whatsapp appears to be worse than wechat. on wechat i can hide my phonenumber from other users. that's a major concern for me, i don't want anyone to be able to call me just because they got my messaging contact.
wechat does not have any kind of read receipt. so i can never tell if someone is seeing my messages unless they actually respond.
ironically, telegram doesn't seem to have any option to turn read receipts off. at least it too can hide the phonenumber.
both telegram and wechat can mute groups, though wechat has no archiving feature, like whatsapp delete is the only option. (or asking the admin to remove me, that way i can keep the history but not get new messages)
Look, if you trust a Facebook or google owned property to respect your privacy that’s kinda on you. They’ve proven time and again they do not care about your privacy at all.
In some places/situations, it is impossible to function in society due to how ubiquitous WhatsApp is. Not using it is not an option. Solution here IMO has to be regulation and/or breaking up companies like Facebook, who would care about this issue if they didn’t have the power to shut down or buy any serious competitor.
I mean, isn't it the same for T-Mobile/AT&T/Verizon?
I have accepted that most of my communications are going to be vulnerable to surveillance. I'd rather that surveillance come from large institutions that are reasonably equipped to manage their own vulnerabilities, and are easily watched and influenced by my own government. Better the devil you know than the devil you don't.
The one thing that freaked me out the most recently was when Google wrote to some Photos customers to tell them that their images and videos had been downloaded inadvertently by other customers.
Met a new person? That's likely how you'll communicate. Talking any lessons? That's how your teacher will usually communicate.
Plus, moving most people over 50 to any other platform sounds way too much of a challenge.