As others have already mentioned, there will be EU regulation that comes into effect soon that will force messengers to be interoperable. Despite following the topic quite actively, it still seems to be quite uncertain how this interoperability will look like. I also have some concerns about companies making interoperability opt-in, requiring users to go to the app settings and manually turning it on or presenting them with a popup that makes it seem like interoperability is a security risk (a Meta spokesperson revealed that they were pushing for a solution like that pretty heavily). Either way, before trying to get other people to migrate to another platform I would first wait and see what the implications of this regulation are.
this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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Privacy
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for the cause yes it is worth it
I think it is difficult for others to tell you whether it is "worth it", because that is very personal.
For me, personally, transferring my family and friends to Signal is not worth it because Signal requires a phone number. If I will invest such an effort, I would rather help them migrate to a service that does not require a phone number - such as Matrix or an XMPP server. But needing a phone number to register might not be a problem for you - in which case Signal could be a perfectly reasonable choice.
But... Even then - is it worth it? Again, it is up to you. I tried, but my success has been limited. The reality is that I still have a phone with WhatsApp that I leave at home and I check it every day or two. I tell people that if they want to reach me, the best is to use e-mail. And to my closest friends and some of my family I did convince them to use my XMPP chat so that we can be connected more often. No one really left WhatsApp, but at least we can have some fun conversations on our own server, which is nice.
But I am not going to lie, I am sacrificing a ton of functionality and convenience. For me, this is worth it because I think that it is GOOD not to be available through the phone all the time, and I am idealist when it comes to not giving big companies our data. But for some people these sacrifices might be unsustainable, and it might not be worth it.
So: I don't know. Maybe it's worth it?