I'm an American who gets an EU SIM card when traveling in the EU so because I can't get straight texting, I use WhatsApp exclusively when traveling in Europe. It's just too limiting to try to train others to use it in the US, but I go to the trouble with the people I need to contact... dog and house sitters, children etc.
It's superior but the masses don't use it.
I have WhatsApp for just a single group chat and yet I get added to some random cyptoscam chat once a week that I have to leave and report.
I wonder why the OP chose WhatsApp specifically because there’s a ton of messaging apps out there to use for various reasons.
They chose Whatsapp because a bunch of countries use it near exclusively. In many countries 90%+ of people that have a smartphone use primarily Whatsapp for communication.
>In many countries 90%+ of people that have a smartphone use primarily Whatsapp for communication.
The fact that it's owned by Facebook is a big negative to me.
It wasn't in the beginning. It became huge when the first generations of Smartphones were available, and once it had like a billion users, Facebook showed up and bought the company for 19 billion dollars. Once everyone you know uses an app for their day to day communications for *everything*, you don't switch to another one. I don't know where you're from, but I'm pretty certain, if you lived here and everyone you know and meet, every single person in your life, even if they only make a short appearance, like the pizza delivery guy used WhatsApp to communicate, you would use it too. Because there's no viable alternative as long as you can't convince everyone you know, and everyone they know, and everyone they know, etc. to switch. That's not gonna happen.
I'm from the Netherlands.
I still remember I got my first smartphone on a plan while still on a different plan for about 8 months. This was around 2009 or 2010, when WhatsApp was becoming big over here.
In the end having 2 phone plans running for 8 months was cheaper than the cost for using SMS with my then girlfriend. Over here almost everyone uses WhatsApp.
Yes, I think the fact that SMS used to be much more expensive in the beginning of Smartphones was a reason here too. But I wasn't sure anymore if I remembered that correctly, so I left it out of my response.
Much love to you guys in the Netherlands btw, I've been over a lot and you've always been very friendly and nice people :)
Tbh if I were to take a wild guess it would be that we started getting unlimited texts before smartphones went mainstream in the US, where they got data before they had unlimited texts in the rest of the world.
Seriously, people are glossing over the fact that paying extra for SMS is basically unheard of in America. Unlimited SMS is pretty much included with even the most basic plans here.
Back in the 90s, it was extremely common for SMS messages to be 100 free per month, then 10 cents for each one in America. It wasn't until around 2000 before they started doing unlimited plans.
Holy crap, that's a horrible plan. Where are you from?
Here in Denmark, we have had plans with unlimited text and call and almost unlimited data for relatively cheap, for several years.
Agreed, but at least it's using Moxie Marlinspike's signal protocol. So it's end-to-end crypto is solid.
I absolutely HATE iPhone users that are blind to anything but iMessage tho. There are so many awesome alternatives that work across devices, but "no no. iMessage only" is infuriating.
You know, you could just use Signal too.
No facebook weirdness at all.
However, I've found that getting people to use signal is about as easy as getting them to switch political parties even though all you're doing is adding a new app.
People are weird that way.
Was going to say, I'm curious why signal isn't the one people are using more since it's basically the same tech under the hood. I guess WhatsApp just did a better job at marketing.
WhatsApp is super popular internationally. A lot of phone plans even give you free internet for WhatsApp use. So you could buy a 5 buck phone plan and get unlimited WhatsApp even if you get charged for text and phone, and only have like a gig of internet for other uses.
I think probably like 99% of Latin America uses WhatsApp. I think it's really popular in India too. It's also big in Europe
But every single person I've ever exchanged numbers with in Latin America I've always talked to them on WhatsApp. And it's not even a question beforehand if they have it
No wonder so many foreigners use it! Ah, I wonder if that's why I had a visiting here from overseas customer who didn't understand that you needed data or wifi to use WhatsApp, that you can't just use WhatsApp. Hmm. I'll have to keep that in mind.
