For people like me who just can’t shake off WhatsApp, because they need it for messaging people, you can use beeper and turn off most of the permissions for whatsapp and keep whatever WhatsApp does at bay, limiting its access. UNLESS it is for calls, beeper can’t take calls. It will notify you to open the whatsapp when there is an incoming call.

Beeper is built on matrix and claims “zero-access encryption”, and has no ads yet.