this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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Showerthoughts
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And even if you have a smartphone, you are strongly encouraged to get WhatsApp and donate all of your data to Meta that way. Not too long ago someone told me about having sent me messages through a channel don’t even use. I wonder if WhatsApp still shows me as online even though I haven’t used the app in more than 10 years.
I hate that very much. I don't use any of Meta's apps, except for WhatsApp. Why ? Because everyone here in Italy uses it and without it I can't contact basically anyone. Want to contact a medic ? WhatsApp. Want to send a document to a clinic ? WhatsApp. Want to make a group chat with some study collegues ? WhatsApp, because not everyone wants to download Telegram or anything else. No one uses SMS or iMessages. Only WhatsApp...
I’ve been telling people around me to install Signal. If you want to send me messages, install Signal. I’m not installing WhatsApp, any time soon.
Doctor: Please send the exam results.
Lemming: Install Signal.
Doctor: What?
I find it highly unprofessional when people use WhatsApp in a work related contexts. When it comes to healthcare matters, I find it completely unacceptable due to privacy and security concerns. Might as well ask me to print my private health related data on a post card and send that to the doctor.
Pretty sure this goes against multiple EU laws.
Italian here! You just described our country!
Tbf where I live it's messenger and that's way worse than WhatsApp.
To the best of your ability, can you tell why WhatsApp is so prevalent? How is it any different than texting or calling someone normally?
Same is true for most of South America. In Brazil, iphones are very expensive luxuries, so the majority of the population had to deal with android phones. Which google, in their infinite wisdom, never made a decent messaging app that lasted more than 1 year.
Whatsapp had this great feature that it let you find contacts by phone number, plus you got to talk infinitely as long as you had internet, so the transition was very easy for people moving from feature phones.
In a very short time, the app reached critical mass. If you insisted on not using whatsapp, people would just ignore you, the hassle of having to use another app or, god forbid, sms you (sms used to be charged per message sent) was just not worth it.
In a lot of countries, especially in Europe, most texting happens over WhatsApp.
Cell providers took a long time providing free SMS/MMS, especially internationally, and lots of people in Europe have international contacts. So apps like WhatsApp became the go-to, since you could just use your data plan to message.
Same in Portugal, it's maddening
You should talk to your close contacts about switching to Signal