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WhatsApp isn't social media, it's a messaging app, but more critically it's based on phone numbers, so WhatsApp really has no control over access to your contac

WhatsApp isn't social media, it's a messaging app, but more critically it's based on phone numbers, so WhatsApp really has no control over access to your contacts. > Unless you don't interact with anyone, that's a completely untenable position due to network effects It doesn't have to be this way though. Between sms, email, telegram, signal, and discord I have communication channels to every person I actually care about, and it's trivial to bridge additional layers of communication if needed. > it's pretty much impossible to get them over to another platform I hear where you're coming from, but in my view this is an intentionally defeatist attitude. We're throwing up our hands and saying "social media owns us and there's nothing we can do, it's just too hard to install another app". In reality, if it's important, it's not that hard. There's no disputing that social media is convenient, but it isn't vital.

dotnet00 4y ago
I am aware that WhatsApp isn't social media, it's just an example of an app I would ideally like to switch away from. I'm not really sure how it's defeatist when trying even to only get myself off the app would require making things much harder for my relatively tech illiterate parents on the other side of the world with no tech literate relative to lean on to help them out. With Whatsapp they've used it for a few years and can easily get help from any young neighbor in case of issues. It isn't like I'm not trying. For example, for communicating with some close fairly tech literate friends, we go through a relatively big effort to host and maintain our ideal of a self-hosted Matrix and Misskey node. But there we can manage it due to everyone in the group being able to at least describe the errors they run into.