I have an Indian colleague who told me he was threatened with arrest after a traffic stop for having element and conversations installed on his phone as the cop told him those are used by terrorists and he should just use WhatsApp
this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2025
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He thought terrorists also use email and drink water, but decided not to tell the cop that.
And that's the truest, just unpleasant, answer to all the talk about new messenger services and emerging replacements.
Power doesn't care about rules. Power does care that you don't have a way to communicate freely. Power punishes you if you try to find a way.
Social problems are not solved by technical means. Or, for the sake of correctness, - they are, but those technical means are called weapons of war. To change the balance of power so that your wishes were respected.
Why would a traffic cop be looking at his phones chat apps?!
They were trading pokemons in pokemon go?
Cops are doing this in the US too.
I'm not sure, but I assume it's because a GPS app is running on the dash somewhere, and the app keeps the phone unlocked and visible?
Need to start obscuring what is installed on devices. Terminal based communication and host it on a remote server that you connect to with SSH so when they inspect your phone there is nothing there.
At least if I had something to hide I would be way ahead of dumb laws like this.
Do you want new messenger services? Because this is how you get new messenger services.
As someone who only uses a phone without a SIM card this would suck for me.
@HeyJoe @schizoidman it's time to migrate the planet to #signal and ...
Signal was also part of this as well
Signal seems unlikely to comply. It will be interesting to see how they respond. A way to register without a phone number would be ideal.
Or Matrix, no need for a phone number and good luck having all instances to comply.
Are many new phones being made with Sim slots? I assumed physical cards were fading.
Pretty much all phones still have SIM card slots.
It's really mostly North American models that have been releasing with no SIM card slots lately, but they usually release it in other markets with one.
I think a bunch still do. I don't have it because I just purchased the phone with no cell plan. I just use wifi and if I go out I use my work phone Hotspot to provide wifi to my personal. I use Google voice so I have a number and some of those chat apps that my friends use to keep in touch. Im in my 40's and have never had a cell phone bill still. Outside leaving the house, I honestly cant believe people are paying $60-$100+ dollars a month when you can get everything it does these days off wifi. For the minor inconvenience ive ran into sometimes I still think it's worth it for the price.
I just pay 15/month on mint for the lowest plan. Just so I can get directions and basic Internet while I'm out.
It looks like that plan allows 35gb of data use in a month before it throttles, I don't think I've ever used that much mobile data.
The $15 plan used to only be 2GB, which was honestly still enough for people that only use mobile data sparingly.
Yes, that's adequate for someone who knows how their phone works and doesn't stream video while out and about.
Isn’t that like a month’s rent in some parts of India?
Pretty much all phones still have SIM card slots.
It's really mostly North American models that have been releasing with no SIM card slots lately, but they usually release it in other markets with one.
US iPhone have no sim slot. How that work in inida?
Esim is also considered as Sim inserted. During registration apps sent a SMS to mobile number, but with this the device will sent a SMS out to the chat platform. This ensure the number is verified. The message sent will be automated by granting the app SMS privileges. The Sim inserted/loaded will be noted by the app. During app startup it will check if the Sim inserted or loaded as esim is same Sim as before. Then it will work, else a Sim change warning will appear.
Source: UPI payment apps in India already mandates this approach. They want all other apps to do the same.
eSim
physically inserted SIM card
So does it just mean you can't use any of those apps if you use them on PC/tablet? Wonder if that would be big enough of a driver to push people to use something else for communication
The apps already use your phone number, on pc you connect to your phone app. But it used to be possible to change your account phone number, and that's what they seem to have blocked.
So this is why Whatsapp logged me out of all my accounts with Indian telephone number yesterday and won't let me back in...
I think that SIM physical presence in the terminal adds just a bit more of difficulty to the main abusers but a lot of pain to the non ones, the apparent bind to univuqous real identity is illusory and fragile, by now we should assume WhatsApp and Telegram as potentially anonymous and spam as a mail account...
Well it's hard to circumvent as it is some network apis provided by the telecom operators. Whatsapp will ask your device to connect to a url using your mobile data bearer to authenticate and the operator will tell them if you're actually who you declare to be.
What do they achieve from this?
Whenever you don't know, the answer is money.
Control of dissent, rather.