[elastolin]

> Obviously many of these people will go with me once I find a better alternative.

People will go only if there's another service that's good enough and has enough user density. You may find the best privacy-oriented, ad-free messaging app, but if it's empty or if it's hard to use, it's essentially useless.

By this point, it's hard to compete with the behemoths like WhatsApp or Telegram and people will not care about this nearly as much as you do. So, no, it's not 'obvious' at all.

[qwerty456127]

I have been told the same about Telegram just a couple of months ago.

Most of the people I know have less than 10 contacts they actually care about and communicate regularly and it is not hard to convince the most of them to install an app you would sincerely recommend.

[elastolin]

You don't understand how hard is for a messaging app to gain traction. Telegram has been growing for years and years, and it offers some significant advantages over WhatsApp. Even with all this marketing and effort, I'd say only about 10% of my WhatsApp contacts are on Telegram. Now you want to get people to move to yet another app? For what? Why would they? Because no ads?

If a new app ever manages to become big (as in, Telegram-level big, let alone WhatsApp), it would take years of raising money and marketing. And how would they pay for that exactly? You think people pay a mensual/anual fee for a messaging apps when there are free alternatives? No, the answer is, again, ads. That or selling user data, which is much worse.

You're too focused on the tech, but you have no understanding of how business works.