Technology

37707 readers

34 users here now

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

TheRtRevKaiser@kbin.social

Use WhatsApp without a smartphone? (self.technology)

submitted 7 months ago by robin to c/technology

14 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hi. I'm thinking about switching to Linux on my smartphone. The only reason I can't is because in my country WhatsApp is everywhere and I'm expected to have it for various school/sport things. I'd like to setup whatsapp on my laptop, but I don't know how.

I know WhatsApp Web and Desktop exist, but in the past you needed to log in to your phone at least once a month for the web session to keep working. Is it that still the case?

Or can I just log in from Android (and be fine as long as I don't accidentally log out)?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] pre@fedia.io 5 points 7 months ago (2 children)

@robin@beehaw.org

Whatssapp is designed as a surveillance app, it's primary purpose is to collect data from your phone for Facebook to analyze, so they make it basically impossible to use unless it's installed on your phone.

[–] beeng@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

But Facebook bought WhatsApp in like 2015 was it?

So it wasn't designed with Facebook datascraping in mind.

[–] pre@fedia.io 2 points 7 months ago

@beeng@discuss.tchncs.de I wonder what proportion of the original code is still there. Not much I shouldn't think. The original app didn't ask for android permissions the way the modern one does, if only coz Android changed the way permissions work since then.

@robin@beehaw.org

[–] ccx@sopuli.xyz 1 points 7 months ago

Original WhatsApp was XMPP with phone number for your username. Pretty much what https://quicksy.im/ does now.

WhatsApp today is completely different beast.