

I have been looking at this possibility, but running a bridge means that I will need to self host a service, which adds one more point of failure, while not really removing whatsapp from my life, so I’m not convinced it’s a good alternative.

In that case, won’t the server have access to my credentials?

Ah, I see. But in that case, won’t the server have access to my messages in plain text?

There’s something that worries me about GPT-like technologies, and I see very few people talking about it: GPT-based social media bots.

It can give people and groups to create much advanced mass manipulation strategies. Imagine a lot of gpt accounts on all sites creating comments advocating pro or against something, every time it’s mentioned, in a very natural language, that can fool most people.

It worries me a lot, and I’m sure it will be done at some point. If recent elections around the world were a mess due to a lot of social media manipulation and fake news campaigns, now imagine that powered by gpt.