I guess this was expected, but it makes me feel really powerless in the sense that I can't really move away from WhatsApp.
I have a couple of friends that I message via Signal and even convinced my dad to use it a while back, but here in Brazil WhatsApp is _everything_, and I doubt most people care about this at all. In my case, I'd love to just go over to Signal fully but then I couldn't talk to family, friends, and probably couldn't even book a haircut or pay my taxes (my accountant messages me on WhatsApp).
It's one of those where unless just about everyone were to go over to Signal, most people won't, because keeping track of messages in two apps is quite hard.
That leaves me stuck in this ecosystem, which is quite sad.
Yup. Non-traveling US Americans mostly won’t understand how critical WhatsApp is in many parts of the world, for more than a decade. It’s much much stronger than the iMessage norm in the US.
Businesses put WhatsApp numbers on their stores, and it’s often the only way to get a hold of a person. I would bet it’s more used than email, especially for young people. If WhatsApp went down for a week, it would seriously impede normal societal functions. It’s pretty much de-facto standard and arguably critical infrastructure.
It's less prominent if you were already 20-30 when the first iPhone came out. In slightly-affluent primary schools, owning an iPhone was your inroad to a cult of iMessage games and insular group chats. If you didn't beg mommy and daddy to fork over $600 and tax to Verizon then you didn't join the cool group chats.
It sounds petty, but not very abnormal for growing up in America.
Respectfully, you can't extrapolate a single experience to _every_ "slightly-affluent primary school". Even the most miniscule of cultural differences can and will lead to different outcomes such as "did you just judge me for a green bubble? what sort of asshole thinks that's worth judging someone over?" (group proceeds to make fun of the iPhone user)
> Even the most miniscule of cultural differences can and will lead to different outcomes
I certainly didn't say it was the only outcome. I switched schools three times in my youth, and each place I went had different kids but the same materialist obsessions. Some people did mock the Apple users, for what little it did to get them into the iMessage chats. Every school I went to had an 'iPhone in group' though, and if you didn't have the right phone you didn't get to chat, period.
My larger point, which you really don't need to extrapolate for, is that Apple knew they were making a FOMO-based service that would predate on kids and adults with maligned priorities. They understood the social clusterfuck that they engineered, and marketed the hell out of it; because it worked, bragging about iMessage does sell iPhones.
Fair enough. I went to public school and (I believe) more people do in general. In my particular public school it was frowned upon to brag about your privilege as many had less fortunate upbringings. Mind you, this was still in a (relatively) affluent area - so general amenities were okay but many people still didn't come from extravagant or even mild wealth.
Excessive privilege really fucks with people's worldview.
Your comment is snide and unnecessary. Do Chinese walk around thinking they want to be more American? No they don't. Americans certainly dont believe everyone is trying very hard to be like them - typically go about their own business. Chinese may be influenced by western shows and movies but everybody is influenced by the shows that they watch. Why do Americans need to think about the rest of the world? Do Chinese think about the rest of the world? Your hatred really shows in your comment.
This has led to all sorts of opinions on the thread, which are all very interesting!
I do agree that just accepting this is not the way to go, and also that slowly making changes is a valid approach.
I do want to qualify though, for those who aren't in a WhatsApp-heavy country, how things work.
I looked at my latest messages and beyond all my friends and all my family, I have my accountant, my landlord, my barber, HOA, groups for birthday party invites (where you're asked to confirm attendance), a painter, etc. In many restaurants, if you want a reservation, WhatsApp is the only way. For people who work in Brazil (I work remotely for a company abroad), a lot of work communication happens on WhatsApp.
Again, this is not to say that not dong anything is the way to go! But I think abroad some people don't understand the extent to which WhatsApp is used here. Someone mentioned iMessage for instance and I don't think I know a single person who uses it. Most Brazilians have Android phones too.
I understand that WhatsApp may be necessary to talk to businesses (because Signal didn't develop that, and I honestly don't think they should).
But what would prevent people from using WhatsApp to talk to businesses and Signal to talk to friends? I have been using multiple channels with friends forever: phone call, mail, email, MSN Messenger, Facebook, IRC, ICQ, WhatsApp, Threema, Signal, Slack, Discord, Matrix, ... What sucks is when I can't reach a friend. But I never saw it as a problem that I had too many choices to talk to them :-).
