Leaving WhatsApp
UPD: It's done. Now there's an empty place where the WhatsApp icon has been for at least the last decade. It was fun emailing my sister earlier today ๐
As I wrote previously, Whatsapp is the dominant mobile platform for communications in Europe. The reasons for how this came to be are simple:
- it was cheaper than SMS, which was dominant at the time
- remember when WA had a nominal license cost?
- the user experience was very good from the get go
Everything was fine and dandy until Facebook bought it in 2014. After that it was just a matter of time when ads, linking of accounts and other shady, unnecessary things would be added for Meta to reap the maximum rewards. At this point WA was already ubiquitous, so the network effects have been keeping people rooted since. And admittedly, WA is a good platform.
As the US struggles to find its way, and the tech behemoths bow and scrape in to get a place at the table, I think it's high time to bid farewell to the last piece of Meta tech in my life.
The issues
These are the concrete issues I see with the current situation:
- Meta is an ad company. I try to follow the heuristic of "If you want service X, buy it from a company that depends on providing good X". The existence of Meta does not depend on WhatsApp being a good product
- also, I'd rather the existence of the company to not depend on ad revenue
- Due to the above, Meta has little incentive to not enshittify the product
- especially if the schism between EU and US deepens, WA is a powerful 'weapon'
- although not directly monetized (yet), Meta gains a wealth of data by absorbing contact information and metadata of chats - who's chatting with whom and when
- as we all should now know - data is money (for these ad companies anyway)
- Zuckerberg has been cozying up to the new administration. By necessity, of course...
The price
'What did it cost?'
'Not much, I guess'
Thanos, talking to some kid, or smth.
It's basically the same as leaving Facebook earlier - I'll lose easy access to a few contacts and groups, but email, SMS etc. are always options. Many businesses operate on WhatsApp, but I've been living without them until now, so I'll surely survive.
I'll have to note here that my case of "not really using WA" might not be representative. I know a bunch of people who are very tightly tied to WhatsApp with e.g. these kinds of contacts, whose migration to a new service would be "nigh impossible":
- elderly folk who are just barely managing to use WA and are used to it
- kids school or hobby groups, parents ride sharing etc.
- neighbor groups
For these cases I absolutely understand that there is a feeling of being truly stuck - I sincerely hope that you'll not need to regret it.
The target
I've been using Signal for years so I'll stay there for now. Most of the contacts I actively talk with are already over there, so no problem there. Signal is also a non-profit.
Granted, the same political risks apply since Signal is an US organization, but I'm much more confident in Signal putting up the good fight than Meta, if push comes to shove. Signal can also be self hosted, in a fashion, so I'd think they could quite easily set up an EU-based escape hatch if necessary.
After this is done later this week (after a trip to a WA friend), I'll have nothing more to do with Meta, which feels pretty great. Except, does ollama count..? We'll at least I'm not generating any kind of revenue or sharing any data ๐
Thoughts, comments? Send me an email!