I am trying to convince my group to switch from WhatsApp to Signal and we plan to vote on it soon. So, I plan to use the replies in this thread to compile a list of reasons to use as talking points. Preferably, I need something that can be understood on a personal level as some of my friends are deeply cynical and have no concern about escaping techno-feudalism and surveillance.
Meta
I am unconvinced that Zuckerberg isn’t personally searching Meta messages to select future Epstein Island 2.0 victims.
I’ve had friends who had close calls with what seemed to them to be a kidnapping attempt by a paid organized group of people.
I dismissed their experience.
Then the Epstein files released.
Tinfoil hat incoming:
Zuckerberg’s whole organization makes a hell of a lot more sense if their real product is profiles allowing billionaires to select their next rape victims.

This is the correct answer.
I just wish I could have expressed my complex opinions more eloquently.
One is owned by a US tech corp whose primary income stream is building advertising profiles on users and selling advertising space to businesses while handing data off to authoritarian governments without warrants.
The other is a US non profit where the FBI admitted the only data they can get from them is when the user registered and when they were last online.
and recently they figured out how to use the OS’s notification database to collect some cache and read the notifications Signal sends
On one OS. You can tune Signal not to display the notification contents. Moreover, if you’re on iOS and actually expect privacy, you should probably reflect on your choices a little more.
Realistically iOS is more private than base android at this point
They pulled the Signal messages from an iPhone… https://www.forbes.com/sites/larsdaniel/2026/04/10/fbi-pulled-deleted-signal-messages-from-an-iphone-without-breaking-encryption/
… Because the person had message previews in notifs turned on
But not Graphene. I’ve yet to hear about this exploit on Android. Curious if it holds true.
Definitely
fortunately, most OSs now offer granular enough notification controls so they can be set to just notify users when messages are received and nothing more.
Everything by meta is spyware.
They are not comparable in my view. One is owned by Facebook, known for MITMing smartphones via a VPN app and successfully intercepting and decrypting traffic from competing apps.
The other is widely regarded to be the best option for most people and most uses cases for privacy and security.
Signal is nonprofit
Whatsapp = Facebook (Meta)
thats everything you need to know about the striking differences of the two. One actually tries to respect your privacy while the other is exploiting you for using its product
The friend I mentioned actively uses Facebook and Instagram. I have tried to argue against it many times but I am getting exhausted. I just don’t want to be forced to use spyware because the majority said so
You arn’t going to get them to end thier use, so you can only draw a line for yourself and decide not to participate if they don’t go with Signal. It sucks but if they value your presense then they will need to decide to branch out and use another app. And JFK if they use those apps, they can fucking install another and use a better one
Easy and insulting way of finding out how important you are to your friends is to tell them on Whatsapp “I’m done with being forced to use this spyware app, I’m moving to Signal, you can contact me there.” Then maybe reminding them a week later about this, then uninstall Whatsapp.
Either they think you are important enough that they go through the awful trouble of spending 90 seconds of their lives installing the Signal app, or they think thats too much trouble to keep in contact with you.
I did that, found out that my friends didn’t really care too much about me lol. A couple did and thats nice. You don’t need 735 friends anyway. Or at least I dont.
Your friend intentionally doesn’t care. Don’t bother trying convert them. Keep texts casual and be real in person.
WhatsApp and meta have had a number of data breaches and accoint losses due to how the technology functions.
Signal is so secure that Defence use it. There’s articles of russia “hacking” singal but looking into them shows it’s only via social enginnnering to scan a QR code. Its so secure from accoint and data loss that signal literally can only give minimal evidence in court (compared to the Proton VPN stuff recently).
But TBH you might want to look into “How convince people of Y when they want X”. Your friends want vinilla and you want chocolate. Its not specifically about WhatsApp vs signal.
It was easier for me to just make new friends
Signal does everything Whatsapp does and it aligns with my personal values:
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I can support a healthy, competitive market by keeping alternatives alive - lack of competition is the death of innovation. Entshittification is only possible because there isn’t enough competition.
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I help shield people who really need privacy (like journalists and whistle-blowers) by adding to the crowd for them to disappear in. I think of it a little as getting vaccinated - the chances are extremely low that I’ll ever really need privacy protection but I do it anyway, to protect the “at-risk” population, and to keep options alive in case my situation ever changes.
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Privacy is not about having something to hide but about the right to consent. I don’t need anonymity, I have nothing to hide. However there are still some things that I don’t want some random Meta employee to know about me, or photos that are for my husband only. Signal allows me to choose what I share and with whom.
Edit: a word
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What’s app is Facebook, what other argument do you need? Unless this you retirement home group chat how the fuck is anyone under 50 still using Facebook.
It’s simply trust in the organization that maintains the app.
Unless you’re coordination/organizing about legal grey or red areas then it’s not much danger. Meta says it’s E2E but do they really not have access to your data? I don’t believe them. Any data they have would be happily handed over to the authorities just like your protonmail.
Signal just straight up doesn’t have access since it’s all stored at the endpoint and they provide no remote backup.
I don’t think there’s anything on a personal level that you can give them. I personally have accepted that I won’t convince people to switch so I use WhatsApp. That being said, up until very recently you could use the “hidden in the crowd” excuse, e.g. there’s no way for them to monitor every single thing that goes through them effectively, this has changed with the advance of LLMs.
This might not concern them, but the truth is that nothing you do in WhatsApp is private, the fact that you can read the same messages on two different devices at the same time without having had to input any sort of password is a dead giveaway that the information is stored unencrypted in the servers. This means that every message someone has ever sent on WhatsApp is likely stored on a huge database that can be scrapped by LLMs to find out information on an unprecedented level. Finding every user who has broken the law by for example mentioned using weed or illegally downloading content or finding all of the password for all of the accounts people have sent over Whatsapp is as easy as asking it in English. And the question you gotta ask yourself is “Do you trust Meta not to abuse that power? Do you trust every single employee at Meta with access to this database not to scrape it for personal gains?”.
But realistically that would fall on deaf ears. If you truly are serious about this you should flip the script, e.g. “Signal can do everything that WhatsApp can, AND it’s secure, which is important to me even if not to you. If you decide to use WhatsApp you’re saying that my opinion doesn’t matter, because you have no argument other than inertia. It’s like if a friend of yours developed an allergy to shrimps and you decide to still keep meeting in a Bubba Shrimp restaurant weekly because that’s what you’ve been doing.”
Meta and everything they do and stand for is why I chose Signal over Whatsapp.
It doesn’t spam your phone with photos, unless you decide to download them
It doesn’t backup your conversations to your already nearly full, Google owned Drive
Dark mode by default
Not owned by Meta
No frills, I couldn’t care less for “personal stories” or whatever bs Whatsapp has
Basically it is somewhat more respectful of your agency as a user.
…edit: yes you have a setting to toggle backup off. And to change background to whatever you want. And I’m sorry for you, because your deeply cynical friends (your words) probably won’t care about my points either. Because in essence, all my reasons rest on personal values. Which your friends already don’t care about, else they would be complaining about things such as no space on phone or being annoyed at having to change settings for things they don’t want or need.
I use signal but never managed to get rid of WhatsApp. It’s a default app nowadays and most people use it. I constantly deal with random customers and whatnot through it. Only family is on signal. Which is sort of nice, I see a signal notification and know it’s someone important.
Agreed. I can ignore my SMS for a day or two, but when Signal rings, I know it’s someone I actually want to talk to.










