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I totally understand. You are facing the classic dilemma of privacy vs convenience. Personally, I distrusted facebook so much that I have avoided any of their p

I totally understand. You are facing the classic dilemma of privacy vs convenience. Personally, I distrusted facebook so much that I have avoided any of their products since 2013. Obviously a major win for my privacy, but it sacrificed some convenience -- then I had no real-time way to communicate with my relative in India. In the end, you'll have to do some introspection to see if the convenience gained is worth the privacy lost. How essential is it that you communicate in real-time with your relatives? Would your relationship be substantially different if you sent email or wrote letters?

tgsovlerkhgsel 8y ago
At this point, it isn't about privacy vs. convenience, it's about privacy vs. being able to have a social life. People aren't going to install a more privacy-supportive messenger just for you, they'll gradually let you drop out of their lives just like you would with a friend that you can only reach by driving to their farm 6 hours away.
- doctorsher 8y ago
  Replace convenience with whatever benefit you see most pertinent. That is your trade-off. For me, convenience is the most frequent benefit.
- plankers 8y ago
  People had social lives before facebook existed... it largely consisted of going places and seeing people regularly. This still works, believe it or not.
Djvacto 8y ago
It's definitely tough, but a big perk of WhatsApp is also the data-calls (instead of paying for long-distance). Maybe next time I visit I can try to help convince them to check out something new, but I also ended up dragging a couple of social groups onto WhatsApp to organize events, chat, etc just by viture of it being what most people use. Especially over in Europe, it's very heavily used and not easy to replace, as it's sometimes the de-facto platform for communication. But it's definitely a trade-off, so I at least kind of have a choice.

tgsovlerkhgsel 8y ago

At this point, it isn't about privacy vs. convenience, it's about privacy vs. being able to have a social life. People aren't going to install a more privacy-supportive messenger just for you, they'll gradually let you drop out of their lives just like you would with a friend that you can only reach by driving to their farm 6 hours away.

doctorsher 8y ago
Replace convenience with whatever benefit you see most pertinent. That is your trade-off. For me, convenience is the most frequent benefit.
plankers 8y ago
People had social lives before facebook existed... it largely consisted of going places and seeing people regularly. This still works, believe it or not.

Djvacto 8y ago

It's definitely tough, but a big perk of WhatsApp is also the data-calls (instead of paying for long-distance). Maybe next time I visit I can try to help convince them to check out something new, but I also ended up dragging a couple of social groups onto WhatsApp to organize events, chat, etc just by viture of it being what most people use. Especially over in Europe, it's very heavily used and not easy to replace, as it's sometimes the de-facto platform for communication. But it's definitely a trade-off, so I at least kind of have a choice.