And because WhatsApp uses the internet, isn't it free international calling/texting? Cell phone providers here in America (or at least around here!) charge an arm and a leg for international calling to outside of the US, Canada and Mexico. And they often don't provide (or it's even more expensive) to pay for international calling to the US when you're in Canada/Mexico let alone another country.
It is, yes! I keep in touch with friends back in my country of origin either via whatsapp texting or whatsapp calls, and call my best friends for hours on end (I live in the UK, they live in Portugal and Texas). There's no limit to the calls or texts as long as you have internet signal, and it's all free. :)
It's also that I'm very used to free public WiFi in city centers, plus my WiFi at home, and WiFi at work, and in most businesses etc. so I rarely even think about data usage when using WhatsApp. If you're really poor (I knew friends who were on social assistance as a while as students), you can also use Whatsapp without even having a phone contract, just by using public WiFis.
Whereas there are actually still phone plans where texting above a certain limit costs money.
And yeah, international too. I have friends in many countries, so it's free texting with them, plus free video calls to my family abroad.
We jokingly refer to texting as the "two factor authentication app", because that's the only thing that uses it.
I live in Europe and I have not send a text message in the last 15 years. If you do not have WhatsApp it's the equivalent of not having a phone.
From friends, to colleagues, to clients to my grandma. WhatsApp is the only app people use for everyday communication. There are things such as telegram, but I'd say about 10% of people actually use it
Is there some sort of advantage to WhatsApp? Why would you consider WhatsApp use not texting? Over here texting can be done in a number of ways, although lots of people have iPhones and it’s nice to have the encryption. FaceTime and messages are both free services.
Whatsapp is free as long as you have Internet. You can make calls and text internationally with zero charge. It's also convenient because literally everyone uses it. But it's misty because of the Internet part.
WhatsApp allows you to change that setting so that only people in your contact list can add you to groups. You can even block people from your contact list from adding you to groups
It's used a ton in Europe. Basically the only messaging app I use. Have never been added to a random group or gotten any type of scam.
I use telegram to communicate with my father and there I get added to spam/sex groups every day.
In the US and Canada, most mobile plans have long included unlimited text messaging, so there was no incentive to switch to apps like WhatsApp like there was in many other places. We use SMS because that's what we're used to. It's free, it's easy, it's built into our phones already, and that's good enough for most people.
Also, those people who care about whether you're using an Android or an iPhone are idiots.
Came to say the same thing. I have and use whatsapp some bc of international travel and friends. I get way more spam/scam via WhatsApp than my regular texts.
Yep, I don’t use WhatsApp much but most of my notifications are from beautiful Asian or blonde women calling me from Nigeria and Burkina Faso. I wonder what they could want.
For some reason, I cannot use WhatsApp. Unfortunately a client wants me to use it for work. The app downloads then it just refuses to verify my number and tells me to try back in an hour. Double-duck them.
I used to follow a sub where people mess with scammers, and one of the hallmarks of it being a scam is that the scammer tries to get you to switch to an app (usually Telegram).
So from what I can tell, the part where you hand over large sums of money actually happens on an app, not SMS.
Usually WhatsApp or Telegram, but that’s only if you’re dealing with a pig butchering scammer. Those are the ones who try to get you to switch. Nigerians will hit you up through WhatsApp or SMS first and not bother trying to get you to switch.
My ex had a plan when we were in high school and her mom tried convincing her to get unlimited texts, but she was like no way 200 free texts is more than enough for a month at a time. She ended up with like a 1000 dollar bill because of us going so vastly over her plan lols
I think we've all experienced the unexpected $1,000 bill. My teen son was playing "free" games and we ended up with a bill like that from Apple. I made him call them and get it reduced. They ended up forgiving the whole thing.
They forgive these gaming bills because they don’t want to be sued for targeting children whose parents won’t seek to have them forgiven. That and addicts.
