| At what point did I say that people would have to figure it out on their own? For the sake of this argument, assume the premises that (a) Meta, a foreign corporation, controlling the private conversation of hundreds of millions of citizens is not simply "not great" but unacceptable, and (b) that it is necessary to put WhatsApp permanently offline (as opposed to making it somehow safer). Steps to a post-WA transition: (1) Publicly gather a list of messaging services that can be verified to satisfy the requirement to act as WA replacements: - E2E encryption - Interoperable under the Digital Services Act (critical) - Phone number-based IDs - Fully hosted in the EU and controlled by European companies - Sufficient operational resources to serve > X number of users (2) Mass send the message to all WA users "Due to new European privacy rules, WhatsApp will shut down on ${today + X months}. You will be able to continue talking with all your contacts through any of the following apps: [ list apps sorted by capacity, click to install ]. You will need to recreate any groups of which you are currently the admin.". Plaster the same message everywhere, send SMSs, etc. Compared to switching to a whole new currency, or moving a shitload of bureaucracy fully online during Covid, this seems a very reasonable task for a European government. |