Delta Chat was one of the FOSS projects affected: https://chaos.social/@delta/114211300446944585

You wouldn’t get it 🚬

Not really, I like Delta Chat because the usability, no other app gave me the same peace of mind and reliability in bad connectivity areas (which I find myself often)

As for the family and friends that use it with me, they certainly don’t use it because encryption and privacy, I don’t even advertise the privacy and freedom much or try to make them uninstall whatever other apps they use for chatting, they use it because it is the way to reach me and it solves a problem for them.

And Delta Chat is not XMPP, at least for now

Yeah and they will not know it exist until you try it out and let them know about the app and help them try it out and get in contact with you.

Unlike WhatsApp that has millions to throw in marketing, come preinstalled on devices and by know “everyone uses it” other smaller projects that are not making money out of you need your help to do the “marketing” part

To show you that it doesn’t have to be a forever alone experience, in your case perhaps it will be, if you are the kind that have to run after the people close to you and accommodate to their requirements for them not to leave you behind and forgotten perhaps you are already alone…

My personal experience: 121 chats (just my family account I have several other accounts)

Your parents can use something else to message you, for other people they can switch to SMS in worse case, just uninstall the app with a goodbye message once you are not there there will be some real reasons for other people to join you elsewhere,

There was a time where there was no WhatsApp and no one died because of it, true there might be some extra inconveniences but the question is if you have the will to do the change, I deleted WhatsApp and things are OK so far I am not using Signal either, I use Delta Chat and email mainly

I use Delta Chat exclusively to chat with my family, I don’t even have WhatsApp installed.

Delta Chat has most of the features you need for communication the only missing thing is integrated calls that cause the phone to ring, which is not a deal breaker for me since I don’t call often, used the jitsi meet integration once with them was a bit messy to get my mom etc to figure out how to use jitsi meet in the browser while explaining via voice messages in Delta Chat, but I think adding integrated calls is in the roadmap

It is easy to disable, just follow this basic steps:

1. uninstall WhatsApp
2. install and use Delta Chat
3. Enjoy 🎉

Or the classic “guys I am leaving WhatsApp, moved my whole family to Signal, another centralized US-based silo that requires phone numbers and runs on AWS, CloudFlare, etc.”