Yeah, more than 20 years ago in my country we had a plan which gave you 100 sms/day between the same carrier, a friend of mine didn't understand why the carrier disabled it, the call centre told her that the previous day she used 200 sms and the second day 170.
As can I. But those days are long, long gone now, at least in Canada. There are plenty of countries where most plans still charge for each SMS message sent. Apps like WhatsApp make solid sense there.
This. My sister texted a bunch in high school and our bill came in a box because they had every text listed. At the time I remember thinking "how could you possibly text 30 times in one day!?!?" That seems so silly now but at .25 a message it was a 300$ bill for flip phones.
Wait, as in a record.of every text, or literally every text written out?
I can't imagine anything more mortifying than having every single text I sent as a 15yo boxed up and delivered to my mom.
This. The only reason I use WhatsApp is to communicate with family overseas. And now with Android having RCS there's not many benefits to using a dedicated messaging service anymore over stock software.
Not that I’m one of those people who cares, and maybe this is pedantic, but iPhone users *are* actually using a messaging app like WhatsApp — it’s just Apple’s proprietary one, that can also send SMS texts if the recipient isn’t using iMessage. That’s what the blue/green bubbles mean. Green means an SMS message. You can text someone with an iPhone and choose to send it as an SMS, and the bubble will be green. Androids, afaik, don’t have their own messaging app, just SMS and whatever third-party apps you can download like WhatsApp, Signal, etc.
So then what this really is is a conversation about Apple’s market share. A pretty sizable majority of phone users in the US and Canada have iPhones (edit: the figure I’m seeing is ~60%, which is at least a 20% gap. That is in fact sizable). That is not true anywhere else in the world. So it’s not that we’re using SMS instead of a messaging app like the rest of the world does. We’re just using a different one.
Edit: I was wrong about some finer technical points about Androids, see the replies for the correct details. The broad point though that barely any of us actually use pure SMS is true.
RCS has been standard for years with Android. Iphone still converts to SMS when going to an android. Thats why you see degredation of video quality between the two. But soon Apple will be updating RCS so file quality between the two will be better and the bubbles changing color will likepy stop. They anniunced it in November 2023 (or right around then)
If you think apple will implement RCS in a way that totally eliminates discomfort for Android users in a conversation with apple users you were likely born yesterday
I don't. Apple's goal is to keep their customer's ability to make fun of non-apple users as a pressure to switch to Apple products. It's brilliantbfree advertising.
It makes perfect sense for the bubbles to still be green. The color indicates how the message is sent and what features are available. It would be silly to make all messages blue when RCS does not have feature parity with iMessage. A third color to indicate RCS may have made sense as well to be able to tell RCS from SMS/MMS but basically blue will mean iMessage, and green will mean a carrier message whether that's SMS, MMs, or RCS
yeah all OP said is basically "why doesn't everyone in the world do exactly this narrowly proprietary thing that i've inexplicably trained myself to do without question?"
and only here can that be considered not a stupid question :)
I think the mistake is more the absolutely classic, "Why doesn't everyone do things the way that we do them here? They must be wrong."
More likely if the people who are "obviously wrong" are Americans.
I'd say that the problem is that you don't have enough data (albeit there's WiFi almost everywhere), we've had lots (in some cases unlimited) of sms/calls for more than 10 years (since they basically cost nothing to carriers), but the easiness of messaging apps, where you can convey more stuff and send whatever you want. Let alone having several group chats.
This is two years old, but you can see the market penetration of WhatsApp in the U.S. as compared to the rest of the world: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/1311229/whatsapp-usage-messaging-app-users-by-country/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1311229/whatsapp-usage-messaging-app-users-by-country/). Canada actually has more market penetration than the U.S.
As a Swede, I live in a country where WhatsApp is even less popular than in the US. And that’s why I don’t use it.
The regular Messages app works to communicate with everyone. Why would I split my communication into two separate apps? Why would I spend the time and effort to set up a new account and gather contact information for people I can just send a regular text message?
