My distrust of Meta wants to say they somehow siphon everything, but you’re probably right. We don’t know for sure, and speculating is probably just crazy-making at the end of the day.

I’m seriously just considering setting up a self hosted Matrix instance and piping all my chat apps through that. Get the more tech literate friends on something more secure, and then be done with the rest lol I’m basically already the unofficial (and untrained) sysadmin for my property lol

Like everyone else said, funding=/=ownership. I do suspect, however, that part of why these big tech companies fund Linux is because they rely on something built on Linux in one way or another. Linux tends to be the better options for things like servers, low processing devices, and more, and if they keep funding it, it continues to exist so they can use it. You’d be surprised about how much of the world actually uses Linux in some way.

Okay, that’s both cool and scary lol and Fair, yeah. I think WhatsApp would be the last on my list. I’d rather my telecom company siphon the data over Meta, but I get you

That’s… Wow! Here, people prefer to use non-SMS options for messaging too, but if you give someone a phone number it’s pretty much assumed you’re getting an SMS unless they ask if you have WhatsApp, signal, or whatever else. That said, using Messenger is still pretty common here, as much as I’d wish it would die off. It is, slowly, but it needs to be quicker lol

I don’t think I’ve ever actually used WhatsApp. An old boss tried to tell me that it was mandatory for my job (there was a group chat where management insisted on tracking every single thing we did). Fortunately, Ontario has somewhat decent labour laws where if you’re required to use an app or something on your phone, your employer now gets to pay for your phone bill! Needless to say, she backed off pretty quick lol

Also, the concept of NEEDING WhatsApp for daily life is wild to me. It’s not the norm for businesses, banks, etc to require it, and if someone says they do, it’s probably a scam here…

If you ask REALLY nicely (or bribe me with a coffee), I’ll share my cat pics with you! We’ll take Grandma down!