Trading one proprietary app that gives you ownership over your own data (WhatsApp) for another proprietary app that locks your data (Signal) is not an "ethical" replacement, it's merely a (worse) alternative.
I think you are completely reversed in how you're analysing the situation there, so I'd like you to expand on it - two questions:
1: How does WhatsApp give you ownership over your data that Signal doesnt?
2: How is Signal locking this data?
With WhatsApp I can backup and restore my messages. With Signal I cannot. I had to reset my iPhone 2 weeks ago because "system storage" was magically taking up 30GB of my 128GB iPhone. The iCloud backup restored everything perfectly, including my 15-year old WhatsApp history. However all my Signal messages were lost. And even worse, this is apparently by design. You can't backup your messages on an iOS device. It's my data, let me do it what I want. But that's not possible, the data can only exist in a proprietary compiled app.
WhatsApp is a lot better in this regard. I can backup my messages in multiple ways, and I can even export a conversation as a ZIP file straight from my iPhone.
You definitely can back up your messages on signal.
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007059752-Ba...
> but there is no way that is happening outside really nerdy
Yep, see email and the phone network /s
> It is of course possible to create signal clients that are forks of Signal.
Which may be killed at any time when they connect to the central Signal server, see LibreSignal
It is of course possible to create signal clients that are forks of Signal.
I don't see how this is an -ethical- issue though providing the ethics of Signal align with that of the user (they do with mine), and if they're doing something unethical then you should not be using them anyway (hence me not using WA)