I'm in a similar boat to the author and have also recently deleted my Facebook and Instagram account - although I'll note that the sneaky "to be deleted" state is now 30 days instead of just 7.
But, similar to the author, I'm having more difficulty getting rid of WhatsApp. This is my primary means of communicating with friends and family all over the world. And for some of them I know it's just not an option to try get them to switch to another platform, especially since I'm not sure which is the better platform. In my opinion, WhatsApp strikes the perfect balance of security and usability. Telegram makes me nervous due to the Russian roots and the numerous security concerns I've read online. Signal is overly secure to the point that usability for regular folk suffers (I've personally had terrible experience with their support after losing a bunch of SMS messages.) Matrix, Riot, MatterMost, and many other opensource apps all look good but not overly user-friendly for novices.
The fun part is that whatsapp is actually preventing people like from communicating with friends and family.
My phone happens to a smartphone that's not running windows/apple/google so whatsapp never bother to release for this phone.
Whatsapp being a walled garden it prevents everyone from the outside from reaching people jailed inside.
As you do not have a data plan, I have no internet access with this pocket computer we use as telephone.
Whatsapp is utterly pointless and useless to me, and coherent with facebook way of doing things it actively prevents me from contacting other people, which is shocking to me who grew accustomed to thing like email, jabber or sms .
The amount of people without a "Microsoft/Apple/Google smartphone" (ie. not running iOS, Android, or Windows Phone [sic]) is very low in absolute and relative numbers. You might run say Sailfish OS, they have an Android emulator. Backwards compatibility is extremely important in the software ecosystem.
Durov (Telegram) had a fallout with Russian government elite who raided his business and now lives in exile in UK (last time I checked). He has no direct links to KGB. Indirect - who knows.
Also security issues, lack of privacy, lack of proper encryption, censorship, etc. among a long trail of reasons.
Also whatsapp founder quitting and leaving 850millions dollars on the table doing so over the way facebook makes money out of whatsapp and for th way facebook made him mislead the european commission to have them green light the sale of whatsapp to facebook.
He also called repeatedly for people to get rid of Facebook services.
But, similar to the author, I'm having more difficulty getting rid of WhatsApp. This is my primary means of communicating with friends and family all over the world. And for some of them I know it's just not an option to try get them to switch to another platform, especially since I'm not sure which is the better platform. In my opinion, WhatsApp strikes the perfect balance of security and usability. Telegram makes me nervous due to the Russian roots and the numerous security concerns I've read online. Signal is overly secure to the point that usability for regular folk suffers (I've personally had terrible experience with their support after losing a bunch of SMS messages.) Matrix, Riot, MatterMost, and many other opensource apps all look good but not overly user-friendly for novices.
What else is there?