I’m trying to get people move to Kontalk, but testing it with my father, the first thing he said was “this app only has 10.000 downloads, why should I use it?”. I know that this is wrong, because many people download it via F-Droid or directly form the website and because of the XMPP compatibility it is possible to communicate with even more people. But this is hard to explain to people who just want to chat with their friends and are not very technically-skilled/interested.
So, approximately how many people use Kontalk?
Hello Stanzi,
first of all, thanks for believing in the project!
This is kind of chicken-egg problem. Other than convincing people of advantages of open source and increased privacy and freedom of the service, there isn’t much to go on on this side. We can’t compete with multibillionaire corporations. We just try to make a better service for anyone, and try to provide something that other services don’t have simply because of what they are.
But back to the point: Kontalk currently counts around 5k users (we were around 10k just a few months ago, but lot of registrations expired because people got away ). I know it’s not much, but as I said, we strive everyday to open people’s eyes and react to the status quo. It’s not a technical matter anymore: it’s people matter.
To that end, you might want to give to your father this reading:
Another argument: “Why shouldn’t you use Kontalk?” It is free, it doesn’t interfere with other messengers or anything on your phone. So you can just install it and chat with people via Kontalk who has it too, and use something else if necessary.
Here in Germany most people are using WhatsApp, now owned by FB. These companies start to connect the private user information they have which means your whole address book with telephone numbers is uploaded and read by FB - including anybody who doesn’t have anything to do with WhatsApp or FB.
To stop this paternalism and loosing personal data to big corporations the only solution is that people are using a different app. Kontalk is a very good choice here and you can start making this switch.
I can totally unterstand your argument, and since you are German, i can directly quote (the meaning of) a conversation I had with a friend (via Signal): “Findest du es nicht gruselig, dass Tesco Kundinnen basierend auf analysierten Einkaufsdaten Glückwünsche zur Schwangerschaft geschickt haben?” - “Im Gegenteil, ich finde das genial!” or “Ich kriege gerne personalisierte Werbung.” (in English: “Don’t you think it’s creepy that female customers of Tesco got congratulations on their pregnancy only because Tesco analysed the shopping behavior of them?” - “No, i thing this is genious” or “I want to get personalised ads”). My opinion on this: If i ever get a girlfriend and a local supermatket would do something like this, I WOULD SUE THE SHIT OUT OF THEM!!!
But how can you argue with a person who has this opinion???
). I know it’s not much, but as I said, we strive everyday to open people’s eyes and react to the status quo. It’s not a technical matter anymore: it’s people matter.