You need a whatsapp account still to use a bridge like thjs. The bridges are for Matrix which is an open source messaging network.
Beeper is built using matrix, and is owned by an American for profit company that also owns WordPress. They’re hosting the bridges, and they encrypt your chat but the bridges are vulnerable to service operators like WhatsApp not locking them out.
Personally I am going for Signal (which ia run by an American non profit) and SMS, and completely leaving WhatsApp.
You can run the bridges yourself, they’re open source. Requires more work (and your own server, of course).
As for third party services, yeah they can block you but then you’ll end up in exactly the same situation as when you say “I only use Signal” anyway. The whole reason people are setting up services like this is because the people they chat with aren’t on their platforms if choice.
Though it’s worth noting that, currently, you need to relaunch WhatsApp on a device every few weeks.
I thought this would be my key to being able to uninstall WhatsApp, but it’s not quite.
Also, people have an annoying habit of calling me via WhatsApp, which currently has no implementation in Beeper. This results in a hasty launch of WhatsApp, which then has to catch up with all the messages sent since the last launch, and I’ll inevitably miss the call.
Also, people have an annoying habit of calling me via WhatsApp
I hate that “feature” with a burning passion. It’s almost always worse than a regular phonecall and yet explaining to my boomer relatives why they can hear me much more clearly when I call them has not managed to change their preferred method of calling me.
I find it works well for me, especially internationally. I don’t want to think of the fees I’d rack up with normal calls.
