> Signal is hardly more private than goddamn Whatsapp.

To be fair, that is largely because WhatsApp partnered with Open Whisper to bring the Signal protocol into Whatsapp. So effectively, you're saying "Signal-the-app is hardly more private than another app that shares Signal-the-protocol".

In practical terms, the only way for Signal to be significantly more private than WhatsApp is if WhatsApp were deliberately breaking privacy through some alternative channel (e.g. exfiltrating messages through a separate connection to Meta).