Personally I don't know anyone that started using whatsapp after the fb purchase, so they were all happy to pay for their use of a messaging app.
Just use Signal. It's free, open source, and end-to-end encrypted.
[1] https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007320771-Se...
I wouldn't trust any api you don't control, don't have a solid contract (without the changable terms) or isn't owned by a nonprofit.
The free ones will hurt you but you expect it. The paid ones hurt more because you often build a business around an ecosystem that eats you up.
The solution isn't to say "profit = bad", it's to break up monopolies or force interoperability and forbid certain forms of "payment" (such as exploiting and reselling personal data) that are deemed nefarious to society.
Lastly, Signal doesn't collect/store any of your data on their infrastructure other than a few hashes required for operation. WhatsApp/facebook on the other hand collect, and likely keep, forever, at much metadata about you as possible. The only way to pay for this free storage is to stay more data so they can target you for advertising dollars.
This doesn't guarantee that Signal will live forever, but at the very least they've learned from previous mistakes and have taken actions to address them.
https://www.upcounsel.com/converting-non-profit-to-for-profi...
Most people use these apps for the network. The app without the network is useless, but any fork would initially be in this situation.
The signal server is also open source. The absence of federation does mean you would also need to get all of your contacts to move to a different service as well, but it is better than a proprietary system. I do wish Signal was more open to federation and/or alternative clients though.
Your example of religions is also suspect. To be blunt we perceive it that way in places and times where established Churches are legally independent and separate from the government. It’s not always and often isn’t true, or at least isn’t the case by default in some places.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_tax
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zakat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jizya
Compare and contrast with Alms, the more charitable less compulsory concept:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alms
Just one more reason to love separation of Church and State and the prohibition on Congress on making laws respecting an establishment of religion.
Not the nicest way to put it but they put in Yeoman’s[1] work and earn it.
"Protection money" means somebody is illegally forcing you to pay for something that you don't want or need, solely to enrich themselves. But it's not illegal if it's literally the foundation of the society.
Democracy is the most expensive system of government. It has to be paid for or it doesn't work. It's paid for with taxes. It's not protection money, it's fuel for a life support system that you and everyone else is hooked up to.
I mean was it legal when the local Baron came and levied a tax on your wheat? Under the King’s laws, or maybe it was just tradition, but if the alternative is you’re killed and your land is taken and given to someone more loyal, then you just had a tax levied upon you and the payment was your life.
Similarly, merchants which snuck into cities rather than paying the tax at the gates were not entitled to protections from whoever was the guarantor of laws, a city guard or the like.
So what’s going to happen if you don’t pay your taxes? Turns out the IRS, the States and the equivalents in other countries have legal means of taking what you own for what you owe. We can discuss the tradeoffs on this, but in practice it’s not overly different from a Duke or a King or a mobster. What’s different is the process, the expectancy of it, and the legality.
At the end of the day, what we’re paying for is the protection of our police, fire departments, Armies and Navies.
One is a google-style lock into an ecosystem of free apps that a company can monetize at any time. Stay away if possible: the users will be milked sooner or later.
The other is openstreetmap-style set of free data that anyone can download anytime, plus some apps (maybe free, maybe not) using it for some function. I see no problem with it as the lock-in is highly unlikely because the main feature (say, map data) is always available. My 2c.
I’m trying to encourage people to remember that this is what these companies do when we use their services for free. They seem to think they are entitled to our private data and they are beginning to respond harshly when we try to keep what is rightly ours to ourselves.
Use a service until it’s useful, then be prepared to leave when you no longer agree to its terms. The average user will go through many social networks and apps throughout their life.
Not all of them. Some, like unroll.me, blatantly tell you they sell your data - and people still give them access to their entire E-mail inbox.
I think we are now at the point where this applies to individuals. If a person or group of people rely too heavily on a single free service then they’re going to feel pain when that service finally decides to monetize.
There are no free lunches. All these “free” products out there that seem great have Venture Capital investors waiting until the day that the service reaches a critical mass and they can flip the cash-generating switch.