I have started using privacy respecting software as much as I can for a while now. Particularly social media. I started with deleting my reddit account, and then one by one deleted twitter, instagram and all. The one thing I couldn’t leave was whatsapp. I just cannot seem to leave it. Not just friends and family, but outside too. My mentor just use whatsapp for all types of communication except for some absolutely formal documents, where he uses email. Otherwise he doesn’t seem to respond to email.
So, my question: If you have made the switch, have you convinced your peers to also make the switch?
I changed my profile picture to something like this and quit all the nonfree social apps one by one after a few months. Currently I have onboarded 3 or 4 friends on XMPP with the profile pic, though they just call it Quicksy. Family still use whatsapp and have no means to text me other than sms.
EDIT: here’s the template, feel free to make a copy and edit https://cryptpad.disroot.org/diagram/#/2/diagram/view/wSR3FAgY9EhEXhuuVnRsk9AvPYdEPFGFg2fOaL7y68w/
@perry @astro_ray
how does this work
assuming you meant how XMPP works: it’s a federated chat protocol introduced in 1999. Many commercial instant messaging services initially used the protocol to communicate with users, including Google Talk, AOL, Facebook chat, Microsoft Messenger and even Skype. Eventually most of the commercial services got enshittified and removed XMPP support. XMPP is still used by people and supports video calls, end to end encryption and many shiny stuff.
If you’re new to XMPP, you might like this guide by @contrapunctus@en.osm.town https://katb.in/xmpp-guide (long url https://contrapunctus.codeberg.page/the-quick-and-easy-guide-to-xmpp.html)