Email, docs, music, maps etc have reasonable alternatives and you don’t depend on others to switch (a gmail user will receive my email from tuta). But with WhatsApp either you conceal and use it or you just don’t talk to people (tried convincing them to switch to signal and it simply doesn’t happen)
How do you deal with it?
Thats the neat part, you dont
Unlike all the apps you named it, “users” is what make it still alive to this day
You gonna have to use it with Signal if you want to use Signal that much, or just dont
Not at all.
Thank you, that’s a great take
Never had WhatsApp, never will
I use WhatsApp without any Android rights other than foreground data usage. I still check my messages once a day, but if someone wants to reach me now, they have to use signal. It also makes it at least less bad for privacy.
My close circle of friends and family do use signal for me and I only get relevant messages every few days on WhatsApp, but getting rid of it still isn’t possible in my situation.
hard to say, I don’t use WhatsApp, i deleted it when FB bought it, yes, that long ago.
I find not having friends helps with this
Naomi Brockwell TV on YT or Odyssey had a video about that, forgot the name. You basically make it more painful to communicate on other platforms, reward for using your preferred platform (e.g. offer tickets to a game through preferred platform).
Don’t expect people to move completely, including close friends
I use the Whatsapp Business app which allows me to be added to groups that I can’t avoid (kid’s class groups, kid’s soccer groups and my wifés family group) and to have an automatic message for people writing to me privately saying I won’t answer except if they write to me on Threema, Signal, iMessage, SMS or email.
With my own family and friends I only use Threema and Signal, even if I kind of lost or got further of some friends with my stance.
Still, I already don’t have enough time for myself, so I’m not looking to have more friends.
In my country, Whatsapp is almost everywhere, so I’m not don’t think I’ll be able to 100% leave it without sacrifizing some of my kids activities sadly…
I’m stuck with WhatsApp because of exactly the things you listed (kids’ class groups, football groups, etc). I use Threema, iMessage or Nextcloud Chat with family and very close friends.
Yeah for such things it’s quite difficult and I don’t want my kids to have to sacrifice anything or be the odd ones out if I don’t get informations.
If I was still with their mom, I could have left her to check the Whatsapp part and be fully done with it, but since it’s not the case, I don’t want to miss anything, especially as it’s already hard to get all the informations since schools/sports club tend to think it’s okay to only information one separated parent.
Whatsapp has almost an official role in some countries and that’s awful. Still I’m kind of seing a change in this lately…
I have tried not using it and it is not worth it for me. The problem was not close friends. But everyone else including all other than my direct family if i don’t have WhatsApp my family just send sms and at that point I thing WhatsApp is better at least its end to end encrypted. You also exclude your self form groups that get created at clubs/association(i don’t know the English word).
I decide some time ago that my person life is more important that privacy because my mental health suffered because of stressing about privacy and cutting my self socially off to some extend by not using WhatsApp.
If you use android you can install it in a privet space or a second profile so it don’t run all the time in the background.
Don’t use it. Refuse to talk with anyone that says they want me to use it. It’s been working great.
Had to install and use an anonymous number that no one has for like 2 things that I was really in need to for interacting with some businesses though and for when many people were laid off in the company and that’s where I needed to find some info.
Either I use Signal only or SMS which has worked great for many years. Now with RCS it’s the same as any other internet based chat even with video calls.
I’m confused. If you want security, why do you prefer SMS to whatapp?
Either all or nothing. But for certain not contributing to the destruction of humanity by using Meta products.
All my friends went cold turkey when I canceled all Facebook products two years ago. I switched to signal; some were using it already, some followed me, some use both. Screw the rest; they can use SMS, or snail mail, it turns out they were unreflective jerks to begin with. Culling is always refreshing. Admittedly, with signal being USA based, I will probably switch to a EU service soon, so the fun starts all over 🤪
It takes time. I’ve been “indoctinating” my family fo years. And that really just means reinforcing things we all, “regular” people included, know about big tech. Part of that meant straight up telling them I wouldn’t use anything other than Signal. That worked, and a few years later I now have my mom on Linux. Sometimes doing the right thing means being stubborn and putting your foot down
Edit: my parents have both become open source evangelists, and my mom has asked me more than once the difference between Free Software and oss. My parents are also both pretty conservative so it wasn’t easy to turn them. But like I said. Put your foot down. Tell them you are doing the right thing, and if it comes to it, withold tech support 😂
This inspired me
conceal
I think you might’ve made a typo here, did you mean concede?
Yes, you give up if you want to talk to them. What else csn you do. Ten year campaign to switch everyone?
Its easy. I have never used WhatsApp. I refuse to install or use any meta apps.
