im sort of torn between not ever noticing a problem texting an android user, and anything that affects whatsapp is good as its the devils spawn.
I’m honestly not sure whether I consider Google or Facebook the greater evil, myself! Maybe Google, if just for their love of Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish? Other than that, they’re pretty much the same company. I find myself using Facebook (but only in website form) because I live away from family and a decent number of friends whose lives I still want to hear about some, and because my mom uses Facebook Messenger (RCS is a non-starter for her because, despite my siblings’ and my appeals to them, my parents don’t even own a cell phone) and my younger brother didn’t have a stable SMS environment for years (think SMS via one of those third party SMS apps, then Google Fi, which he didn’t like for a number of reasons, now he’s on a proper carrier and group SMS isn’t really an issue), so groups with either him or mom in them are stuck on Messenger. That and I’ve accidentally lost my wallet on public transportation more than once, and the finders found me on Facebook Messenger and reached out to me. So, in spite of all their issues, Facebook makes products that are still useful for me.
Google, I’ve tried to wean myself off of Google. I’ve used DuckDuckGo for a decade now (and, if I absolutely need to use Google because DDG isn’t returning results, that’s when I add a “!g” to the end of the search string). I use Google Maps, but I don’t use it while logged in, but I usually use it exclusively for Street View (and then, only if Look Around in Apple Maps isn’t available there) and Apple Maps is legitimately better than Google Maps for what I use it for. I’m occasionally stuck with Google Docs/Sheets if I need to collaborate on a document with someone (in a personal context, professional collaboration is usually done via internal work intranet tools). I have a Gmail account that, today, mostly gets used for some older account log ins and marketing messages, it’s just too much of a pain to get all of that off Gmail (and I prefer IMAP to webmail, so I hate how awkward Gmail over IMAP is). And the biggest reason I find it hard to avoid Google properties: YouTube’s online video sharing monopoly. I don’t listen to podcasts on YouTube (and if your podcast doesn’t have an RSS feed for me to subscribe to in my podcast app of choice, then your podcast isn’t worth listening to). But so many of the sorts of videos I enjoy and so many of the skills tutorial videos I use every now and then when furthering a hobby are exclusive to YouTube.
Edit: Honestly, I think I hate Google more. Facebook annoys me because of the ads, and I hate their tendency to Hoover up as much data as possible, but I feel like it’s possible to use the app without giving them too much data. I have some concerns (for myself, perhaps, but for society in general more specifically) when it comes to maintaining a healthy relationship with social media products that 1) doesn’t damage interpersonal relationships (Facebook does that thing where they encourage you to add your whole social graph, including coworkers, but I prefer to disconnect from work at the end of the work day, and combining multiple groups like that is a recipe for disaster), 2) doesn’t result in unhealthy comparisons or unhealthy usage patterns (mostly mental health), 3) doesn’t radicalize you in your own bubble (Facebook can do this, but Twitter is far worse on this count) and doesn’t cause you to viscously attack others, and 4) doesn’t contribute to oversharing. And I feel that the metaverse has the high potential to worsen those 4 situations. But Google sucks up just as much data, YouTube has a lot of the same problems as social media, and Google’s stewardship of YouTube hasn’t really been terribly beneficial to YouTube in the grand scheme of things (if just because Google’s opaque algorithmic ”customer service” manages to be more Byzantine and inscrutable for content creators than anything Facebook has done on its platforms). And there just aren’t Google alternatives, period. You can very well minimize your interactions with Facebook, even if you have an account. You could always use Telegram or Signal over Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp if that really matters to you. Google, inevitably you’ll find yourself without a choice when it comes to using one of their products, if just because there’s no real competitor to Google Docs/Sheets/Slides for (free*) real time collaboration or to YouTube for independent video content (Vimeo just doesn’t have the breadth or depth of content, and DailyMotion is most useful for its relatively lax copyright enforcement relative to YouTube, and none of the other would be challengers have any sort of critical mass**).
* Yeah, I know, free service = you’re the product, and there are some services online I’ll definitely pay for, but a bunch of online services aren’t worth paying for in my mind (and paid dating apps suck just as much as the free apps or freemium apps, so even paid apps can be abusive if the app’s goals aren’t aligned with yours)
** This is also the problem with the host of federated Facebook alternatives. Maybe there’d be a shot if everyone supporting them got behind one (I suppose you’d call it) “protocol”, though I doubt enough people want Facebook style social media on not-Facebook (most people looking to leave Facebook are probably content to leave social networking in general). The YouTube competitors need more than “the sorts of videos that would get demonetized on YouTube”, they need the long tail content, the mainstream-ish independent content (like knitting or watch repair tutorials, for instance), the unobjectionable stuff, but also the sorts of largely unobjectionable stuff that might occasionally skirt issue with ContentID (since ContentID has a fair use issue, and with abuse in general). But none of those videos are going to move over if none of the sites have a good population of viewers.
