well i am that stupid guy who refused to install whatsapp. yes, i have heard that hundreds of times till now. even though the idea of "shadow profiles" my phone is already in facebook/whatsapp/truecaller DBs but i have never been able to accept that on a personal level. it just feels wrong doing it.

back in 2016 i decided to be the renegade and go to the shiny new telegram when everyone was over at whatsapp. took me years to convince 3-6 relatives to install telegram if they wanted to talk to me. wanted to avoid "whatsapp university" because everyone knows when unkills come to "chat". this meant that even today my messaging is on demand, if i want to talk to someone, i message them, reply and i close the app.

over the past month i have seen an explosion of "x joined telegram" and i told those relatives "remember how i made you download telegram back in the day, now i want you to get element because i am quitting telegram". that brought a few laughs.

my point is like yours. short of something catastrophic with whatsapp or facebook or instagram, people will not change because it requires you to download an app which takes 5 minutes. too much friction. /s