All centralized communications and social networking platforms will fall to pressure to sell at this point, if that wasn't their intention (this seems to be the exit strategy of most startups these days). The alternatives exist, but they don't have marketing budgets. They're things like jabber, matrix, Jami, and the many ActivityPub implementations out there.
We have the alternatives already. We can use them now. To me this defeatism is like jumping out of a plane with a parachute and saying "I guess there's nothing to be done now." It starts with you making the decision to use something else. It is harder because of the lock in. But there's only one way to do it.
It's not me using it, it's all my friends and family that's the challenge. Whatsapp isn't just marketing, it was better than everything else by being super easy to use, required no sign up, looked just like text messaging so my parents liked it too. They did everything right (up until they sold it!).
Well, what makes you think that some new company would get any users then? Whatsapp requires sign in by the way. They take your phone number for that reason.
We have the alternatives already. We can use them now. To me this defeatism is like jumping out of a plane with a parachute and saying "I guess there's nothing to be done now." It starts with you making the decision to use something else. It is harder because of the lock in. But there's only one way to do it.