The Perils of Trying to Do (More of) the Right Thing

A few weeks ago I quit the messaging app WhatsApp. I explained the decision to my friends and family contacts: WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, and Facebook is one of the worst social media companies, from an ethical perspective. They have engaged in gross and willful violations of privacy (more than most other companies, especially Apple, which has adopted a contrasting business model that banks on privacy), and they have repeatedly refused to do anything about the sort of rampant fake news and foreign-led trolling that we now know had an effect on the 2016 US elections (Twitter, by contrast, has been moving more aggressively in that regard).

Since I was causing some inconvenience, I gave my friends and family five alternative ways to keep in touch with me (other than the old fashioned phone call, of course): the messaging apps Signal and Telegram (which I had researched), iMessage for those within the Apple ecosphere, standard sms, and email.

Several of my contacts understood and respected my decision, and adopted one of the new methods. Some grumbled a little but went along anyway. From some I shall probably never hear again. But one case stood out: an old high school acquaintance (not really a friend), O., went on a rant about how one should not attempt to dictate public morality (I obviously wasn’t), and I could go f*ck…