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January 17, 2023
When I made the decision to remove Facebook from my life, I did more than delete my Facebook and Instagram accounts. I also deleted WhatsApp.
When I deleted Facebook and Instagram, the impact on my lines of communication with friends and family were definitely impacted. However, after the initial shock, I was neither reminded of nor missed those accounts. Sure, there was some level of online discourse I missed and friends I lost contact with, but I was never tempted to re-open those accounts.
WhatsApp on the other hand has been a constant struggle to keep out of my life. I have not yet acquiesced and re-downloaded the application, but I've gotten close. Whenever I meet new people, and especially when they're from my community, they first ask me to add them on WhatsApp. When I tell them that I don't have WhatsApp, I'm met with looks of utter confusion, and when I try to further explain why I've made the choice not to use WhatsApp, the confusion usually persists.
Most people understand leaving social media. Between the manipulative advertising practices and the existential threat they pose to our mental health and privacy, most people I talk to have, at one point, declared they were “leaving social media”. However, when it comes to a messaging app like WhatsApp, that same sentiment isn't there.
Knowing that WhatsApp is owned by Facebook will never be enough to make people change. The same company that was harangued for spreading misinformation and jeopardizing democracies across the globe is given a free-pass when it comes to our most intimate conversations. All people really care about is being where everyone else is. Unfortunately, that means being on WhatsApp.
There are loads of alternatives to WhatsApp that are privacy-respecting and free (as in freedom). The problem is it's “easier” to just stick to what you know, even if it is in complete contradiction to your values.
I've been able to bring my closest friends and family to Signal, and with most other casual conversations I stick with plain SMS. If anyone who is trying to move away from WhatsApp could bring their close circle to another messenger, maybe momentum towards an exodus, however minuscule, might build.
At the end of the day, I just want WhatsApp to become as irrelevant as it appears Facebook itself is becoming. I know I'm asking for the impossible and thus this post reads more like a rant than a real “call-to-action”. I just see all these people, especially the generation before me, using WhatsApp all the time for all their communications and it frustrates me that their entire social structure is build atop a platform owned by a company actively exploiting them.
Whatever, it's cathartic shouting into the void once in a while.