[1propionyl]

Let's turn this around: why are you commenting?

Your message seems to boil down to asking people to "get on board or get left behind", and that otherwise they just should delete the app, shut up, and stop complaining.

That may be possible for you, but it isn't for every person, even if they wished it was. "Just don't use it" isn't enough, and I say this as someone who hasn't had Facebook or WhatsApp in over 5 years. That I can go without them is a luxury many don't have.

Lastly, people being outspoken about technology not working for them has led to countless improvements and innovations, often with benefits to the entire population (<curb-cuts-cliche/>). Telling people not to express their criticism and complaints helps nobody.

[helmholtz]

I thought I was making a wider point about the sort of comment where people dive headfirst into a comment thread with complaints about how the solution doesn't work for them because of XYZ, when the author may never have inteded their solution to be universal in the first place.

I have serious doubts that idle complaining on the internet moves the needle too much. What works instead is voting with feet/dollars. In this instance, it's the mass of people who actually HAVE jumped ship that are causing whatsapp to pause, not the ones saying they can't quit, however justified their reasoning.

[1propionyl]

> What works instead is voting with feet/dollars.

So I both agree and disagree. On one hand, yes, one person voting with feet/dollars has a relatively large impact compared to one person raising a complaint. But if we look at the entire ecology of users, the story is different.

Many of the people who end up voting with their feet do so after being exposed to people raising complaints. And on the flip side, people who see their friends voting with their feet may then seek out the explanations and complaints leading to that action.

Just uninstalling an app is very low information density as a signal. It doesn't provide any reason why, it's just a single bit. It's value is more as an action rather than a statement.

I think the ideal is somewhere in between, and we need both concrete action (voting with your feet) as well as public discourse (raising complaints). The former without the latter is inscrutable, the latter without the former is toothless.