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0 pointsmike_hearn11y ago0 comments

>You'll find that many people are very reluctant to give up that sort of information about themselves though

Erm. I suspect you don't realise that WhatsApp has over half a billion users. It's as large as the major webmail services and nearly as large as Facebook itself. Society has reached consensus on this issue very fast - phone numbers as your identity work well, and any app that wants to be accepted by the market has to work this way exclusively.

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1311y ago

> Erm. I suspect you don't realise that WhatsApp has over half a billion users.

I'm well aware.

Just because something has given up this information doesn't mean they approve of being asked, just that they evaluated that the positives outweigh the negatives. If I put out snail pellets to save my lettuces it doesn't mean I enjoy the death of any animal, it just means that I value the outcome of healthy lettuces more than living mollusks.

> any app that wants to be accepted by the market has to work this way exclusively

I see nothing that suggests this, outside of a successful app despite it. Maybe they'd have more users if they didn't have such an asinine policy. We don't (and probably can't) know for sure.

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