Why I’m removing WhatsApp and Facebook completely

Brief summary for the friends to whom I sent this post as an explanation: on 1 January 2026, I will permanently delete all my Meta accounts. This means that you will no longer be able to find me on Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp. The latter will be particularly difficult. Not because I use WhatsApp a lot for my personal communication, but because of all the WhatsApp groups in Flanders for passing on information to parents or arranging things. But look, I don’t want to be held hostage any longer. From now on, they’ll have to do without me. I am easily reachable in countless other ways: via email, SMS / RCS / iMessage, Signal, telephone, or Discord, to name but a few. You’ll find me. And if not, I will survive. That is the short version of my announcement. If you are not interested in a lengthy discourse on the power of big tech companies, you should stop reading here. 🙂

Before I dive into the details, let’s first address the hypocrisy, so we can get that out of the way: yes, I am a huge Apple fan. And yes, three-quarters of my life is connected to Apple services. And yes, Apple is one of the big tech companies I’m going to target here. I realise all that. And I’m certainly no stranger to a little hypocrisy. And if Apple turns out to be very evil tomorrow, then I have a problem. But anyway, I made that choice, and I have my reasons for it. I promise I’ll come back to that in a bit.

Big Tech

We constantly read in the newspapers that ‘Big Tech’ has too much power. But what does that actually mean? It says that the whole world revolves around a few companies. Take away Microsoft and Google, and half the business world collapses. Take away Meta and Google, and our social networks collapse. Take away Microsoft and Apple, and our laptops will no longer work. Take away Google and Apple, and we will no longer be able to find our way (literally), we will no longer be able to order food, we will no longer be able to pay, we will no longer be able to turn on our smart lights, and we will no longer know what to do on the loo. Take away Amazon, and a lot of companies will no longer be able to sell their goods.

A few observations:

1. I have only mentioned a handful of companies, but the consequences of their disappearance are far-reaching.
2. I have not mentioned a single European company. Only American ones. I could add Alibaba, Samsung, and TikTok to mention a few Asian companies, but the European list remains blank.
3. I have mentioned Google very often.

Stockholm syndrome

Whether we like it or not, this dependence makes us hostages and those companies hostage-takers. Because if they are not happy with a law or regulation, they threateningly say ‘BEWARE’ and then the regulators back down. They all do it, Apple perhaps most of all. We are experiencing this ourselves here in Europe. Europe is perhaps the strictest and most critical regulator in the world, one that seems to genuinely care about the privacy and security of its citizens and the protection of our planet. But those American companies are not impressed and are giving us the middle finger by simply depriving us of functionalities.

Mark Zuckerberg, the nerdy, somewhat clumsy boy at the head of the Facebook empire Meta, is anything but stupid. He realises that certain monopolies or duopolies, such as the smartphone market, cannot be broken, but he has been working on dominance in social networks for twenty years. Whether you share a joke on Facebook or complain about your neighbours, whether you arrange to play tennis or tell a story about a teacher in the parents’ group on WhatsApp, whether you share a holiday photo or a rare animal on Instagram, or perhaps have a discussion on Threads: it all passes through Mark’s servers. And he has us in a stranglehold. Because unlike a washing machine or a car, you can’t just change brands if you’re no longer satisfied. Dependency is somewhat inherent to all software (opening Word documents in OpenOffice is not always a breeze), but with Meta products it’s extreme: your followers on Instagram, the parent groups on WhatsApp, your old Facebook friends: you can’t transfer them to another platform. Choosing is losing: if you choose to turn your back on Mark, you pay a heavy price. And he realises that. So he can make you do anything.

The phenomenon is so common that they’ve come up with a term for it. ‘Enshittification.’ The practice of first making something free and attractive, thereby attracting many users, creating a great deal of dependency, and then tightening the screws, making it worse or more expensive. Like a giant trap that we all walked into with our eyes wide open.

I haven’t mentioned A.I. yet. How do you think that will play out? ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini: they’re all free today. Never before have we embraced a technology faster than generative A.I. — it’s barely a few years old and we wonder how we ever did without it. But do you think that will last? Think again.

