1. move your closed source messengers to another phone
2. keep it always turned off additionally with all the graphene features, always at home, somewhere inconvenient
3. open it once a week, and you will see who needs to contact you will ask you for a better way to communicate

I think for my friends it's just what we have been using for literally a decade since we were kids, combined with apathy towards privacy - although of my friends does use duckduckgo. I don't judge them for that since I've been pretty bad with privacy. I do worry if we get into more activism that we will need to secure our privacy

The crux is that all the alternatives suck. I don't have a problem going App hopping, I just have a very hard time finding ones that don't fundamentally suck, and I am not talking about little implementation issue, but garbage like Signal that violates the GDPR, wants your phone number and is proud of it. Always grinds my gears when that gets celebrated as the "alternative". Same with the Fediverse, where user owns nothing and server operator controls everything, how again is that different from Reddit, Facebook and Co.?

Nostr and Tox seem ok so far, but really the amount of true alternatives that improve on the original in significant ways is pretty damn rare.

I'm personally trapped on Discord and Instagram.

Discord is required by my workplace, so no way of getting rid of it until everyone decides to move to something better. I have some friends on it too, but most of them also made Matrix accounts when I explained I won't be very reachable on Discord (I only open it when necessary; and it doesn'r run on my phone since they rewrote the app in JS). I have Instagram as a way to people I meet during travel or events to "add me" easily, and then we can figure out a good way to communicate afterward. I'm not too bothered by having it as I don't use it daily or anything.

I think the way we are trying to make technology sound sophisticated and our refusal to reinvent language makes technology become much less accessible than what they should be.

It's hard to get people to care about things. I've gotten a couple people to switch to signal (which I hope is good), but I have one holdout who keeps saying "ill switch later". I don't understand why "take 3 minutes to install signal" can't be done right now, but I'm not a mess of depression, anxiety, and debt, so I've just been giving them gentle reminders every so often.

Tech illiteracy is the biggest reason.

These days people dont hardly know what IRC or a router is/does, theyre not going to change to any other application unless its DEAD easy.

Also I despise discord UI and always have. I must just be old, but its sucks and is horribly designed. Now it has built in ads so it really pisses me off. At least most of my friends moved on from Snapchat (literal Spyware).

Why is it so hard to get friends to leave

I mean the reason is usually summed up with a single word when I make the suggestion: "Why?". People don't know and/or don't care. You try and explain it and they mock you and act like you're a paranoid conspiracy theorist.

what apps do you feel most trapped in?

Geeze, you name it. Right now I need a new job, and if you're not looking on Indeed, you're severely limiting your options. You can't see anything on Indeed without creating an account and turning over ALL of your personal details, much less actually submit an application. Not to mention the site itself is just horrendous to use. If we had some sort of technological standard protocol for submitting resumes ( so you could send them the same way you send contact info via .vcf), or even OCR that actually worked, it could be a lot easier, but we don't, so the alternative is going and typing in all of your information for every individual application, which simply doesn't work when you're submitting a couple dozen every day, on top of their meaningless personality quizzes and chatting endlessly with AI bots, and aptitude tests and video response interviews and and and...

I make a good % of my money for my business using FB and IG. Not through ads but just through networking. Although I'm about to close my doors (due to unrelated market circumstances), at which point I'll delete them. But then I will mostly lose access to all of the events that are shared exclusively on these platforms. I ask them to share them elsewhere but it's more of the same, mocking and asking why.

When it comes to open source, Discord and Reddit seem to be the platforms of choice. Usually this means I simply ignore otherwise-promising projects.

Fortunately almost no one has ever asked me to use WhatsApp. Usually only international travelers. I usually just decline and/or ask them to use Signal.

Network effect and the path of least resistance.

People usually resist change until there's a net and obvious gain, or when thing don't work as expected anymore.

And you need to consider that what's important in a messaging platform for someone, might be vastly different for another.

Understanding why those platforms are bad is another layer of thought that most people aren't capable or willing to engage in.

The inconvenience of switching and learning a new thing is the largest deterrent. People complain but don't care enough due to those reasons to switch.

I only text people on Signal, except the old grandparents or potential new friends that I will in time get to switch to Signal.

These are just opinions, but here are the two I know about (I don't use WhatsApp)

Discord: It's not just you. You would have to get their other connections, all their servers, and all the connections from those servers to switch. Frankly speaking, Revolt isn't ready for that to happen. You are one person. I'm sorry, but if I have 1 friend vs. all of my servers and friends, I'm not going to make a meaningful change for the one person. And tbh I'm more likely to be the one than the many. What I would suggest is to try and put yourself between the two services, help to build the communities you want to see, then invite people over.

Instagram: Same issue as Discord. The fediverse doesn't have the variety of content, the wide range of users, or half the stuff to engage with.

Cory Doctorow refers to this as the Anatevka problem.

Because everyone else they know is there. If the people they follow and interact with moved to Mastodon or switched messengers to Signal, you’ll see how quickly they will move. It’s hard to convince someone to sign up or install a new app if it’s only you they’ll find there. I was able to switch my family over to Signal and they literally use it only for family group chats, because they don’t know anyone else who uses it. And they were a little easier to convince because they’re family. I won’t be able to convince people with less close ties to me like friends, acquaintances, and neighbors.

I had my wife and best friend using signal until they dropped support for sms. Switching between apps was too much for us.

I can't control my contacts. I can control what I do. I was personally getting annoyed enough with Discord that I uninstalled the thing and stopped visiting it on the web. My account still exists AFAIK. I didn't make a big production of it nor tell anyone; I simply left.

It was a bit of a sacrifice because I don't connect with an extremely rewarding community on there as much anymore. Thankfully they still host IRL meetups and I do go to those.

I'm opinionated about messaging apps but I don't try to convince anyone. Well, other than siblings and SOs. People who want to talk to me can find me on the apps I do hang out in. If they ask why I'm not on the big ones I will gladly tell them. But where they end up is their decision, not mine.