I believe in an open internet, FOSS, privacy by default, etc. I migrated away from Google by self-hosting Nextcloud. I prefer messaging apps like Molly, SimpleX, Threema, Matrix, etc. over standard SMS. I love the Fediverse (Lemmy, Mastodon, etc.).
But everyone I live with and everyone I know simply refuses to take part. I can’t interact with them socially because they’re all on Facebook. I can’t communicate with them because they all use group texts for SMS/RCS. I feel like I’m living in a different part of the world and am completely disconnected from everything that’s going on around me (with the people I want to interact).
My question is: does anyone else experience this, and how do you reconcile it? I want to share photos and clever posts with my family but they aren’t on the Fediverse. I want to communicate securely with them but they only want to SMS. I want to share documents but they only use Google Docs.
There are people I’ve met on the Fediverse and through some secure messaging apps with whom I’ve struck up a rapport, but these are still (predominately) strangers, and I’d really like to involve the people I care about in these exciting new times. They just wont participate.
I feel like I’ve invited everyone in my family to go on a great, grand vacation away and I’m the only one who’s packed.
I just have the app in a separate profile right now. Ideally I’d like to run CopperheadOS and have it virtualised or something, but I chose the wrong hardware. I also don’t keep anything very sensitive on my phone is the first place, besides just the data it can passively collect about it’s environment.
The problem with WhatsApp, to be clear, is that the app itself is a closed-source Facebook data hoover. If you stop it from seeing outside data it should be okay. It’s also possible it can be put into a mode where it relays incoming messages after they’re decrypted, but if they ever got caught doing that there’d be a bit of hell to pay, and I can use Wireshark as well as the next guy.