I think this is because of FB/Meta. I would assume that they dont have massive financial restrictions from investors due to their data harvesting capability. Other apps like Telegram, however, might work harder to introduce money-making features.

Is it? WhatsApp calls home a lot in background, so much it was draining my phone’s battery. Also, business features are coming for a while, bloating the app. Heck, on iOS its installer has 163 MB!

Crypto shit aside, I think Signal is way more focused. Element/Matrix, too.

I know very well of 20 people atleast who use Whatsapp a lot and nobody has had an issue with battery due to Whatsapp. You can try Netguard and disable Whatsapp networking to validate your battery hypothesis, but I doubt it is true. Business features are not in the app for normal users (Whatsapp Business is a different app), and I don't even know of a single business feature. Business chats to me are like normal chats. 163 MB is below normal these days on iOS AFAIK. I think both Signal and Element have similar sizes.