The search for a messenger app without strings.
As you may already know there’s quite a lot of mischief going on in the online world (and offline for that matter) right now.
Lots to think about, or not. Lots to let hinder us, or not. Whatever, we’re all on our own trips.
I’m pretty stoic and watching from some place outside of the fray for the most part.
So far anyway.
But I do find myself in slight, what I would call, “preparedness mode”.
(Could be my 39.5 Design moon doing what it does - stepping around the shit)
Something like what we who live among the possibility of hurricanes do.
Just in case.
We stock up on this and that. Make sure the back up generator starts. We put things away that might be blown around.
Basically make ready to be as least inconvenienced as we can be - whenever the storm might come.
It’s feeling no different here now with the social media deplatforming and censorship that’s been quietly and not so quietly happening - depending on where you have your radar tracking.
If you don’t have any radar on at all - no worries either way, but it can be interesting for me 🤔 to understand what others are experiencing sometimes.
Case in point - Ben Shapiro - it drives me nuts to listen to his voice.
But he’s himself and doesn’t sugarcoat or try to manipulate with his point of view.
I can respect that.
What he has to say often enough isn’t how I want to be spending my days (listening to it), but then a video of his comes across my radar like his response to the response about a piece he was asked to write for Politico.
And I’m all ears.
Back to the hunt for a new messenger app, how we find ourselves here and where I decided it would be long-term secure to plant my flag.
Several months ago, probably around when I started this migration over here to Locals (for similar reasons - FB was acting the fool and I was seeing how my own work and connections were vulnerable to their whims), my friend Matt - the same one from my last post actually - had a problem with being hacked or something which got his FB, Instagram and WhatsApp accounts locked and deplatformed.
They just disappeared him.
He’s since been reinstated - took 2 or 3 months it seems like.
But here’s what happened on my end. Shock.
Because I realized that, without a FB connection, I didn’t know how to reach him.
In fact, I didn’t have any back up way to reach MOST of the people I would like to not lose touch with.
Crazy how a decade on a platform can breed complacency.
It took Matt being unavailable (no emergency or anything - it was just eye opening) to show me just how shaky my foundation really was.
Eventually, I remembered I could probably email him through LM (didn’t even have a personal email for him!) and that worked - phew panic averted, but also warning heeded.
Here’s why messenger matters so much to me.
Not only is it my main communication tool. Family and friends included.
But I also still complete like 95% of my business via messenger too.
Maybe more.
As I continue to hone the Doing Business as Yourself value ladder of offers, that can shift with scaling activities (like more paid advertising to introduce people to Planet Andrea, etc...)
But right now, and maybe it’ll always have some leaning this way - messenger is where the transactions happen.
Anyway, back to the search.
Zavia and I have separately and together been #3rdlinestyle testing out multiple platforms and options, finding the holes (ie. figuring out what doesn’t work, or what doesn’t meet our criteria - privacy and free speech being top of the value pile)
And we individually happened upon the one I’m rolling with now.
It’s called Threema.
You can read about it here:
https://threema.ch/en
It solves a lot of my concerns, and possibly many that I didn’t have too.
But the biggest one is not having to give out my phone number in order to connect with people.
I literally speak to no one on the phone if I don’t have to.
The only person who’s probably never going to have that be a thing with me is my 80+ yo father ... and there’s a couple of cousins too.. it’s nice to catch up a bit by phone with them - occasionally.
But you know what’s even better?
Video chat.
Had an old friend from High School message me recently, wanting to get on the phone and bridge a 35 year gap ... 👀
And I was like ... umm I don’t do phone, but a video chat sometime maybe?
He was like - wait - you don’t do phone but video is okay??
Lol. 😂
Yup dat be me :)
Anyway - if you wanna find me - posting here is one way.
And Threema is the other.
Add me :)
My Threema ID: https://threema.id/FKTC8X7T
Storm averted.
I like it!