[2000UltraDeluxe]

Even teachers use Whatsapp to communicate with pupils nowadays.

Here in Finland, from 13 and up, it's pretty much total social exclusion and severely reduced ability to participate in school work if you don't have a smartphone. Teenagers without phones is pretty much uneard of, apart from in some religious circles.

The thing about those teenagers is that they rarely meet outside school. Covid made damn sure parents are somewhat paranoid about social contacts, and having people over is still pretty rare. The result is teenagers communicating pretty much all the time, but it's all done over social media.

[rglullis]

> > Even teachers use Whatsapp to communicate with pupils nowadays.

There are messaging platforms that are not dependent on Big Tech. If communication via group chat is so key to the school operations, parents are more than entitled to ask the school to implement a proper platform for it.

> Covid made damn sure parents are somewhat paranoid about social contacts, and having people over is still pretty rare.

That is your first-order problem to solve.

Giving kids a smartphone as a substitute for proper social interaction is a terrible band-aid.

[2000UltraDeluxe]

> That is your first-order problem to solve.

Definitely. Personally, I've taken steps to remedy it.

On the other hand, other parents I discussed it with now consider me a luddite, and visiting friends is still a thing of the past for most of the local kids. I suspect it will remain so until the fear of Covid goes down and interacting with actual people becomes uncontroversial again. :D

[em-bee]

good luck being the only parent asking for that when everyone else is fine with whatsapp. it's not just the school you need to convince but every other parent too.

[rglullis]

No one can compel you to use WhatsApp. If the school says that they need to have mandatory communication with parents and children through some kind of system, it needs to be universal.

In my kids' kita, I wasn't alone when I said that I didn't want to use WhatsApp. So we created a mailing list. Parents and teachers can still talk on whatsapp if they prefer, but any "official communication" needs to be through email.

[em-bee]

it helps a lot if you have one or two allies who agree with you. but when you are the only one it feels very isolating, like everyone is against you. and not everyone is willing to put up a fight alone.

[rglullis]

The first thing to change would be this attitude. Don't treat it as a fight, and don't think of people being "against you" but merely "insensitive to the matter".

Just talk with them, see how much common ground you can find. In my conversations with other parents, I found that some were interested in changing away from whatsapp, but didn't know what would be the "best" alternative. In the end they opted for Signal, still not ideal but at least it was a step in the right direction.

[jcbrand]

I'm already the parent and "that guy" in various settings who refuses to join the Whatsapp group and it hasn't had any meaningful effect on my life.

Most of the time people already were sending out emails as well, and they (perhaps begrudgingly) continue to do so to accommodate people like me.

The signal to noise ratio in these Whatsapp groups is extremely low.

[mensetmanusman]

That doesn’t mean they need a device though, our family has an iPad mounted to the refrigerator for things like that.

[lrvick]

If a teacher could not figure out how to communicate with a kid without routing those communications through Facebook servers, I would kindly teach them how e-mail, matrix, or other neutral internet protocols work.

Honestly -most- of the time I tell people I don't have a phone they say something like "That is super cool, I wish I could do that. My phone has ruined my life. How would you prefer we keep in touch since you can't use X app?"

[Freak_NL]

> If a teacher could not figure out how to communicate with a kid without routing those communications through Facebook servers, I would kindly teach them how e-mail, matrix, or other neutral internet protocols work.

And some (few) would appreciate your effort, but quite pragmatically have to acknowledge that there is no way they can support a classroom full of kids with those solutions, and that even if they could, it would get in the way of the curriculum. In the Netherlands too, WhatsApp is decidedly not (or only nominally) optional in high school. This is not something that can be solved by going to individual teachers (and really, most won't understand why you can't 'just' use WhatsApp); you need legislation to break open those silos and technological support at a national scale for non-commercial alternatives. The former is happening in the EU (so give it a few years before you can chat with people on WhatsApp without a smartphone from a Linux laptop, maybe); the latter is a non-starter in many countries due to government IT projects failing constantly.

[lrvick]

It should be illegal (if not already) to demand children accept data sharing agreements with private companies to participate in public education.

That is what the teacher asking kids to use a Facebook product is doing. Speaking personally, if I end up with a kid in that situation, and they are limited in school in any way because they don't accept FAANG license agreements, I will take them to court and make a media shit show out of it.

Something being "normal" in education doesn't make it right, or unchangeable. Not washing hands in hospitals was once normal, and a small minority of people needed to challenge those norms to set appropriate healthcare hygiene standards.

[chrisseaton]

> and make a media shit show out of it

I doubt anyone in the media will care as much as you think they will.

[lrvick]

The media will write about privacy issues if you hand them the right headline on a silver platter. See my "Japanese Robot hotel hack".

[rglullis]

> This is not something that can be solved by going to individual teachers

Yes, it can. You just need to become part of the "intolerant minority" that refuses to give in. https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

[2000UltraDeluxe]

It's not about figuring out how to do it in other ways that doesn't include Facebook servers. It's just that all the pupils are already on those platforms, as are the teachers, and asking everyone to switch to other platforms is simply inconvenient.

