Today is the day the notion of the 'internet is free, good and a convenience' is over for the global public. WhatsApp was the first ever primary convenience brought by the advent of the internet - it fulfilled a legitimate need all over the world by providing essentially free, limitless, boundless communication if you had few megabytes of internet in your mobile quota. It is to this day the #1 most used app for a good percentage of the population, only surpassed by social media. (Mostly because of the immortal network effects lingering from a decade ago.)
I was honestly expecting it, after recently seeing on a friend's phone that it already essentially turned to social media on Android. They can't yet push it on the higher income iPhone users (lest they switch to other messenger apps), but change is coming rather inevitably since it's nothing but untapped advertising dollars potential in the eyes of the behemoth that is Meta.
I don't think there's a sustainable solution here except to self-host a Matrix server for family and friends if you have the time, money and technical expertise.
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