It has been a long journey.
I have been gradually convincing my family, close relatives and friends to make the switch to Signal for over two years. I am already the “tech support guy” in all my circles so most didn’t really question it. Most of my friends are quite tech-savvy, and some even did use Signal before I talked to them about it.
This also filtered out some “friends” who were never that close to me to begin with. So, that’s a bonus, I guess.
Overall, my recommendation to others interested would be to tell people how much you don’t like Meta’s business model instead of the privacy aspect. I already ditched Facebook and Instagram many years ago, and this helped defend my point a bit better.
🎖️
In my country nowadays you can’t even contact companies and services through regular phone number, you gotta message them on Whatsapp, and I mean, you use Whatsapp to talk with the guy from your neighborhood that fixes roofs to international banking institutions.
Something that needs to be reversed as soon as possible.
It’s cool because online based chats have more features but are more susceptible to enshittification. A federated, online based, encrypted open standard like Matrix is the future.
This is something I didn’t realize until I traveled outside the US. In some places, WhatsApp is the default.
I’ve always been very anti-Meta, and refused to get on WhatsApp until I ran into that situation.
What’s app was cool as shit, until, just like Michael Bolton, something shitty in the world happened.
I installed it for an upcoming trip with loathing just because I know I may stay in places and not be able to connect with a hotel or host if I don’t use whatsapp. The EU better get their shit together since they were trying to lead on digital privacy…
I don’t think I’ve ever actually used WhatsApp. An old boss tried to tell me that it was mandatory for my job (there was a group chat where management insisted on tracking every single thing we did). Fortunately, Ontario has somewhat decent labour laws where if you’re required to use an app or something on your phone, your employer now gets to pay for your phone bill! Needless to say, she backed off pretty quick lol
Also, the concept of NEEDING WhatsApp for daily life is wild to me. It’s not the norm for businesses, banks, etc to require it, and if someone says they do, it’s probably a scam here…
WhatsApp has significant market dominance in Europe, to the point that only one or two people I know who live on that continent don’t use it. If you give someone your phone number in Europe, they will almost certainly send you a WhatsApp message, not an SMS.
It’s not a need in the sense that you’ll die without it, but not having it adds significant friction to social relationships.
At least Europe rarely uses WhatsApp for business purposes. It’s worse in Asia and South America where WhatsApp and Facebook literally are the internet, including the enterprise space.
And the reason it’s less the default in the US isn’t because people are so forward-thinking to use signal, but iOS being so uniquitous that people use iMessage.
People everywhere are just somewhat lazy and just don’t know better.
Congrats! I know too many foreigners to get rid of WhatsApp. I try to count my blessings that it’s not WeChat or Facebook Messenger that inexplicably became popular worldwide.
In latin america, this is basically impossible. This also covers people who message a lot of people in latin america.
They may technically be able to switch, but most of latin america uses things like whatsapp for official communication.
An inspiration. I salute you, sir. I’m attempting the same.
I’ve done it quietly 4y ago, only told some closer relatives. It was kind of funny when relatives I wasn’t talking to told my closer ones that we were keeping in touch on WhatsApp, not even aware I wasn’t in the platform for over 6 months at that point.
Now after years and leaving 2 family groups, politics, and a whole lot of drama behind, I feel it was a great decision, and the only regret was not doing it earlier.
Can you expand a bit what you tell people about not liking Meta’s business model? I got some people to follow me to Signal, but only for messaging with my husband and me. They don’t really care for the privacy aspect, so I’m curious about your other arguments!
Well, some people called me paranoid and said “us regular people don’t have anything to hide” when I told them how much data Meta collects about us. Of course, this frustrated me as my threat model is very small compared to most people here.
I explained how free services where instead the user is the product work, and how much I disagree with this model. I informed them that I use FOSS almost everywhere and that they exist for the greater good of humanity.
Thank you!
And to think in ~6 months you’ll probably need to go through that whole song and dance again when you switch them to Matrix 😔
I feel bad for Europeans or folks who need what’s app. Needing Big Tech that impeds social media into your texting app is insane.
It’s definitely unfortunate that it’s a proprietary closed system owned by big tech. On the other hand, SMS/MMS is a pretty bad user experience by comparison, and it’s unencrypted.
Which Europeans need WhatsApp?
Lucky, my social circle’s technologically illiterate AND doesn’t care what happens to their personal data so I’m stuck with both Facebook & WhatsApp :/ One saving grace is that I don’t have either installed on my “main” phone.
Signal’s not great for privacy either tbf - Meta is just a very very low bar to be better than.
Signal’s not great for privacy either tbf
Why do you think so? Yeah, it is not anonymous due to requiring a phone number, but all media and metadata are end-to-end encrypted.
Ended up having to do some more digging on Signal as I was under the impression more metadata was getting left unencrypted than there is.
My bigger concerns are with whom Signal employs and the very questionable decisions the company’s made.
Their VP of engineering was at Facebook managing Onavo VPN when that was spying on teenagers using Snapshat. Then, Signal had known their desktop encryption keys were stored in plaintext for six years and only fixed it after public outrage.
To the best of everyone’s knowledge, Signal’s netcode is solid, but leadership with a history in privacy scandals & negligence towards clear privacy holes is very iffy IMO.
