[Siira]

And people keep repeating the lie that the app stores somehow created a better experience for end users. Dark patterns and deliberate sabotage of the UX is pretty much only confined to the mobile ecosystem; Desktop-friendly companies also tend to be much more open (e.g., Discord, and Telegram have bot APIs, Tumblr publishes RSS feeds for all its blogs), while the more mobile-first a company is the more user-hostile it acts (e.g., TikTok uses UUIDs in its share links to track the fuck out of you).

The lies about malware are the most laughable. Malware ultimately only matters for business usage (if for that). I have seen (non-tech-savvy) people here use Windows PCs with all its software pirated (completely typical here in Iran, and presumably in most of the developing world), and they are just fine. They needed to install some antivirus software before Microsoft upped their game, or their computer would break after some (rather long) time, but installing a (pirated, of all things) antivirus app isn’t that hard. People could just pay the computer retail shops to do it for them for a small fee.

Note that this is still the state of affairs even for most enterprise PCs in Iran. Malware just isn’t that pernicious for end users. Ultimately, WhatsApp itself is nothing but malware. There isn’t much difference between poor users who are forced to use a malware-injected cracked app, and people forced to use a privacy-invasive app like WhatsApp because of network effects.