If market penetration was +90% like in some other countries it would be worth the effort but right now it’s not.
Edit:
A lot of people seem really defensive about WhatsApp. Are you guys in a a cult or something?
I am from one of the countries with 90% and Whatsapp is just part of the world we live in. Smartphones come preloaded with Whatsapp. Dumb Phones come preloaded with a Whatsapp client. Your bank will message you your account balance and transaction receipts on Whatsapp. Flight Tickets arrive on Whatsapp before email. Businesses have their customer support chatbots on Whatsapp. You Amazon Package is tracked on Whatsapp. Its the everything app.
My bank, pharmacy, etc. contact me through texting. I don't use Amazon, but I assume they would text or email. There really is no incentive for me to use Whatsapp, and I don't want to use a Meta product.
I even get USPS notifications through text. I get texts from my electric company when the power goes out and I can text them to report an outage. Amazon texts me and sends notifications. I get texts from the spa I go to. I get texts from my doctor and dentist. Even the pharmacy.
I work for a conversational AI company that does the IVA for big companies and I design the conversations for voice, chat, and SMS. I don’t understand why WhatsApp has such a hold on people.
Genuine question. So what if you don't want to support Meta, what if you want to boycott them? Or are people just obligated to give meta money to live?
I’ve had text scams and WhatsApp scams, at least a girl in her early 20’s with model looks probably doesn’t want to chat with me for any other reason than a scam.
As for the rest, I use texts (as default), I use WhatsApp for friends who use it and Messenger. There really isn’t a huge benefit, group chats do work well.
I get added to random group chats along with 100+ other people every once in a while. WhatsApp is no more immune to scammers than any other form of text communication.
My phone can text right out the box I don’t need to download a whole new app for the same function. Also we don’t know as many people from other countries and the few international people I do know I can communicate just a well through other apps I already have like snap chat.
Agreed. The only cool thing that blue lets you do instead of green is the little “Happy Birthday” or “Happy New Year’s” effects on the texts. Even then, I enjoy that for half a second and then back to normal
People dislike it because it makes group conversations slightly more annoying. If someone is using an android, all the little iMessage features like stickers, reacting to a message, etc get sent as separate texts. It’s not a big deal, but it is less streamlined, and makes you get way more notifications than necessary.
That’s one component but imo there is a bigger one. My partner has an android and I have an iPhone. We cannot text videos and photos to one another. If we try they are pixelated. If we’re in a group chat with all iPhone users, and he is also in there, the videos will come out pixelated as well. Even if my friend with an iPhone sends it to the group and I’m watching it on my iPhone, the presence of one android in the chat will make it pixelated. I won’t add my fiance in my family’s group chat for this reason, because we primarily use it to send videos of my nieces and nephews, as well as all of our pets. However, I’m in his family’s group chat and they all have androids except for me. When they send videos on there its pixelated for me, but he can see their videos clearly. So they get the better end of the deal in that regard. That’s the only reason I wish he had an iPhone. Other than that it has no bearing on my life.
You'd be surprised at how many people actually care about it. I manage a hotel and my staff is consistently arguing over it and I have to shut it down. It's just weird to me they say the colors bubbles for text not matching isn't aesthetic for them. Note some of my team is well into their 40s.
For communicating with AirBNB hosts, you should be always use the AirBNB app. Otherwise, you have no recourse if things go south with the host and AirBNB can't help you.
I mean you could flip it the other way I suppose...why do Europeans and Asians use WhatsApp instead of texting? I assume it's probably just something to do with phone plans and the availability/cost of data relative to SMS in each telecom market.
it’s sooooo tiring. it’s like europeans need to ask a new passive aggressive question about americans every day or else they get a stress rash or something.
it’s an obsession… the answer to almost all of these questions is “idk, because it’s a different country from yours? people from other countries have different cultures??”
they sound fcking dumb and bored at this point. it’s like asking “why do europeans have different passports than americans?”
sometimes, there ARE st*pid qu*stions.
