You'd be surprised how many people in your life can be introduced to secure messaging apps like Signal (which is still centralized, so not perfect, but a big step in the right direction compared to Whatsapp, Facebook, etc) by YOU refusing to use any other communication apps, and helping them learn how to install and use Signal.
Signal is the best messaging app, but not by metrics people use to measure messaging apps, because not a ton of people use it. I use signal, but I also still use SMS (garsp!) because ultimately sometimes I just need to send a message.
It sucks and it's stupid, what we need more than anything else, more than any app, is open and federated messaging protocols.
There is no feasible way for a normie like me to convince enough people to take any kind of action collectively that will be noticed by FAANG.
I think we like to pretend otherwise, like oh if enough people stop using Instagram, they will fail. This is only true in the most literal sense, because "enough" is an enormous number, totally unachievable by advocacy.
We need far better strategies than "vote with your wallet". I think it is at least time to get rid of "vote with your wallet" from our collective vocabularies, for the sake of actual democracy.
If something is bad, it's said that the free market will offer an alternative and the assumed loss of market share will rein in the bad thing. It ignores, as does most un-nuanced discourse about economy and society, that capitalism does not equate to a free market outside of a beginner's economics textbook, and democracy doesn't prevent incumbents from buying up the competition (FB/Instagram) or attempting to block competition outright (Tiktok).
Which is why I think the only solution has to come at the governmental regulatory level. In “freedom” terms it could be framed as freedom from, as in freedom from exploitation, unlawful use of data, etc. but unfortunately freedom to seems to be the most corporate friendly interpretation of freedom.