WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

> I simply say "I'm on Signal" and if it's important enough, they go and install it; it's been fairly frictionless, after all how hard is it to download an app and go through the fairly minimal registration process

Genuinely curious. I am in WhatsApp groups for my kids soccer teams (who will be there at the game, can my kid drive together with you to the match), my kids school classes (Johnny lost his headphones did anyone see them), my work teams "social chat" (happy birthday, I am at conference XYZ) etc. etc. In your situation, which of the three scenarios applies?

1 - You are not in such groups

2 - You were in such groups, and the entire group moved over to Signal

3 - You were in such groups, but the entire group did not move over to Signal and now you are not in these groups anymore

It's scenario 1. My children are still young, pre-school and reception so no such groups have come up yet. The odd parent that wanted to contact me has installed Signal or sent me SMS (RCS). For anything else, my wife is still on WhatsApp so she relays messages if/when they come up.

EDIT: re: Work, my colleagues are all on Signal, we have lots of Signal groups to communicate.

So in a nutshell "I have someone else on WhatsApp who keeps me in the loop"

Expect this to scale, in my experience you can move your family over to another service. Groups of families your kid is somehow in contact with, not so much...

I've managed to go a very long time - living in both the UK and the US - using only iMessage and (as of around 2017) Signal.

I finally had to install WhatsApp on a trip recently for group coordination, but ensured it didn't get things like contact access, and removed it afterwards.

Kids school may well be an outlier (US), but they send formal communication by email (with an SMS notification or call for emergencies), and the parent group is all on iMessage.

Option 1 mostly. I think it's also worth taking into consideration one thing.

People on Signal tend to have much less volume of overall messages and groups. For someone on WhatsApp to forward you the invite is a hassle for them, sure, but it is an infinitesimal unnoticeable increment on how many in/out messages they deal with in a day.

As I mention in another thread, people will complain that they "have too many apps" if you pitch Signal as a privacy app. They would install it instantly if you told them the emojis are funnier or whatever. Because they already installed 300+ apps and one more is actually .3% increment ; whereas for your typical GrapheneOS F-droid person, adding whatsapp would be a +15% increase of apps on their homepage.

It's kind of the same with those WhatsApp groups. There will be 1,000 messages in the group this week/month. 3 of those are the actual invite you need, and if you have actual human connections with folks, someone will send you those.

it's a challenge for sure, however, I've managed to get my extended family all on Signal which is about as much reach as I could hope/expect to achieve.

That's my household, my parents, my grandparents, my parents-in-law, my sibling(s), cousins, aunts/uncles, sibling(s)-in-law, friends, and my colleagues.

Some of my children's' friends' parents who I'm friendly enough with also began using Signal so we can communicate. Those who are school friends but not outside-of-school-friends, we can communicate with via the school's app.

Almost anyone I could want to communicate with is on Signal, all of the family is directly or indirectly because of me, and friends and colleagues has been a combination.

Anyone I don't know well enough to have a conversation about privacy and Meta being the antithesis of it, is not likely someone I need to communicate with.

All in, my wife, on WhatsApp, isn't really "keep[ing] me in the loop", unless we're messaging a trades-person or similar, but that's infrequent enough to not be an issue.