[JumpCrisscross]

> fine with people not finding me automatically

That’s a private gain at the network’s cost. For a challenger, their decision to bar that albeit limited form of free-riding is perfectly rational. For a dominant network, I am much more sympathetic to the call for anonymity.

[turminal]

Prioritizing your market share over private gains of your users is precisely the thing that makes you "not an ally of user freedom"

[JumpCrisscross]

> Prioritizing your market share over private gains of your users

Network effects make these virtually indistinguishable. If a network is unusable it doesn’t help anyone.

There may be an argument, however, for charging for the opt out.

[gefhfffh]

Unusable is a big stretch

[lucian1900]

If a network is not usable by anyone with a smartphone, it's strictly less usable than WhatsApp. That means in practice, it's unusable.

[kitkat_new]

Why would messengers without phone number collection not be usable by anyone with a smartphone?

Even if that was the case, " it's strictly less usable than WhatsApp" is not true, because other messengers can provide other quality of life features.

" That means in practice, it's unusable." is not true either. Remove "Status" support from WhatsApp and you get strictly less usable than WhatsApp. Still, it is not unusable.

Signal is pretty close to being strictly less usable than WhatsApp btw.