Signal, Telegram, SimpleX.
Spin the wheel ladies and gentlemen!
this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
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Privacy
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Tbh. This took waaay longer than i expected. They bought it con 2014. I didn't even know a company was capable of holding its enshitification tendencies that long
It’s unfortunately hard to convert people from WhatsApp to other software, because contacts might care to move but the group will not…
I've had 2 or more messenging apps for about a decade now because of this.
What happened to them not being allowed to bridge data? Or is this not the case in EU?
The next time you wonder, "wow. How can they provide this amazing service for free?" always remember: YOU are the product.
That’s inane and misleading. FOSS is free and amazing. You are not the product.
Mosern cars are filthy. They cost a shitload a money and you’re the product anyway.
“If it’s a service provided by a company whose business model involves selling personalised apps, you are probably the product
Amazing? Whatscrap? I think there are way better services out there for free as this Zuckerbot trash.
"WhatsApp doesn't collect your data!"
(because everything else they own does)
Who you contact, when, how, from where is bing collected
WhatsApp doesn’t collect your data, because it’s an app. Zuckerberg does it
I wonder from where they get the data if I don’t have Facebook or Instagram. WhatsApp is a shitty app that I begrudgingly use because of the parents groups and some relatives that I didn’t manage to make switch to signal.
Facebook absolutely builds ghost profiles for people who don't have a Facebook profile. You see all of those "Like" buttons on non-Facebook websites? Those are cookies that are essentially tracking you. They may not have your first/last name or other personal data as a regular profile, but they can build a pretty damn good composite of you. Source - I work in the ad industry
Yeah I thought it would be something like that… feels shady af
WhatsApp links you to a social circle and Meta has all of the information of said social circle.
I don't need to know you like soccer if I know 10 people who have a soccer team and you're on all of their contact lists.
What? The communications app owned by Facebook is using data from other Facebook owned platforms to target ads? Who could have ever seen this coming!
So the whole security and privacy claims are purely marketing.
Yes, but so are the ads!
Time to switch to a different client.
Check out Signal; it works very well.
And people will still use it.
We lemmings are cool enough to do that. The struggle is convincing everyone else🥲
Saddest truth
Is there, by any chance, an alternative client?
There's the Whatsapp web client on F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/io.kuenzler.whatsappwebtogo/
But it still requires the official mobile app for the initial login. When I used it, logging in once seemed to be good for a few months, as long you open it from time to time. There's also a Whatsapp clone that seems to support login, but I haven't tried it and it hasn't seen updates in a couple years: https://github.com/KhubaibKhan4/Whatsify-Android
Thanks. It seems to be just whatsapp web in an app form, so I could probaby just go to my browser. But that's still an interesting idea that never ocurred to me on phone.
you can still hide your messages with gpg the green in the logo may be glowing brighter then ever and if you cant move from it atleast use gpg
Haaaa noyb… never a dull moment with them.
thats the push i need to disable whatsapp notifications.
if only the literal state, and corporations didnt fucking force me to use it.
Same here, not yet at the point where I can convince all my colleagues to switch over. Why disable notifications in particular?
so i dont get annoyed by ads, while still being able to use it when i need to.
whatsapp has become ingrained in my country's culture. it would take a lot of scrubbing.
I see. I'm notorious among colleagues for going the extra mile and putting Whatsapp on a separate phone, which I only check on a routine. Hoping that there's a category of notifications can be disabled for ads, but no big loss if the notifications should be shut off altogether.
it seems they are adding them to the stories functionality, which won't impact my use of it
but yeah, i'm thinking i can be the guy who notoriously only responds quickly to not-whatsapp messages.
Privacy is never single player, so we must get good at spreading our ideas to those around us.
Normies got nothing to hide and they dont mind ads.
So, stop saying privacy. Say control, scam and abuse.
Normies got nothing to say and have no mind.