Yup. Reality. No point using a hyper secure chat system if literally nobody you know is using it.

Pretty much what will always happen. You move away from society, you get fucked. Your mental health is down the drain. However, this allows an opportunity to introspect on how respectful your friends really are, and what you want your life to be like. Most privacy stans never capitalise on this opportunity and get fucked instead.

We should be glad that WhatsApp with E2EE is what people jumped to, instead of Facebook Messenger or Viber or some crap with no encryption. While Facebook does abuse metadata, message content is perfectly secure and private, and your metadata does not matter much in daily life when it’s just your family and friends. I would not use it to connect to people if I was a big public activist or politician or high profile person, since both the metadata and a popular app with 0days can become a threat to my life or assets.

I should share my testimony. My “good” friend did not give a fuck about privacy when I asked him to use Signal for me. Our communication massively decreased. A year passed, and we stopped communicating. I learnt that day that most people in life who are “friends” see you as an investment, and it can be treated as a sunk cost endeavour. Also learnt that we saw each other as friends of convenience and not necessity or truly.