WhatsApp is more problematic to leave though. Where I live, it’s the default messaging app everyone uses. I haven’t texted anyone in ages. And I can also see why it’s the default, WhatsApp is just better than the competition. It’s end-to-end encrypted, so Meta cannot read your messages directly, it has good markdown-like formatting support, it’s has a lot of features, and it’s relatively stable.

I’ve been using Telegram and Signal with friends, but honestly Telegram doesn’t exactly feel safer to me, especially with e2e encryption not enabled by default (last time I checked). And Signal is better, but sometimes just a pain to use. No Markdown-like syntax (though formatting is finally possible via GUI), it constantly keeps desyncing devices that I use once every few weeks, and we’ve had plenty of bugs with not seeing messages of eachother.

Now, I can accept that to a degree, in return for better privacy. But no way in hell are laypeople like my family going to switch. WhatsApp is too good and safe enough to remain dominant.

Sorry for being pedantic, but it’s “Ruud” not “Rudd”. I’ve noticed that the same mistake often gets made with other Dutch spellings, like the Haas F1 team being written as “Hass” online. Do repeated vowels feel weird or something to people who don’t speak Dutch, or is it just a coincidence?