I know it's hard to switch if most of your friends are on WhatsApp, but you can talk to them and switch together.
It seems that you can still get the SMS import by first installing an old version that supported it and then upgrading (see [1]). But obviously this is only an option for techies, not moms and pops.
[1] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/8887#issu...
I asked my son's friends if they had each other's phone numbers in case the 'party' got split up and needed to arrange to meet at a time/landmark. They pretty much all said "we've got each others insta". Today's yoof don't SMS, so SMS integration has a decreasing lifespan.
People's lives are so busy (I know this because that's what everyone says), who's scrolling back through their SMS conversations, and why?
In the UK, everybody uses Whatsapp, from friends and family to businesses.
That won't change until communication platforms are forced to make their products interoperable with each other. I can't use anything else because nobody else does, I would not even be able to book my Dog in to the Groomers because they won't answer the phone and only respond to Whatsapp.
E2E encryption can protect contents in transit with TOS for communication platforms to join the Multi-provider network stating they cannot analyse the contents of received messages in-app.
... you ask people to use an alternative. I got my entire family on to Signal about a year ago. I keep asking the BBC not to use WhatsApp. We'll see.
Good luck getting businesses to move away from Whatsapp. I deleted my account and was able to get friends and family on Signal, but thankfully I don't have any businesses I interacted with that used Whatsapp (or Facebook). I might be missing out on products and services... But hey, at least I don't know what I'm missing. :)
The best way to get your friends to switch messengers is to not be reachable on the bad ones: ie delete your accounts and uninstall the apps.
Retaining your account on bad platforms makes those platforms more attractive to other users and makes the world worse.
But it has a native bot API and can handle multiple clients on multiple different devices without any issue.
Even niftier: In some countries Facebook created this "FreeBasics/internet.org" scheme where access to Facebook services is free. When travelling Indonesia WhatsApp was the only way to reach the landlords of guest apartments, taxi drivers, ... not even regular SMS/text.
The strength of the network effect can be hard to break.
When you cave and install WA, you make it harder for the next parent, just as all the ones before you made it harder for you.
If you want to be rid of these things, you can't get there by using them because you think you have to.
The vast majority of people don't think Facebook is the abhorrent service it is, and an even larger majority don't realize WA is owned by Facebook.
That's not true. A lot of people are a lot more concerned about their privacy these days.
You can obviously argue that they can't siphon away information at the server level; but if you don't trust whatsapp/signal/telegram at that level then you're boned anyway because they could quite easily activate the 'whatsapp web' function and exfiltrate information via whatsapp servers.
Ideally we'd have clients and servers and server operators as distinct and uncoordinated individuals, which would have to work in conjunction with each other to unravel your messages: but there's no incentive for them in place to do that.
I, a server operator, can pass encrypted traffic, that data is encrypted with clients I don't/can't control.
I, a client software developer can make encrypted traffic, but messages can only be passed on networks I can't control. (and if it didn't, this would be easy to spot).
I, a server software developer can write software which allows traffic to be passed but does not promote an operator to exfil even encrypted data.
We have this with Matrix, IRC, XMPP etc;
IMO if you're going to use Whatsapp; it's the same as if you use telegram or signal; I understand that this opinion is controversial but you're choosing convinience over security and E2E doesn't mean anything if you have one entity controlling the ends.
E2EE is not the main concern any more for most though. Most messengers offer some form of it, and you're correct in saying it probably won't prevent the company from accessing your data. However, I think the point is about which company to trust with this sort of power. Actually, it's more like "which company is least likely to do [bad stuff] with my data?"
Currently, facebook is much higher on that list than the signal foundation -- at least in my book.
It’s not perfect, but it’s a cross-platform, free, secure, open-source communications platform. I’ll take it for now.
Given that WhatsApp uses the Signal tech (largely). I’m always surprised that what’s app still reigns supreme.