No shit. Why people even started in the first place is crazy to me.
But if you are using them, please stop.
this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2026
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Privacy
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Here in Spain it was because WhatsApp took over cuz carriers charged for SMS and phone calls. Now there's a massive captive audience that self-reinforces. Same with Instagram if you're young or Facebook if you like having your brain melted
Someone yesterday just tried to get me on Instagram. No thanks.
Because instant messaging died out. Then it seemed like you were nothing if you weren't sharing the bitchiness of your life. Then tumblr died out. Now we're at the enshittification of it, with algorithms curating everything with an advertisement every three scrolls and an Ai post every two it's basically every one wheel scroll is your family and friends then three scrolls down you're seeing your memes.
It's shit.
None of those things would have made me interested in starting to use non anonymous services. We learned not to do that years prior to its arrival. Took one look and went hell no.
Now we’re at the enshittification of it,
Maybe, but it was always bad. Always. It was a bad idea from the beginning. No person who thought about it for 5 minutes should have thought it was ever a good idea.
Thats why when Zucks quote called the users dumbfucks for just handing over their data to him, it was no surprise. Thats what the facebook user was from the beginning: a dumbfuck.
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Unfortunately, it is simply impossible for me to stop using Facebook.
I never started.
The only valide excuse
I only ever made a Facebook account because of one club in college that never posted their meeting time and location, which changed, anywhere else and you couldn't access it without an account. Believe me I tried. The last time I interacted with that account was a couple years ago when I Got a notification that someone tried to log into it so I went and changed the password just to make sure no one would be impersonating me. I didn't give them more information than was necessary. I don't know that I even uploaded a photo of myself. In the people you may know section I only ever saw one person that I actually knew, which means I was probably doing something right
The red pill is the answer.
I'm hoping this guy just hasn't consumed any popular media in the past fifteen years because that term has been associated with some pretty specific communities...
Yeah probably living under a rock. Nothing that’s new in the article and talking about whays already obvious. Might be even ai generated
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19 years ago.
Because of not having enough time and money to maintain the app, like the implementation of encryption and new features, founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton accepted the deal and sold the app for $19 billion to Mark Zuckerberg.
I imagine I'd also find that I don't have enough time and money to maintain something if someone offered me $19 billion for it.
😅 😂
Yah. Most ppl would. Not all! But most.
Which creates a perverse incentive, right? The ppl making s/w with no malware, no spyware, they are lucky if they even make a living. Often they do it volunteer, or for low income. But those who do it to amass power, and sell that power to somebody, as here, they can roll in money.
To fix the whole s/w world, I believe we must fix the bad incentives. Might be lots of ways to do it, but it certainly helps a lot, if most ppl shun spyware. And support OSS authors who are genuine about keeping it out. Right now, most ppl do the opposite.
To be fair to Brian Acton, afterward, he did co-found the Signal foundation and give it a hundred million dollar zero-interest loan.
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As with all things involving humans, you can't really change minds with facts. It's just emotions and peer pressure.
Not a bad post, but I expect it won't sway people who aren't already on board.
It wildly depressing how many folks are still on and refuse to get out of Zucks world. Most even acknowledge it’s bad but it’s almost like cigarettes
it’s almost like cigarettes
It really is. They employed psychologists to make it as psychologically addicting as possible. They studied the ways to make ppl engage the most. Which turned out to be in-group vs out-group rage. They designed their algorithms to pump that, nonstop. And on top of htat, every other psych trick they could find.
Avg person has no chance, when an entire ass team of big dollar PhD psychologists comes at them.
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what would it realistically take to move an entire country off of whatsapp?
The first people have to abandon the idea that they're only allowed to use one product of a category at a time. It will not kill you to use to chat apps, it will not kill you to use two microblogging services. The second is that you need to prioritize the better one when you can. This eliminates lock-in effects which are a major moat
Yeah I have texting, signal and discord on my phone for different people, it's pretty seamless to use all 3.
what would it realistically take to move an entire country off of whatsapp?
Wisdom.
Same as what it took to have it take the whole market: a better alternative and enough advertisement for a critical mass of people to migrate at once, so that they stay active there.
Then the rest will flock more or less progressively.
I gave up on Facebook. I've been using the MEWE platform for a long time. I replaced YouTube with Odysee. And for messengers I have Signal, Viber, Line, Telegram, Ratspeak.
Only have messenger left. Considering doing another push to convince my stubborn friends to go on signal. Then I can finally be rid of meta
I haven't been on in years. At first everyone said I was left out, IDC, text me better than fb/meta. I've been sm free since ~2016. It works just fine.
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I've managed to escape all but WhatsApp but I'm going to do it
I managed to get rid of what's app, But my damned HOA is using groups because it's easy to keep people out.
It's been about 6 months after deleting WhatsApp, and there are no issues at all. only peace of mind.
The only problem is market place. If you want to seel of buy something locally. Everyone has switched to that.
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I use React, but that’s about it.
the worst of meta's sins, the web hasn't been the same since React took along
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