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Totally understand, instead you can use WhatsApp

Or Instagram has great messaging, and if you’re brave oculus can do great VR chat!

Thanks! VR chat looks like the wild west, not sure if I'm ready for that.

I suspect they were being facetious - every option in that list is owned by Facebook.

There are some well-known alternatives: Signal, Telegram, any XMPP server (which you can host)... As for convincing your friends to switch to it, there's no one-size-fit-all method.

Thanks, I will check these out.

Telegram is not secure. It is optionally secure.

a good argument for switching to signal is that you can also use it to send sms messages, which means you don't have to switch between apps as much or at least lets you cut down on the amount of IM apps you have installed

That is nice. Does WhatsApp not support SMS?

Is it just a tad ironic that Facebook just got hacked and people are recommending that you move to a Facebook owned messaging platform as a solution?