Comment by IshKebab

> This is a feature, not a bug.

Uhm no. I wanted to know who real people were. At the time it was the much more secure and private than anything else because you needed to be at the same university to see anyone's accounts, and the idea of selling user data for profit didn't even exist.

> There is also so much that's truly awful about it, such as Meta vacuuming up your contact list, photos, and recording extensive telemetry

Sure. That doesn't invalidate any of the good stuff, and is minor in comparison (contact lists are not as valuable as you seem to think). If Signal had existed at the time I'm sure it would have been extremely popular too. Also photos are E2E encrypted.