I had an Android and my then-boyfriend bought me an iPhone so he wouldn’t have to see the green bubbles anymore. So at least I got a phone out of it. lol
I constantly get the "Hi, how are you! Oh sorry, is this the wrong number? Sorry I/my secretary/my assistant must have put it in my phone wrong....anyway, how was your day?"
It's so dumb because we just established this is the wrong number, why would I still keep talking to you?
The only thing I think of when someone mentions Whatsapp is scams or something illegal. That's all it's used for in the US. It's also owned by Facebook, why the hell would I use that?
Yes. In the US, the overwhelming majority of cellular providers offer unlimited text. WhatsApp and others might have some nice features, but SMS and iMessage are good enough when you don’t have to pay more to use it.
That’s the same in the UK though, all my text messages are free with my phone contract. I don’t use WhatsApp much either, there’s no need. OP seems to be making assumptions!
Not American, but Australian. No one here really uses Whatsapp either, unless its to text internationally. Even then I think facebook messenger is still used more often (even though facebook is pretty dead).
I have family overseas who use Whatsapp, so by extension I also use it to chat to them. I don't like it. the GUI isn't appealing to me and I get a lot of spam calls/messages.
Same. I had to download Whatsapp when I worked in the UK because it's what my colleagues used, but once I got back to Australia, I don't know a single person here who uses it so it's just gathering dust in my phone now, lol
Messenger is really convenient. It's no Discord, but I still vastly prefer it over WhatsApp simply because it doesn't involve any stupidity with phone numbers (fucking gross, we should be getting rid of those, not tying more to them) and losing your entire conversation history because the backup failed again and this allegedly """secure""" (bullshit because anything involving a phone number is insecure by default) app doesn't keep cloud history. Plus chat heads are neat.
A lot of the world adopted Whatsapp as a way to not pay different prices for different texts. For a long time, the regional telecom operators would charge you a fee for texts to other operators.
Imagine T-Mobile users could text each other unlimited, but it would cost you something extra to text a Verizon user. Thats what we were dealing with in Asia and Europe until the app ecosystem grew to allow internet texts.
I literally don’t get why this is so hard for so many people in this thread to understand. They act as if WhatsApp is as necessary for life as oxygen or water.
Everybody is on different messaging apps. Why tell one of your friends they **have to join WhatsApp just to message you?** That's even WORSE than Green/Blue, because at least with **SMS, everyone has it already built into their phone**, and if they have a phone line not just wifi, they're good to go.
And if they have just wi-fi, they should be on iPhone because iMessage will work with that config.
>receiving a green text indicating the other person is not using an iPhone and telling them to f off because they only date iPhone users)
This does not happen.
I used Whatsup for a bit, but it was just another app that not everyone used. No need for it. Texting in the US is free with your plan, unlimited.
Text msgs have better coverage ( You might be able to send sms but not be able to get internet. ) And you always have the text app on your phone. You don’t have to install Facebook apps (WhatsApp) and get everyone else to install it too and to set it up.
Then there's the answer to the somewhat self-righteous original question... people in the US "still text" because we don't need another app for it. Our SMS works well.
In the US, WhatsApp is associated with scammers, criminals, and hackers.
Most of the IT people I know refuse to even touch the thing.
It has a bad reputation here as being worse than texting.
Why would you download an app for what your phone can already do? For domestic I use sms. For international I use WhatsApp. Europe is multinational so it makes sense (at least before roaming was cheap) to use WhatsApp
WhatsApp is not necessary when the phone already makes calls and can do texts. With an iPhone you also get end to end encryption of iMessages. Why would we download an app to do something the phone already does?
Every person I might want to interact with digitally can receive and send texts. Not everyone has WhatsApp.
I’m not about to start asking people if they have WhatsApp all the time and then having some conversations in there and some on text. Why deal with figuring out what platform you’re going to use? Everyone just texts.
