Today, I finally deleted my WhatsApp account.
I've been a user of WhatsApp for nearly 10 years. I actually paid 0.89€ for the app.
It was a game changer back in the days, because I grew up paying 0.49€ for each message (SMS). So due WhatsApp, I just had to pay my monthly data and was able to send unlimited messages.
I actually liked the functionality of the app, e.g. having groups, broadcasts and stuff.
I remember the acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook and all the news about it, like "Why do they pay 19 Billion Dollars for a free app?".
I think we all know why Facebook did this.
WhatsApp had 2 Billion users at the beginning of 2020, 25% of the world's population. Meta data of 2 Billion people who probably use it each day. Now add this to the data of 2.8B Facebook users and 1.0B Instagram users.
This data is in the hands of a company, that made a net income of 29 Billion dollar in 2020 with just free user services (and selling a small amount of VR hardware).
So how did I do this?
I sent a personal message to each contact and to my groups, stating that I will delete my account and they can reach me on Signal or by phone/SMS. ~50% of my contacts joined Signal after this message.