I was the exact same way. I could justify watching ads to support the people I watched, but then I learned how little compensation a creator actually gets from one view and decided my time was more valuable. Plus I just got too used to never seeing ads and could never go back.

This video sums up the sentiment you’re describing nicely.

I just got set up on Simple X Chat. From my cursory research it seems to have the best security going in a chat app right now. I find the UI really slick too. It has all the features I use in a chat app anyway. The only thing to be aware of is that all the messages are saved locally, so backup/recovery needs to be handled by you. There’s a couple videos an YouTube that go over the app.

All that being said, I still have WhatsApp on my phone. There’s still the same problem of getting everyone in your life to download another app.

Someone will be smuggling microfiche behind the iron curtain…wait wrong century.

Never been happier to be on Lemmy ❤️ Well maybe it’s a close second to the day I switched!

I think the internet just caused the trend lifecycle to become much shorter. So short that they only last fractions of a decade now.