I am not a heavy user of meta apps, but still i forced to use one or two meta apps daily for educational and work related communication. Also instagram was so addictive until i understood the dark pattern and toxicity in the entire platform. That was just a platform for comparison and show off, even though many users/customers uses it as a blog platform, broadcast, promotion tool or anything.
One of the harderst product to quit was whatsapp. I used it in my custom rom (lineageos) installed phone with bootlocker unlocked. Recently i started to get a popup saying "please use the official app", no matter i downloaded it from anywhere (playstore, official website, apkmirror, aurora store). I know they detected that my phone is modified and installed a custom rom, they are intentionally doing this to millions of users. So, finally trying all the way to fix it, meta itself forced me to quit. I used one of my family members phone to just login and instantly deleted my account. Btw, nowadays i feel so peace. The most exciting thing is that, 2 of my friends actually contacted me via telegram and phone call to ask what happened. So, atleast 2 people noticed my sudden disappearing and cared to ask why!
The case of instagram is not like this, but random account restriction and "are you human ?" popups. Really meta can't figure out are we humans or not with this massive of data they collect? After they forced me to add my phone number to account and the refusal led to disabling of my 5th account, i choose to quit again.
Figuring out fediverse platforms like pixelfed, mastodon, lemmy showed me a different world that moves slowly and gives peace of mind.
The toxicity of instagram and the hollow content on facebook made me delete them. I still have messenger however, since convincing people to install signal is difficult, and also it is useful to communicate with new friends (considering the alternative is unencrypted sms)
But wow its so good to be off it
How do you delete Facebook without deleting your messenger account? Or did you just uninstall the app?
Oh yeah i just mean delete the app to make me stop looking at it. It was an addiction for me. Well, not facebook but instagram was.
Ah fair enough, I did the same last year. I got a new phone and just decided not to install Facebook on the new one. I still need messenger and WhatsApp for now though
Btw fb messenger is unencrypted. Right?
There is an end to end encrypted feature, with a 6 digit pin to decrypt the keys I believe. a 6 digit pin isnt the most secure, but its better then nothing for typical conversations.
Annoyingly there is a feature that u can summarise texts with using AI, which ofc breaks privacy, but u can turn off message sharing (meaning you and the other person can no longer do that)
A few glaring alarm bells around privacy on messenger, but again, better then nothing.
So what if it's unencrypted SMS with new friends? Seems like supporting meta is far worse.
If they become actualy friends move them over to signal. If they wont then you don't need to be friends with them.
Gotta make the move to a better future.
I see what your saying, its just my friends have no interest in signal (tried a few times) so messenger is a compromise.
Then they are not friends.
You might as well just write checks to Zuckerberg and skip the extra steps. The entire world is worse for giving meta money, I would have no interest in being friends with people who think funding him is ok.
And believe me, I know its hard. Where I live people use it for everything: businesses, doctors, friends, etc. But at some point someone has to say fuck no I am not doing it.