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?

  • mystic-macaroni@lemmy.ml
    0·
    2 months ago

    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 😂

  • notsosure@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    2 months ago

    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 🤪

  • Victoria@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Everyone I talk to regularily has Signal or Discord (yes i know I would prefer Matrix or something), basically the only reason I have WhatsApp is one or two group chats I don’t read.

  • daytonah@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    I have a non gms ROM (e/os) I have shelter (work profile jail), and WhatsApp is living in the jail and doesn’t see any contacts or rest of the phone… I split my comms to (beeper for all texts that I don’t care about for privacy that I can not get away from e…g LinkedIn/WhatsApp/g messenger but I have signal/briar that actually runs on the phone (non shelter). And I refuse to add them to beeper.

  • berty@feddit.org
    0·
    2 months ago

    I don’t, I deleted it. But to be fair I didn’t use it that much in the first place. These days I mostly call friends or send them quick SMS, ask them if they wanna hang out tomorrow etc. Family and my best friend is on signal and I also have telegram if someone asks how they can reach me. Deleting WhatsApp wasn’t that difficult for me but depending where you live it can be a struggle. Even schools, sportclubs and so on use WhatsApp exclusively which sucks.

    I’d just delete it and see how things go. Reinstalling is easy if you feel you miss out too much.

  • Mucki@feddit.org
    0·
    2 months ago

    Either enjoy the advantages of WhatsApp and be happy with the way it is. Or just don’t use it.

    • M1k3y@discuss.tchncs.de
      0·
      2 months ago

      There are no advantages for WhatsApp, it just happened to exist before Signal. The only selling point is the user lock in. WhatsApp could show a 30 second ad for every sent message and let an AI crawl all your chats and it would stay the most used messenger in countries where it currently is.

      People don’t use WhatsApp because they like it so much, but because not using it means loosing friends and excludes from hobbies.

  • Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    2 months ago

    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…

    • RiDe @lemmy.world
      0·
      2 months ago

      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.

      • Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        2 months ago

        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…

  • ThirdConsul@lemmy.zip
    0·
    2 months ago

    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?

  • Eggman@thelemmy.clubEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    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.

  • Trilogy3452@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    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