It’s not about having the option, I love having alternatives. It’s about 90s ways being the only choice when they could have better options. E.g. You need to send a form. It’s already a pdf file, send it by email, right? No, it has to be physical mail… or fax if they have a number. Oh, and you have to stamp on it. No pdf. Multiply that by time constraints and local bureaucracy mixed in.
In a similar situation as you (entire society revolves around whatsapp). I came to this conclusion:
Others won’t share my view on personal privacy at all will happily give out any metadata or data. No matter what secure channel we use, the destination (people) will always leak.
Because of (1), consider all communication with others as public, no matter the inferred intimacy, no matter the platform or its security.
Consider (2) as true even if they somehow used Signal or any secure platform, because of (1). (E.g. “Hey, did you hear about $familyMember? Yes, the weird kiddo who forced me to use some strange blue shit for chat. He got positive on blood exam for $badCondition. Go check on him”)
As for whatsapp itself, i use Android and isolate it in a separate profile, also frozen until opened. I also used a burner phone number for account registration, not my actual number.
People are more receptive of whatsapp accounts with “alternate” numbers when you explain you “got hacked in the past” or any plausible reason.
It should be perfectly doable. The only difference is that the server in on the local network (e.g. 192.168.1.101) instead of localhost (127.0.0.1). You might need to configure your OS firewall to let traffic through.
There are many ways to solve this problem, with different degrees of acceptance: legally (arguing for personal freedom granted by basic laws, depends on jurisdiction), or technologically (tools to evade or deceive censorship techniques, could require technical knowledge for proper use).
We have the tools, but legal grounds can also play a greater role (e.g. declaring vpn/tor illegal causes a chilling effect for potential beneficiaries).