Stop using WhatsApp
There are so many reasons to stop using WhatsApp and move to another service like Signal instead.
I could tell you about all the privacy issues with WhatsApp and Facebook. In case you missed it, WhatsApp is owned by Facebook and is getting integrated more and more closely now so Facebook can make money from it. But what other companies would consider a “data breach” is considered “business model” for Facebook, so that list is ridiculously long.
Or I could bring up the story that Zuckerberg lied to the Federal Trade Commission, promising to keep Facebook and WhatsApp separate to get permission to buy WhatsApp in 2014: “We are absolutely not going to change plans around WhatsApp and the way it uses user data.” “WhatsApp is going to operate completely autonomously.”
I could tell you about the advantages of Signal, which was co-developed by one of the founders of — yes, exactly — WhatsApp. After selling WhatsApp to Facebook, Brian Acton got so disgusted by what the company was doing to his messenger service, that he quit and posted #deletefacebook messages. He then invested 50 million USD into the foundation that now runs Signal
But since we have learned that our choices around technology are unfortunately not informed by privacy concerns or antitrust matters, but mainly by convenience, here is a different story about changing from WhatsApp to Signal:
Imagine you are sitting in an old shitty car. It has been doing its job until now and somehow got you from A to B, but you never really checked the engine to see how it’s working. Yes, you know that you have to fill it with dirty fuel regularly and some people have been complaining that it leaves a lot of dirty fumes behind, but that hasn’t had any impact on you getting from A to B with it. The car is not particularly safe either.
Ok, so you are sitting in that car — but now there is another car standing right next to you. You could use that one as well. It is safe and has been thoroughly tested, it drives on electric energy and does not require your dirty fuel, it is tidy on the inside and it can also do all of the things that the old car can do.
All you have to do is to get out of that old piece of metal and sit down in the other car. That’s all. You just need to change once. It will take you two minutes.
Go and make that change: https://www.signal.org/
And one long read on WhatsApp:
