Hi everyone,
First of all, I know WhatsApp doesn’t belong to Google so I’m technically in the wrong community.
Still I think getting rid of Facebook is part of the same movement.
I’ve been using Threema (and Signal/SMS a little bit) for years with all my close contacts, but I can’t fully get rid of WhatsApp as I’m part of some groups where I can’t convince/force everyone to move to Threema.
Because I was still on WhatsApp, a lot of people outside of the necessary groups thought it was okay to contact me on WhatsApp.
I had looked into ways of blocking everyone except these essential groups, but I couldn’t find anything on the web.
Now I think I’ve found the solution to prevent people outside of these necessary WhatsApp groups to write to me on WhatsApp. I had never heard of it before yesterday, but you can download a WhatsApp Business app which lets you send automated answers when people are writing to you.
So I basically just created an automated answer telling people that I’m using Threema/Signal/Sms and that I won’t answer on WhatsApp. Now I don’t have to write long messages telling people to please write to me on another app (and then these people keep writing on WhatsApp of course). So now it’s make the effort or leave me alone 😅
I still plan in ditching WhatsApp for good at one point, but it seems like a good temporary solution and, since I hadn’t found anyone suggesting this idea, I thought I would share it here to help people who have the same problem.
I wondered why you wanted to get rid of it slowly instead of quickly, and it sounds like you got rid of it quickly. Good work. No idea why Threema instead of ordinary email, but whatever.
You don’t know the difference between instant messengers and email?
Because email is annoying for chatting. I very much prefer using slack or teams at work compared to email which I only use for more formal stuff. It would feel very weird to use email with friends.