WhatsApp & Pinephone - What are the alternatives for collaborative comms?

[danimations]

If you must use WhatsApp, but don't need to be up to date every minute, you could also set up a VM with Android on your desktop machine and install WhatsApp inside. I did that for a while and it worked. It's far from practical, but enough to check new messages once a day or so. WhatsApp in Anbox would be much more convenient, but I'm not sure about the current status there.

I'm very much for opposing privacy invading technology whereever you can if you want something to change. Very often it's a matter of lacking knowledge about background and alternatives, these apps are just used for their convenience and wide spread use while people would be open for alternatives if they were set up for them. So if you can convince your client to use another platform, I would suggest something like the Matrix protocol. It's widely used by now, you can have a nice UI that will be familiar if you have used tools like Slack before and it's not tied to a specific app, you can interface with it however you like. If you read up on it, I'm sure you will find a lot of compelling arguments.

Thanks kqlnut... very helpful advice. Both ideas are worth me exploring.