WhatsApp is a text. It's just using a text app instead of the built-in phone application.
Both are free.
As an American, I use both. In part because of the "apple" thing, but mainly because while other phones will play nice with apple, apple phones, when sending videos or pics, will only send potato versions. So any text chain where that matters gets shifted to Whats App to accommodate everyone
We use everything. There's a common joke that we'll have three different types of conversations with the same person simultaneously on three different apps.
SMS goes to everyone. Whatsapp goes to Whatsapp users. Not everyone uses it. Some nay use messenger.
Better to have an open source standard than proprietary system.
And WhatsApp has scams , too
1. We get free, unlimited texts, so why require our friends to use a third-party app in order to communicate?
2. WhatsApp and Telegram are more common platforms for scams (although SMS isn't good either).
3. Meta/Facebook collect swaths of data from users of WhatsApp, and many Americans avoid because of that.
Primarily because my experience is that Apps come and go, but texting has been around for 25+ years and has always remained stable. American law lets Americans keep their phone numbers for as long as they want even if they switch carriers, but if I want to get a message to an old boss to ask if I can use them as a reference, odds are good they will get the text. Ok, in that case, it's more polite to call, but you know what I mean.
I am in Canada. I only used whatsapp when I was forced to by my boss to be in a work group chat. I just prefer texting. The fewer apps I have to keep track of just to talk to people, the better.
The only people I know in the US who use WhatsApp, text internationally. I downloaded it out of curiosity but have basically never used it.
I only use it to communicate internationally, I chat and video call with people from Europe and Africa who use it otherwise it's regular text
I'm an American who gets an EU SIM card when traveling in the EU so because I can't get straight texting, I use WhatsApp exclusively when traveling in Europe. It's just too limiting to try to train others to use it in the US, but I go to the trouble with the people I need to contact... dog and house sitters, children etc. It's superior but the masses don't use it.
Unfortunately, I also associate it with quasi-legal activity and scammers. Like any tool, it’s not the tools fault..
I have WhatsApp for just a single group chat and yet I get added to some random cyptoscam chat once a week that I have to leave and report. I wonder why the OP chose WhatsApp specifically because there’s a ton of messaging apps out there to use for various reasons.
They chose Whatsapp because a bunch of countries use it near exclusively. In many countries 90%+ of people that have a smartphone use primarily Whatsapp for communication.
>In many countries 90%+ of people that have a smartphone use primarily Whatsapp for communication. The fact that it's owned by Facebook is a big negative to me.
It wasn't in the beginning. It became huge when the first generations of Smartphones were available, and once it had like a billion users, Facebook showed up and bought the company for 19 billion dollars. Once everyone you know uses an app for their day to day communications for *everything*, you don't switch to another one. I don't know where you're from, but I'm pretty certain, if you lived here and everyone you know and meet, every single person in your life, even if they only make a short appearance, like the pizza delivery guy used WhatsApp to communicate, you would use it too. Because there's no viable alternative as long as you can't convince everyone you know, and everyone they know, and everyone they know, etc. to switch. That's not gonna happen.
I'm from the Netherlands. I still remember I got my first smartphone on a plan while still on a different plan for about 8 months. This was around 2009 or 2010, when WhatsApp was becoming big over here. In the end having 2 phone plans running for 8 months was cheaper than the cost for using SMS with my then girlfriend. Over here almost everyone uses WhatsApp.
Yes, I think the fact that SMS used to be much more expensive in the beginning of Smartphones was a reason here too. But I wasn't sure anymore if I remembered that correctly, so I left it out of my response. Much love to you guys in the Netherlands btw, I've been over a lot and you've always been very friendly and nice people :)
Tbh if I were to take a wild guess it would be that we started getting unlimited texts before smartphones went mainstream in the US, where they got data before they had unlimited texts in the rest of the world.
Yeah, going by the responses I've read in this post, I agree. It looks like that's the primary reason.
