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this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026
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Privacy
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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.
And the reason itβs less the default in the US isnβt because people are so forward-thinking to use signal, but iOS being so uniquitous that people use iMessage.
I don't think that's quite it. iOS wasn't as popular in the USA when WhatsApp use really started to take off elsewhere.
Instead, I think it was a combination of unlimited SMS plans being the norm, and most Americans having few international contacts.
That's... Wow! Here, people prefer to use non-SMS options for messaging too, but if you give someone a phone number it's pretty much assumed you're getting an SMS unless they ask if you have WhatsApp, signal, or whatever else. That said, using Messenger is still pretty common here, as much as I'd wish it would die off. It is, slowly, but it needs to be quicker lol
If I put someone's number into the contacts on my phone, I will see what messaging apps are connected to that phone number in most cases. If they have Signal, I'll try that first. I'll try WhatsApp before SMS because it's a better user experience and probably encrypted.
Okay, that's both cool and scary lol and Fair, yeah. I think WhatsApp would be the last on my list. I'd rather my telecom company siphon the data over Meta, but I get you
How much of the data Meta can siphon is an open question as I understand it. WhatsApp definitely uses encryption, but there are a bunch of ways the client could send them the cleartext, especially if one allows their chatbot into a conversation.
It's hard to say which is worse. I have a fair number of contacts on Signal now, and I find that's a good balance of easy and trustworthy.
It's not really that they get the clear texts, but that they get access to who you talk to, when, and kinda how long are your messages. That metadata is super valuable. Over long periods, just with that metadata there's a lot that can be inferred.
My distrust of Meta wants to say they somehow siphon everything, but you're probably right. We don't know for sure, and speculating is probably just crazy-making at the end of the day.
I'm seriously just considering setting up a self hosted Matrix instance and piping all my chat apps through that. Get the more tech literate friends on something more secure, and then be done with the rest lol I'm basically already the unofficial (and untrained) sysadmin for my property lol
Great, just dont get too comfortable. The reason this laws exist is because workers in the past died to conquer it. If we stop fighting this will not be possible in the future. Fuck the capitalist class.
Uhhh... Sure. I understand what you're saying, but this isn't really the right context for it lol
yay you did itt
Congratulations. For me, it was also nearly two years of work, it's just already a few years ago.
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.
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?
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.
Yep. I've seen a lot of WhatsApp icons during my trip!
Congrats! I'm glad I never started using it, cause while it hasn't been easy I think it's likely much harder to get off of it. So good job!
An inspiration. I salute you, sir. I'm attempting the same.
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.
Good job!
Just deleted it from my phone. Thanks for the reminder.
I'm planning to delete my WhatsApp by the end of the month and have used Watomatic to send an out of office like message during this month saying I'm no longer reading WhatsApp and how to contact me (Signal, Threema, email). Worked great! Pushed some groups I'm on to Signal without me even asking! The beta group function is still a bit buggy. But would definitely recommend.
Yeah I made the call a couple months back and it felt really good to be done
I envy you. Every person in my country uses WhatsApp and Instagram for communicationβfrom individuals to big corporationsβso I'm forced to use them. I hope Meta, Microsoft, and Google get nuked.
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.
And to think in ~6 months youβll probably need to go through that whole song and dance again when you switch them to Matrix π
Why is that?
I don't know @SleepyPie@lemmy.world's reasons, but I am concerned about Signal Messenger LLC being based in the United States, and it being centralised, on AWS servers no less.
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.
Could you be mixing it up with matrix/element, which leaks a lot of metadata.
Signal is way, way better than what you currently have
What I currently have for privacy is SimpleX - not needing a phone number alone beats Signal - but I've also got only a single contact there so it's not replacing WhatsApp anytime soon π€·ββοΈ
Yep. Thatβs why we privacy sensitive people keep coming back for signal and matrix.
eversince i started using beeper im contempt HAAHAHH all my messaging needs in one app running on device<33 (would love if it'd be foss but it is what it is)
The problem with universal clients like that is that it inherently breaks encryption, shares it with a third party, and then MAYBE re-encrypts it correctly. And it does not prevent the third parties like Discord or whatnot from having access to your messages just because you run it through Beeper. It still goes through them. It's not even particularly more convenient. You still have to create an account with the other provider, and often times this can only be done by downloading the app.
So there are a lot of downsides, and the only upside is not having as many apps installed, and I doubt you're hurting THAT bad for storage.