Calling someone a dumb fuck, even indirectly by using Zuck's famous quote, is quite rude. People aren't dumb fucks because they are forced into using WhatsApp.

Maybe you're from the US or somewhere where iMessage, SMS, or WeChat dominate, but here, you either use WhatsApp, or you become an outcast. Whatsapp is de facto mandatory. Even half of my delivery notifications and 2FA comes to my WhatsApp, not SMS. When people say "just don't use WhatsApp", they may as well be saying "just don't use email".

I don't want to be one of Zuck's users. That's why I want an open and secure protocol for cross-client messaging. So I and others can use something else without being isolated from friends and family. Being lonely isn't pleasant.

Facebook's WhatsApp is almost certainly filled with backdoors and exploits

Perhaps it is. We can never know due to its proprietary nature... which is why I don't want to use it.

As it stands, I can use Signal with one contact. The rest refuse to use it, or used it and abandoned it.

It would be amazing if everyone woke up tomorrow and flocked to signal, but here in the real world, outside of my fantasies, I have to go with the standard, which unfortunately is WhatsApp.

The only other alternative is SMS which is far worse in terms of both security and privacy, and would also cut me off from talking with friends as I'd have no group chat access and because nobody uses SMS.

My choice is between:

• being alone and unable to talk to anybody, but being a privacy purist.

• conceding some metadata but retaining private chats and using a client I want to use. It would also bring more people to signal as they also won't be locked out from chatting with others. Overall I'd gain signal-to-signal contacts, as well as imperfect signal-to-whatsapp ones.

• giving in entirely and using Facebook software.

To me, there's an obvious answer there. It's not perfect, but it's better than the others.