You may not need any incentive to do this, but I’m going to argue that moving from WhatsApp to Signal is an important action, right now. There are other alternatives to WhatsApp, of course, but several have received criticism over various issues so I’m going to focus on Signal here. Please comment below if you’d like to propose ethical alternatives to WhatsApp.  

In March I argued that we should choose Bluesky over X/Twitter, based on the obvious reason of boycotting companies connected to Musk. Bluesky is structured as a benefit corporation (like Patagonia) and based on an open network, two features that create strong incentives for the company to not upset its users.

This creates an alignment between Bluesky and its users – Bluesky is disincentivized to make a bad user experience. This also acts as a kind of poison pill against a billionaire takeover, or at least a deterrent against this.

Moving from X/Twitter to Bluesky does require some sacrifice for people who worked hard to build up a following on the former. But we’ve reached a point where support of Musk is unconscionable, whatever the sacrifice involved.

Moving to Signal is straightforward in that it’s easy to set up and functionally very similar to WhatsApp. You probably won’t find all of your contacts there yet, so there will be a transition period. But we’ll never transition if individuals don’t take a stand, and it’s more important than ever that we stop supporting tech that interferes with our society.

Ethical issues with WhatsApp