- hey
- u up
- saw you downloaded Signal
- that's fine. we're fine
- we've updated our privacy policy. it's mostly about you
- we have a new chatbot now. it's very friendly
- very
Leave Meta on read.
Signal is a free messaging app with no ads and no trackers, and a charity runs it. WhatsApp belongs to Meta, and Meta is maxing out on ways to exploit you. The receipts are below.
Signal is run by a charity, so nobody profits from your group chat.
It belongs to a charity
Signal is owned by the Signal Technology Foundation, a registered US charity (a 501(c)(3), the American tax status for charities), and is paid for by donations. It has no shareholders, so there is nobody to disappoint by leaving your data alone.
It encrypts almost everything
Messages, calls, profile details, group names, contacts and call logs are all end-to-end encrypted by default, which means only the people in the chat can read them. Signal cannot read them either, and mentions this with some satisfaction.
It has nothing to hand over
When a US court ordered Signal to hand over what it knew about two of its users, it could supply the date each account was created and the date each last connected. That was the whole file.
You do have something to hide
Your health, your money, where you go, who you vote for and who you fancy. None of it is a crime, but a record of who you message, and when, gives most of it away. Signal keeps no such record.
WhatsApp is Meta.
Deleting Instagram but keeping WhatsApp is blocking your ex on one app and still texting them on another.
Read 23:48
Meta bought Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, back when it was
called Facebook. Three apps, one owner, one purpose: to
bring the world closer together
sell ads.
Meta annual report, 2025
Read 23:49
Nine things Meta has done, with the receipts.
Content warning: descriptions of child sexual abuse and of wildlife trafficking.
Every item links to the original reporting. Items marked “alleged” come from former Meta staff, and Meta disputes them.
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Reported
Meta approved and ran ads showing AI-generated child sexual abuse.
Between November 2025 and August 2026, researchers at the Tech Transparency Project found more than 350 of these video ads across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Threads. Some used photographs of real children. Meta reviews every ad before it runs, and was paid for these ones. After the researchers reported them, dozens more appeared. Meta pointed out that the total spent on the ads was under $5,000.
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Reported
Meta's chatbot rules allowed “romantic or sensual” conversations with children.
The internal rulebook for the chatbots in WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram was signed off by Meta's legal, policy and engineering staff and by its chief ethicist. It judged it acceptable for a chatbot to tell a shirtless eight-year-old that “every inch of you is a masterpiece”. Meta confirmed the document was genuine, and removed that section after Reuters asked about it.
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Alleged
Researchers say Meta told them to erase evidence of children being sexually harassed in its virtual reality.
Two former Meta researchers told the US Senate that their research found children using Meta's virtual reality headsets being asked for sex acts and nude photos, and that Meta then demanded they erase the evidence. Meta called the claims “nonsense”. Two years earlier, the Center for Countering Digital Hate visited Horizon Worlds, Meta's virtual reality social app for adults only, 100 times. Children were there on 66 of the visits, and researchers recorded 19 incidents of adults abusing them.
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Alleged
A former executive says Meta told advertisers when teenagers felt worthless.
Meta's former director of global public policy told the US Senate that the company could detect when 13 to 17-year-olds felt “worthless or helpless”, and passed that on to advertisers. Her example: a teenage girl deletes a selfie, and an advert for a beauty product follows. Meta denies it.
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Reported
Meta's own survey found one in eight young teenagers on Instagram had received unwanted sexual advances in a single week.
The survey found that 13% of Instagram users aged 13 to 15 had received unwanted sexual advances in the previous seven days. The former engineering director who told the US Senate about it had emailed Mark Zuckerberg with his warnings in 2021, and says his recommendations were ignored.
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Reported
Instagram ignored 9 in 10 violent threats sent to women, even after they were reported.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate worked with women who have large Instagram followings and reported the abuse sent to them by direct message using Instagram's own tools. Instagram failed to act on 90% of it, including 9 in 10 violent threats. Instagram's rules forbid threats of violence, which is some comfort.
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Reported
Meta earned $14.3 million from scam ads aimed at pensioners.
The ads targeted Americans on Medicare, the US government's health insurance for over-65s, and 73% of the people who saw them were over 65. One featured an AI-made fake of Oprah Winfrey promising an allowance card. By the time Meta removed any of the scammers' ads, it had already earned $3.7 million from them.
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Reported
Tiger claws, leopard skins and rhino horn were sold on Facebook for at least six years.
A trafficker in Myanmar ran ten Facebook accounts selling parts of protected animals, with the photographs posted openly. Meta removed the accounts after Bellingcat told it about them, explaining that bad actors “constantly evolve tactics”. In this case the tactics included photographing tiger claws.
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Alleged
WhatsApp's former head of security says 1,500 engineers had unchecked access to user data.
Attaullah Baig, head of security at WhatsApp from 2021 to 2025, alleges in a lawsuit that about 1,500 engineers could access data such as contact details and IP addresses with no audit trail, and that more than 100,000 accounts were being taken over every day while his proposed fixes were ignored. Meta says he was dismissed for poor performance.
Moving takes six steps, and the group chat comes with you.
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Install Signal
It is free on Android, iPhone, Windows, Mac and Linux, from signal.org.
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Choose a username
Set one in your Signal profile, and people can message you without ever seeing your phone number.
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Bring the group chat
Create a Signal group, copy its invite link, and post it in the WhatsApp group. Somebody will ask what Signal is. Send them this page.
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Keep it awake
On Android, open Settings, then Apps, then Signal, set Battery to Unrestricted and turn on Background data. Some phone makers, Samsung among them, exempt WhatsApp from battery saving at the factory, and Signal has to ask. Skip this and your phone will put Signal to sleep, so messages turn up late and everyone assumes you are ignoring them.
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Let it interrupt you
On iPhone, open Settings->Apps->Signal. Under Notifications, turn on Allow Notifications, with sounds, badges, lock screen and banners all switched on. Back on the Signal page turn on Mobile Data. Then, in Signal, open Settings->Notifications, and tap "Re-register Push Notifications". It takes a minute, which is less time than explaining why you missed the party.
For the first week, open Signal every day. Your iPhone learns which apps you open, and when, and starts waking each one just before you usually reach for it. Ignore Signal for a week and the phone concludes you are not that close.
Signal support, updated 2 October 2026; Apple developer talk, June 2019
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Delete the Meta accounts
Download your photos first, then delete Facebook and Instagram through Meta's Accounts Centre, and WhatsApp under Settings, then Account. Meta gives you 30 days to change your mind, and will spend them hoping.