I got rid of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp about 4 years ago. Facebook and Instagram was easy, but people who have WhatsApp really think you’re weird for not having it.

Deleting WhatsApp, while annoying for me personally, has resulted in many people I know joining Signal or Telegram — the network effect can be broken by being belligerent.

If you don’t want to have a conversation about why you deleted WhatsApp, simply say it’s a moral issue, nobody wants to know.

Use mautrix-whatsapp [1] on a home server to bridge Matrix chat to WhatsApp and (optionally) add a dedicated VoIP phone number for WhatApp.

Allows you to connect to/chat with WhatApp users using Matrix/Element.

[1]: https://github.com/mautrix/whatsapp