Instant Messengers as of 2023
Instant messengers are the primary means of communication of our time. What used to be the telephone and then text messaging is now instant messaging. This makes it all the more surprising that we use self-contained systems. That would be like a Telekom customer not being able to talk to a Vodafone customer. But that is exactly the situation with instant messengers at the moment: If you want to contact someone who uses WhatsApp, you can't do it from other messengers. There is a compulsion to install WhatsApp and accept its conditions in order to contact its customers.
This situation would be unthinkable in other telecommunications networks.
A solution would be simple - from a technical point of view
A technical solution would be simple. It would enable the different services to communicate with each other. That was the case a few years ago. Facebook Messenger could send messages to users of Google Talk or Microsoft Messenger. The reason that this possibility no longer exists is due to the fact that the messenger providers have deliberately taken this freedom away from their customers in order to be able to market them better.
This closed-off space is also called the "communication silo", and there is a way out of it.
An additional messenger app frees you from the so-called "communication silo"
It is possible to install a Messenger app which does not build artificial walls. This is exactly the standard that made it possible to send messages across different providers a few years ago. This standard is called "XMPP". And apps for this there are many. Here's a selection:
Advantages of free instant messengers
You do not have to give out your cell phone number
It is possible to correct messages after sending
You don't need a cell phone for it (but you can)
One does not have to link all people together with one phone number, but can have one account for professional and one for private contacts, to separate them
No problem to change phone numbers, because you don't need a phone number
You can freely choose which app you want to chat with
Less playful. Concentrate on messages by text and picture, calls by sound and video
Sending attachments of any size without limit
Encryption more trustful and therefore more secure than other messenger services, as the apps are open source
Usage
Since you are not bound to your cell phone number with free messengers, you set
your own username and password. It is like an email, and it looks the same.
E.g. you have an address like myname@myprovider.net. With this address
you log in to the app, and anyone can write to you to this address.
How do you get the address? If you start one of the apps mentioned above, you can either create such an address with a password, or enter it to start the app with an already existing address.
After logging in, you can send messages to others' addresses.
That's all:
Install an app
Create address or enter existing address
Send a message to the address of another person
Why non-free messengers are so successful
So why are non-free messengers so successful when free messengers have so many advantages? Because contacts are easier to maintain in non-free messengers. Non-free messengers load phone numbers from the address book into their system. The phone numbers are used to identify contacts. Thus eliminates the need to create an address, as described above. Also it is not necessary to communicate the address to others.
This advantage is also the disadvantage of non-free messengers: If you only have the phone number, you have to tell it to everyone you want to contact via the messenger. And you can't just change the phone number, you have to tell all your contacts that you have a new phone number.
In addition, you are not only tied to a phone number, but also to a provider, such as WhatsApp, to its apps, to the systems on which these apps can be installed, and to the provider's rules.
This is a great deal of restriction of one's personal freedom that one accepts.
Regain freedom
Let's compare that with an address separate from the phone number, which also works across different providers, as is the case with free messengers from the list above. Then this restriction of freedom does not exist. One can log in on any device at any time. The change of the phone number has no influence on it. You can even have multiple accounts on one device and separate your contacts. Or one of the addresses only on the laptop, and not at all on the mobile phone. The little bit of extra circumstance of having an extra address obviously gives a great deal of freedom.
But many people nowadays give up this degree of freedom just to avoid having an address that looks and works like an email address.
Here you can make yourself aware of the advantages of a free system, and install one of the apps mentioned above. It is so easy to regain a great deal of of freedom.