Most people simply don't care enough, and that includes most teenagers. People want convenience, and as little interference as possible. I'm not saying it's a good thing; on the contrary I suspect it will be outright disruptive for society in a generation's time or so. Still, people _like_ their dopamine fixes. Most enjoy being hooked to TikTok, and having a real-life attention-span beaten by goldfish.

We, as a society, missed that the hopelessly incompetent and oblivios people in Wall-E was a warning and not a manual.

[rglullis]

Still, it is not an either/or situation. If teachers want to use WhatsApp for their personal communications, fine by me. What parents are perfectly entitled to do is to go to the school board and say "*We don't want to use WhatsApp. There needs to be a proper messaging platform for school communication"

[2000UltraDeluxe]

There is one. It's just crap and both teachers and pupils avoid it when they can. Government IT is funny that way.

Not to mention the fact that if I somehow managed to get them to ditch Whatsapp, I would be held responsible for it. I'd like to keep my business running rather than be known as the local tosser -- being famous for being a technophobe won't attract new customers. And yes, that's what being against Big Tech makes you these days; most people see you as paranoid, or in the best case, as someone who fights windmills.

And all that assumes other kids wouldn't take it out on mine because they're frustrated about her dad forcing everyone over to some crappy app instead of whatsapp.

As another sibling mentioned, this needs to be addressed at a political level. And yes, I've contacted elected representatives about it. Most of those used Office 365 or G suite for receiving emails.

[lrvick]

No one has ever accused me of being a technophobe.

I run a security and privacy consulting company counting some of the world's largest companies as clients. I have many friends at FAANG and have had engless direct and indirect dealings with data privacy and data breaches at major companies.

I am also the guy that will teach their kids to program, and to solder.

When I am -also- the one to say I don't carry a smartphone and that I strondly recommend against TikTok and FAAANG, they at least hear me out. If anything it has gotten me -more- business because they know I take privacy seriously, which means they know I will take the privacy of their company seriously.

Don't be afraid to use your position of influence to be polite but firm in your convictions. People often will respect you for challenging toxic norms even if they don't choose to do the same. I think your fear of being "out" as a privacy advocate is unwarranted.

[rglullis]

Yeah, I don't want to pick on OP, but i's disappointing to see how even in a forum called "Hacker News" the prevailing mentality is of apathy and/or conformism.

It's almost like all the talk about of "it's cool to be a nerd" and "we need to have more room for different voices" is just corporate-washed propaganda and not the real values of this generation...

[rglullis]

> if I somehow managed to get them to ditch Whatsapp, I would be held responsible for it.

No, think of it as a grassroots movement. You won't be doing anything by yourself, you'll be gathering just enough support to make it become a collective action.

It doesn't even to be a majority. Just a small group of parents saying "anything but WhatsApp" will at least get people to look for an alternative. If their excuse is "the current system from government is bad", the group can respond with "here is a list of messaging providers that use open messaging protocols."

It does NOT have to be a crappy app (e.g, Conversations XMPP is actually quite a polished client) and it does NOT have to cost a lot (I know that I can provide a fully managed service to schools for $0.10/user/month and still be profitable). All it takes is a small committed group refusing to take no for an answer.

[maccard]

> If a teacher could not figure out how to communicate with a kid without routing those communications through Facebook servers, I would kindly teach them how e-mail, matrix, or other neutral internet protocols work.

Honest question, how many teachers do you interact with? I don't have kids, but I've got a few friends who are teachers, and most of their coworkers are completely tech illiterate. Getting them to use email rather than whatsapp would be hard enough, but setting up and running a matrix server is completely out of the question.

[rglullis]

The teachers are not the ones setting up the servers. All they need is to install a mobile app, and get a piece of paper that says:

  - Name of the server
  - Username
  - initial password, which needs to be changed upon login.

The element client is far from being perfect, but even my aging parents could start using it, join the family group chat and adapt.

[lelanthran]

> If a teacher could not figure out how to communicate with a kid without routing those communications through Facebook servers, I would kindly teach them how e-mail, matrix, or other neutral internet protocols work.

I get the feeling that your worldview is extremely limited, and you have not experienced the world of kids.

We choose schools based on how successful their graduates are. The more CEOs, doctors, etc that a school produced means that that school is more successful.

Once the school is chosen, you adhere to their rules. For my kids, some of those rules included online-only stuff. Sure, I could send my kids to a shittier school, but I don't want to do that.

[lrvick]

Online only is fine. The internet is not the problem. Forcing kids to accept data sharing license agreements with private third party companies with a history of abusing that data to get education at a public institution... is the problem.

It should not even be legal to do this and IMO parents in your situation should consider forming student privacy advocacy groups and legal funds demanding students not be discriminated against over legitimate privacy concerns involving third party private companies. I know I will if I am the parent of a kid in that situation and a teacher at the best school for them does not comply with polite help migrating to more accessible solutions.

Force the schools to self host, and use open source software. This is the norm at many major academic institutions in Europe. The US is just way behind because virtually no one is fighting for student privacy here... because most parents don't care about their own privacy so why would they care about that of their child?

[rglullis]

> The more CEOs, doctors, etc that a school produced means that that school is more successful.

Or it means that the elites managed to self-select themselves around that particular school.