Fuck these walled gardens.
I wonder how you can manage without WA in the Netherlands. For me, all group events, sports, kids' activities, trips, vacations, family things, etc are managed in a whatsapp group. To "App" has entered daily Dutch vocabulary as a verb (meaning sending a whatsapp message). I'm in dozens of groups (none of them created by me) and participating in anything without it would be very unpractical.
I'll gladly deal with any downsides if that means maintaining the principled standpoint that being a member of society doesn't require owning either an Android or IOS smartphone, being forced to run someone's black-box proprietary software, and agreeing with some foreign mega-corporation's dubious terms of agreement. It's harmful for democratic society as a whole to engender such a dependency.
Besides, if the experience of friends and colleagues is anything to go by, opting in to Whatsapp means you get its downsides too: that one group member who keeps spamming everyone with noise, the constant demand for attention, the gossipy, sometimes down-right stalkerish neighbourhood watch groups (glad my neighbourhood hasn't hung up those sycophantic Whatsapp street signs), not to mention Facebook looking over your shoulder at the metadata level.
Besides, I'm not alone in taking this particular stance here in this country.
This is the reason I have faint hope for government intervention here. Whatsapp has become critical infrastructure and a monopoly in NL. I would want to close my account when ads happen but it’s just too big an impact to do so. Because of the nature of messaging the alternatives are simply not an option unless everyone switches.