Rid myself of WhatsApp

Technology
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I was a fairly early adopter of WhatsApp and, like so many others, used it for most of my texting needs. I started using Signal some years ago out of privacy concerns, but again like so many others, I was locked into WhatsApp because of its closed source and my many friends who use it and only it.

With worse and worse headlines coming out about Mark Zuckerberg and his terrible company, I recently started exiting old chat groups, goading friends into installing Signal, and ceasing all but the most necessary communicaton through WhatsApp. Finally, when FB started forcing the expected AI garbage into the app, I got my main work group chat moved over to Signal - no small feat, I’ll tell you that much. Yesterday I read about Facebook selling user data to advertisers so they could introduce ads to WhatsApp… and that was the final straw.

I looked up a nifty bit of Python wizardry that decrypts and reads WhatsApp databases, and converts them to these amazingly neat HTML chatlogs, media and all - so I will always have my old chats. This morning, I finally deleted WhatsApp, that greasy stain on my home screen. Never again!

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Congratulations! That sounds like quite a bit of work – I often notice how lucky I must be that Signal already seems to be rather widespread in my circles.

Sooo… I sort of hope the Python code can only decrypt WhatsApp databases that you have the keys for?

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WhatsApp is sadly ubiquitous here, to the point where it has entered the colloquial lexicon, like band-aid and kleenex.

As to that last query, yes, certainly. Pretty easy to get if you have root access though, I’ll say - was expecting it to be harder. It’s this tool if anyone’s interested - worked like a charm.

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i only have whatsap to hear from my mom who is living abroad. i use RCS to hear from family in the same country.

to hear from friend i use discord. i dont want to be that person to ask people to use something they’ve never heard of, so signal isnt really something i could use lol.

good for u tho, zuck turly sucks lol