[derwiki]

I don’t know about other places, but in SF, everything around schools is coordinated over WhatsApp—you’d be really doing your children a disservice to opt out.

And I hate it. I had deactivated all my Meta accounts but reactivated WhatsApp because of school stuff.

[Loughla]

Tell your school board to use a dedicated messaging platform built for schools. Cite privacy laws. That's what I did, and it worked.

Unless you're talking about parent groups. Because then you're fucked. Every parent group everywhere uses Facebook or Whatsapp and don't care that not everybody uses it. You will be excluded.

[ryandrake]

I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of the philosophy: “you’re not missing out on anything worthwhile by being excluded by people who want to exclude you.” Don’t voluntarily interact with people who make “uses a particular app” a condition of that interaction.

[grvdrm]

I assume parents. Not actual schools. Same situation here on East Coast. School uses ParentSquare but so much coordination is over iMesssage and WhatsApp.

[the_af]

> Tell your school board to use a dedicated messaging platform built for schools. Cite privacy laws. That's what I did, and it worked.

My daughter's school uses a clunky proprietary platform that is way, way worse than WhatsApp. I wish they used WhatsApp! Actually, they also do this, because being non techies their use of tech is all over the place and they adopted the worst of both worlds: school digital platform (very clunky) and, because it sucks, also WhatsApp. So important communications reach me both ways.

Sigh

[derwiki]

Which privacy laws?

[Loughla]

FERPA, COPPA, and whatever your particular state has. Just Google it.

[derwiki]

Thank you!