I am trying to convince my group to switch from WhatsApp to Signal and we plan to vote on it soon. So, I plan to use the replies in this thread to compile a list of reasons to use as talking points. Preferably, I need something that can be understood on a personal level as some of my friends are deeply cynical and have no concern about escaping techno-feudalism and surveillance.

  • kbal@fedia.io
    14·
    3 days ago

    In favour of whatsapp:

    • You’ve already got it installed

    Against whatsapp:

    • It’s one of those tech platforms owned by and run for the benefit of evil billionaires
    • The source code isn’t available, so nobody really knows if it’s secure at all
    • The metadata probably all just quietly flows into the Facebook data maelstrom
    • It never worked properly on my android phone that doesn’t have Google services
    • It differs from Signal only in ways that make it worse
    • Mothra@mander.xyz
      2·
      3 days ago

      I’ll be curious.

      It never worked properly on my android phone that doesn’t have Google services

      Just properly or actually not at all? Currently, my android has Google services, but my WhatsApp isn’t linked to any Google Account. It runs as expected. I wonder what your experience was, as I’d like to own a google free phone sometime but I don’t think I’ll be able to remove WhatsApp from my life unfortunately.

      • TisI@lemmy.zip
        2·
        2 days ago

        So I recently got a new phone, and disabled all google services and downloaded WhatsApp from Aurora store. It worked fine except for the notifications.

      • kbal@fedia.io
        3·
        3 days ago

        It was a while ago so they might’ve fixed it by now, but I remember the problem being that notifications didn’t always come through.