I don't really understand this "It has to have 100% of the market" stance. I don't want monopolies, I don't really understand why someone would say "this monopoly sucks, but I really want a monopoly so I won't ever change unless it is for a better monopoly".
For 1:1 conversations I think you're right. Having multiple channels for communication is fine.
Where it breaks down is for group conversations. If Person A won't use Signal and Person B won't use WhatsApp, you can't easily have group communications. And it only gets worse as the number of people in the group goes up.
In my experience, people who use Signal usually also have WhatsApp. It's really mostly that many people absolutely refuse to install Signal on their phone. Like they have all sorts of apps (including social networks that are sometimes downright malware), but they will fight against Signal for some reason I don't understand.
> (because Signal didn't develop that, and I honestly don't think they should)
FWIW, as far as I ever could tell, Facebook did this correctly: the only real thing is letting a business have an account without a phone number; they then provide the software you can run on your server to be a WhatsApp client, so all of your user's messages are then end-to-end encrypted to your business. Yes: later on they decided they'd get in the business of offering a "hosted client"--which meant that, technically, if you used that service, they could see the messages, which caused a change to their terms of service, as a blanket statement that Facebook can't ever see messages isn't technically true anymore, which Signal threw a ton of FUD at :/--but anyone could have offered that service before (and could right now also for Signal).
> I'd love to just go over to Signal fully but then I couldn't talk to family, friends, and probably couldn't even book a haircut or pay my taxes (my accountant messages me on WhatsApp)
Comments like these make me think it's probably more a problem of inertia. Of course they can still talk to family (visit/call/email/sms/fax/mail,...), and of course they can still do their taxes, they might just have to get a different accountant that does business outside of WhatsApp. This all would take more energy than living in this beautifully convenient platform that Meta set up for them.
you should still slowly push for more ppl in family to use signal. In moldova as example most ppl used viber, but moved gradually to telegram and whatsapp.
I've convinced my family/friends to use telegram in the past, but I'll slowly help them use Signal more. Changes rarely happen fast
Is there functionality whatsapp provides (even if it’s really unrelated to software features, just by happenstance due to its widespread usage) that signal doesn’t currently provide for? If so, it’s a losing battle. No one would go backwards in functionality unless the ads got egregious.
What you consider important may not be what others consider important. Seems like you know of other features that others find important you’re just not wanting to mention those because it undermines your point.
Non-profit and actually quite economically efficient per user.
Once WhatsApp was bought by Meta the writing was on the wall. I moved out of it immediately and I'm surprised people are caught off-guard by this news.
I suppose there's little guarantee Signal won't be sold, but an ultra popular app with no profit, owned by a single bloke (WhatsApp) was the last thing I expected to be a sustainable platform for my communications. Same reason I've never looked at Telegram.
Signal is open source, for one, so if Signal started pushing for ads, then someone could fork it into a new service.
In my opinion, the goal is not to find "the perfect monopoly". The goal is to be versatile. Right now, Signal is better than WhatsApp (be it just because it does not belong to Meta), and using Signal is absolutely trivial (it can even be used in parallel to WhatsApp).
I use Signal today, if in 2 years Signal goes into surveillance capitalism and ads, well I'll move to the next one. And then the next one. It's not like it requires a PhD to use a clone of a messaging app.
I had this problem some years ago. Eventually I just told everyone I would be uninstalling whatsapp on date XX/YY, which I then did. Some people installed signal and stayed in touch, others didn't. Life didn't change much.
Now I'd like to move to my own matrix server but I think appx 0.0% of my social group would follow me down that rabbit hole. :-(
More extreme, a friend of mine one day eliminated his cellphone entirely but kept Skype on his laptop. So now it's email or nothing with him and sadly it's been nothing for some time now.
I left whatsapp long ago when it was bought by meta, due to my privacy beliefs. I quit facebook in 2007 when i caught negative behaviour patterns. Im staunchly anti social media, however it would be dishonest not to note that it is lonely, organising anything is tedious, you have no access to the used goods marketplace (fees on sales platforms are too high). I dont really know if privacy is worth it. But tbh the thought of going back makes my skin crawl.
