Amazon’s Ring wants to replace local WhatsApp groups. It’s a recipe for curtain-twitching disaster
Imogen West-Knights
Here in 2026 we’re worrying about replacing that time honoured community spirit fostered by a company founded in 2009.
Nowt so conservative as a lefty, eh?
TBF, I agree with her on this. I had a notification about it last week and I’ll be disabling it as soon as it appears. I’m not in any local WhatsApp or FB groups and plan to keep it that way.
Good move. I’m regrettably in one WhatsApp group and I detest the drivel there. I need to check the scheduling information in there from time to time so I can’t leave the group. Instead I have “Archived” it so I can see what’s there by visiting every week, and not get it the way of important stuff from friends and relatives.
WhatsApp dominates in the UK because it’s what our friends and neighbors use. In many other countries a different messaging app dominates for exactly the same reason. If you persist on using a different messaging app to the people you want to communicate with you will soon find yourself missing out.
The same process that converges people onto one of the many messaging apps makes it hard to move people onto a competitor.
I’m a dinosaur, I still use email. One of the companies I deal with, possibly leccy, started sending me stuff on WhatsApp. I reprimanded them severely and directed them to email as the proper way to communicate. Thankfully they obliged.
There is this thing called Nextdoor that seems to be popular around our way, but it’s mostly dreck and Mrs TG has given up on it. I dunno why I still bother. I delete most based on the email subject, which is often just ‘Hi.’. No clue as to content.
One of the companies I deal with, possibly leccy, started sending me stuff on WhatsApp
That’d get a furious reaction from me. One of the features of Whatsapp is deletion of the message at the receivers end. So they can delete a promise & claim they never made it.
My WhatsApp refuses to work on the grounds that I never use it.
Amazon’s Ring? Tolkien sequel?