There is no such thing as free

It’s a harsh message, but there is no such thing as free. Everything we do, we do with a purpose. Some of those purposes are very noble. When I do something for my children, my intention is to be a good father and show my love; that’s how parenting works. When I give up my seat on the train to someone who needs it more than I do, I hope that my karma points will go up and I’ll get it back in forty years. But companies like Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Apple laugh at that. Everything they do, absolutely everything, must have a commercial return. And that ranges from making users pay to selling advertisements or selling user data.

With every product we use, we have to ask ourselves, ‘How does this make someone richer?’ Software developers need to eat, so with every product, I want to know what the underlying revenue model is. Sometimes it’s obvious: if software has a one-time or subscription price, that’s a source of income. If software is full of advertisements, that is also a clear source of income. Sometimes it is more subtle; if software is free but the sympathetic developer asks for a cup of coffee via PayPal, that can be a source of income. But if we have no idea at all, then we should be concerned. A fantastic free app that makes our lives better and doesn’t show any adverts? A service where you can host your photos for free and share them with everyone? That’s when my senses go on high alert: that’s just not possible.

Take Google and their search engine, their oldest and best-known product. Keeping it up and running requires huge investments. Data centres and data centres and data centres are being built and consume electricity, just to continuously search the internet for new websites, index them, and answer our billions of questions every day. And that’s completely free? Ha! Google earns billions and billions of dollars purely from companies that ask them to influence our search results. So what you get on Google is not an objective search result. And that’s not even mentioning all your data that is collected and resold. If you search via Google, drive via Google, chat via Google, meet via Google, create documents via Google, use AI via Google, and have your mailbox with Google, then Google knows everything about you. Just like Meta knows everything about you. And OpenAI (ChatGPT) is gradually getting there too. Because AI also costs a fortune, and it simply doesn’t make sense that it’s free. It’s not free, and it can’t possibly remain free.

Let me pay

So from now on, I’m resolutely opting for clear revenue models, where I am no longer the product. Some people think I’m crazy, but I pay for my search results. I use Kagi for my search results, and I don’t miss Google one bit. For AI at work, I use a paid Copilot version with a processing agreement, and privately I use a paid Perplexity. I chat via Signal and I voluntarily donate something to them for that. I have been happily paying for a mailbox and web hosting at Combell for 20 years and today I would choose ProtonMail. I pay for cloud hosting and backup. And then there’s Apple, where pretty much all my other services are.

Yes, Apple is just as much a Big Tech giant. Apple is equally well not doing charity. Apple has just as much insight into all my data. And Apple is just as much an ecosystem walled garden that I am stuck in if I ever want to change. So why don’t I turn my back on them right away? Call me naive, but because I believe in their revenue model. They have spent 50 years building a reputation for quality, premium hardware. They link services to that hardware, forcing you to buy another expensive iPhone after that first one. They make everything work seamlessly together, so that after that expensive iPhone, you’re tempted to buy an expensive Mac. And for the last 10 years, they’ve carefully built their entire reputation on privacy and security. If anything punctures that carefully constructed image, the whole house of cards will collapse. If someone catches Apple flagrantly violating your privacy, it’s game over for Apple. If Apple starts churning out crappy hardware and software, it’s game over. Business logic perfectly explains how they make their money and how they cannot afford to deceive me and sell my data. Go ahead and call me naive, but that’s what I believe today. And if Apple turns out to be evil tomorrow, then I’ll have a big problem, but I’ll solve that problem.

Because no matter how you look at it, we have to choose something or someone. And today, that is often an American tech giant. Because despite all the efforts to find European alternatives, today it’s often a case of crying over spilt milk. I would love nothing more than to see a European smartphone with a serious European operating system, but I don’t see that happening in the first ten years.

Bye bye Meta

I turned my back on Google a long time ago, and today I am doing the same with Meta. That choice goes hand in hand with choosing paid alternatives such as Kagi, Perplexity, and yes, Apple. And supporting Signal. And you don’t have to switch to Signal yourself to send me a message: the standard text messaging app on your phone has supported RCS for a while now, allowing you to easily share photos or videos, or create group chats. If you have something to send, you’ll find me. But no longer on WhatsApp.