Last night I just removed myself from every friend groupchat and blocked everyone there, while leaving a status message about how they can reach me on Signal or call me. If they are actually your friends they'll come around, and families survived before Whatsapp existed. I'm also brazilian, I just won't stand with people dismissing what matters to me as if I'm a nutjob for not using their fascist app
I admire the conviction, but I think you're underestimating the social inertia that platforms like WhatsApp benefit from.
The unfortunate reality is that most people won’t follow you. Not because they don’t respect you or your concerns, but because the cost—in effort, friction, or just breaking habitual patterns—is too high. Social coordination is fragile, and it leans heavily on lowest-common-denominator tools. WhatsApp has become that denominator.
What’s likely to happen is this: group chats will move on without you. Events will get planned. Conversations will unfold. People aren’t going to message you separately to accommodate your principled stand—not out of malice, but out of convenience and momentum. You’ll be increasingly left out, not because anyone wants to isolate you, but because ecosystems don't fracture easily.
After a few months of being disconnected and missing out, there’s a strong chance you’ll reinstall WhatsApp—not because you’ve changed your mind, but because opting out of a near-universal platform means opting out of modern social participation.
This isn’t a defeat of principle—it’s a reflection of how network effects work. The only way to realistically challenge something like WhatsApp is if a critical mass moves at once. Individual protest, while noble, often just leads to isolation unless it becomes collective action.
Your predictions assume I live in a contemporary, "atomic", social organization where people aren't integrated in tight-knit communities apart from the internet. My core friend group meets a few times a week because of church-related activities at a fixed weekly schedule, to the point where if someone is missing with no explanation they get a phone call. Football night is also at a fixed, weekly schedule with no need for Whatsapp, and I run game night, so...
I was also reading some of the comments in this thread with incredulity. You switch messaging apps and your friends.. just aren't your friends anymore? Not being on a particular platform means you'll be "left out"?
I've seen a number of group chats move platforms because "we need to add X but he's not on imessage, let's use snap instead" etc. I have all sorts of group chats and contacts on various platforms and they move around all the time. A group being beholden to a single messaging platform sounds.. inflexible, and probably not the kind of people I'd want to associate with in the first place.
Yes, like ggp explained its not something people do intentionally to spite you but just how social interaction works.
But you could also turn your argument around if you wanted to - what kind of friend refuses to talk to you unless you sign up for whatever new app they found.
> This isn’t a defeat of principle—it’s a reflection of how network effects work. The only way to realistically challenge something like WhatsApp is if a critical mass moves at once.
This isn't the only way. The other option is a legally enforced (with real teeth) requirement for interoperability. That we can require device makers to support USB-C charging but can't require social media companies to play nice with others is absurd.
Because then they have the option of readding you to group chats and sending you messages
ETA: there is no way to really uninstall Whatsapp around here because so much of society runs on it, the most I can do is move all of my private existence elsewhere and hope that decreased traffic will do something
Please allow me to be devil's advocate here (and FYI, this comes from someone living in a country where government officials use [official state institution]@gmail.com to ask you to send passports and other info, and tell you they'll whatsapp you your papers when they're ready).
I have not yet been in a situation where you CANNOT skip WhatsApp - since having someone be your one-time intermediary is almost always possible. Can it be an incovenience ? Yes.
How much would this inconvenience compare to what my grandfather's grandfather would consider an inconvenience? Probably not much. (You mean, I had to twiddle my thumbs for twice as many minutes!? How difficult)
So in the end, you're asking people to experience what they consider to be a major hassle (having 2 apps) just for you, when you're not willing to go through the pain of having just one app. It feels unbalanced.
So please consider that people might be complaining that you're being too much of a Don Quixote, but actually, the reason it's not working is because you're not playing the Don Quixote card hard enough
I have a couple of friends that I message via Signal and even convinced my dad to use it a while back, but here in Brazil WhatsApp is _everything_, and I doubt most people care about this at all. In my case, I'd love to just go over to Signal fully but then I couldn't talk to family, friends, and probably couldn't even book a haircut or pay my taxes (my accountant messages me on WhatsApp).
It's one of those where unless just about everyone were to go over to Signal, most people won't, because keeping track of messages in two apps is quite hard.
That leaves me stuck in this ecosystem, which is quite sad.