Note: The following piece contains arguments, uncategorized to conform to any particular format. Little coherence is to be expected as of this time when I’m also writing personalized messages about this decision to be sent to my contacts and need to finish this up fast. There might be a revised version later here.
You may want to read my story of quitting Facebook first to get an overview.
Whatsapp too is now owned by Facebook.
I don’t want to be a customer of a company that doesn’t care about not sharing my data, doesn’t let me know who uses my data and doesn’t let me delete my data when I want it to be deleted.
I remember getting into WhatsApp sometime around in 2013 and removing it after a few weeks of usage. Then again, in order to stay in touch with new people that I just got to meet then, it felt like a need to have WhatsApp available. I later came to know that this is a known phenomenon with a known name - Network Effect.
Now that I decided to prefer communication services where I have control of my data, I’ll be deleting my WhatsApp account. Prior to that, I decided to personally get in touch with everyone in the order mentioned below:
| Contact name starts with | Personalized message sent and contact info requested | Planned date for end of communication on WhatsApp | Responses received |
|---|---|---|---|
| [‘A’ - ‘C’] | Sun 03 Feb 2019 EST | Wed 06 Feb 2019 EST | “Is this a dare?”, “What is this?” |
| [‘D’ - ‘J’] | Wed 06 Feb 2019 EST | Sat 09 Feb 2019 EST | |
| [‘K’ - ‘N’] | Sat 09 Feb 2019 EST | Tue 12 Feb 2019 EST | “Why?”, “Haha” |
| [‘O’ - ‘S’] | Tue 12 Feb 2019 EST | Fri 15 Feb 2019 EST | “Why?(2)”, “What is this?”, “Really?”, one rather inquisitive exchange of words on the lines of ‘isn’t it just ads?’ |
| [‘T’ - ‘Z’] | Fri 15 Feb 2019 EST | Mon 18 Feb 2019 EST | |
| non-Latin chracters | Fri 15 Feb 2019 EST | Mon 18 Feb 2019 EST | |
TIP: You may use this table above on your own blog for your planning purposes
I am also seeing this as an opportunity to organize my contacts.
We have SMS and e-mail (for non-urgent communication) and phone (for urgent communication).
On another note, the availability of 286+ contacts in my WhatsApp account made it seem like I’m being in touch with everyone which isn’t the reality. Let’s talk like real people hereafter, over phone.
As of this writing, I’m planning to investigate setting up infrastructure to enable video calls with you, my contacts. If you have done any work or know anyone that does, in relation to this, I’d appreciate very much if you get in touch with me. You already have my email ID and/or phone number. Don’t you? Please do inform me.
In case, you find it trouble communicating with me any time, please cite this blog post as a start of the argument. We can then arrive at adopting a mutually acceptable method of communication.
Thanks for asking. With quitting Facebook as a start, I initiated my deletion of centralized social networking site and instant messaging app accounts.