I’ve come to realise that normals aren’t going to leave WhatsApp any time soon. No amount of explanation trumps the belief that the surveillance doesn’t matter and that their lives would be so much more difficult without the convenience of it. “Why do I need so many apps? Why don’t you just download WhatsApp? It’s free!” is something they often say when asked to cater to yet another of their contacts preferred networks.
So what is needed is a truly all in one messenger app. Something that they could use to chat with all of their contacts, regardless of whether they used WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Matrix, XMPP, etc, etc, etc, would seem to be a proposition which would increase convenience without forcing anybody to leave any particular network.
Signal actually achieves this in a small way by unifying secure Signal messaging and insecure SMS. Matrix has its bridges to several networks and so some will argue that Matrix clients are already the solution to this. But I, who have been developing desktop software professionally for nearly 30 years, found setting up a bridge to a Telegram channel extremely arduous and I required a lot of help. What hope does the average non-technical user have?
What I am proposing is something which has been around for a long time in the desktop world: a multi-protocol client. Such a client would connect to the supported networks directly, rather than being bridged e.g. from Matrix. A user would simply create accounts and enter their credentials for what ever networks they needed to be connected to thus eliminating the current bridging pain. This would allow WhatsApp refuseniks to preserve their privacy by selling the convenience of “all-in-one” rather than the threat of privacy violation. It’s much easier, in my experience, to sell a gain than to sell an insurance against loss.
If such an app were to be developed and widely adopted then it would be up to the privacy preserving networks to encourage their use by a better experience through features, etc. This could see use of the surveillance networks wither and die through lack of interest without ever having to persuade someone that it wasn’t in their interest to stay.
Now, having written all of this, I feel sure somebody is going to say that such an app already exists or that the concept is unworkable for some reason or another. Both may be true. Ladies and gentleman, you have the floor.