I admit I’ve always compromised on this way too much myself, always to this day having Facebook Messenger just to communicate in my families group chats. Sure I run it in a Work profile on my GrapheneOS phone that I can switch off at any time, I can completely cut it off from network access any time as well, I can have a lot of rudimentary control over it, I use it as sparingly as possible, but it doesn’t change the fact everytime I use it we’re funneling private convos through bloody Meta’s servers and trackers etc.

@eldersnake@we.loveprivacy.club

I run it in a Work profile on my GrapheneOS phone that I can switch off at any time

Hmmmmmmm, I like that idea. If I could ban WhatsApp into a second profile and only switch it on every now and then, I would feel a little bit better about it.

(I don’t really trust Android, though, and I suspect that apps can still install background services that are always active. Pure speculation and paranoid on my part, but still.)

I run it in a Work profile on my GrapheneOS phone that I can switch off at any time

So this kind of works in stock Android, too. You have to reboot after switching back to the main profile, then the second profile won’t get loaded at all.

(I bet that this stops working in the future. It feels like the second profile doesn’t get loaded as a means to save CPU power. Once those smartphones get even more powerful, there’s no need to do that anymore …)