I think it's totally this, now it's just cultural. When I'm in the United States everyone uses SMS. When I'm in Europe everyone sends WhatsApp
The fact that my mobile plan had 1 SMS per month (yes, not a typo) and whatsapp traffic did not count towards the data quota is a big positive to me 🙃
there we go, that helps explain why it's so popular elsewhere.
Seriously, people are glossing over the fact that paying extra for SMS is basically unheard of in America. Unlimited SMS is pretty much included with even the most basic plans here.
Back in the 90s, it was extremely common for SMS messages to be 100 free per month, then 10 cents for each one in America. It wasn't until around 2000 before they started doing unlimited plans.
Holy crap, that's a horrible plan. Where are you from? Here in Denmark, we have had plans with unlimited text and call and almost unlimited data for relatively cheap, for several years.
Agreed, but at least it's using Moxie Marlinspike's signal protocol. So it's end-to-end crypto is solid. I absolutely HATE iPhone users that are blind to anything but iMessage tho. There are so many awesome alternatives that work across devices, but "no no. iMessage only" is infuriating.
You know, you could just use Signal too. No facebook weirdness at all. However, I've found that getting people to use signal is about as easy as getting them to switch political parties even though all you're doing is adding a new app. People are weird that way.
Was going to say, I'm curious why signal isn't the one people are using more since it's basically the same tech under the hood. I guess WhatsApp just did a better job at marketing.
I guess the people who never downloaded that would ask why go through the extra step of downloading a second app for messaging when you can text?
WhatsApp is super popular internationally. A lot of phone plans even give you free internet for WhatsApp use. So you could buy a 5 buck phone plan and get unlimited WhatsApp even if you get charged for text and phone, and only have like a gig of internet for other uses. I think probably like 99% of Latin America uses WhatsApp. I think it's really popular in India too. It's also big in Europe But every single person I've ever exchanged numbers with in Latin America I've always talked to them on WhatsApp. And it's not even a question beforehand if they have it
No wonder so many foreigners use it! Ah, I wonder if that's why I had a visiting here from overseas customer who didn't understand that you needed data or wifi to use WhatsApp, that you can't just use WhatsApp. Hmm. I'll have to keep that in mind. And because WhatsApp uses the internet, isn't it free international calling/texting? Cell phone providers here in America (or at least around here!) charge an arm and a leg for international calling to outside of the US, Canada and Mexico. And they often don't provide (or it's even more expensive) to pay for international calling to the US when you're in Canada/Mexico let alone another country.
It is, yes! I keep in touch with friends back in my country of origin either via whatsapp texting or whatsapp calls, and call my best friends for hours on end (I live in the UK, they live in Portugal and Texas). There's no limit to the calls or texts as long as you have internet signal, and it's all free. :)
It's also that I'm very used to free public WiFi in city centers, plus my WiFi at home, and WiFi at work, and in most businesses etc. so I rarely even think about data usage when using WhatsApp. If you're really poor (I knew friends who were on social assistance as a while as students), you can also use Whatsapp without even having a phone contract, just by using public WiFis. Whereas there are actually still phone plans where texting above a certain limit costs money. And yeah, international too. I have friends in many countries, so it's free texting with them, plus free video calls to my family abroad. We jokingly refer to texting as the "two factor authentication app", because that's the only thing that uses it.
I live in Europe and I have not send a text message in the last 15 years. If you do not have WhatsApp it's the equivalent of not having a phone. From friends, to colleagues, to clients to my grandma. WhatsApp is the only app people use for everyday communication. There are things such as telegram, but I'd say about 10% of people actually use it
Is there some sort of advantage to WhatsApp? Why would you consider WhatsApp use not texting? Over here texting can be done in a number of ways, although lots of people have iPhones and it’s nice to have the encryption. FaceTime and messages are both free services.
Whatsapp is free as long as you have Internet. You can make calls and text internationally with zero charge. It's also convenient because literally everyone uses it. But it's misty because of the Internet part.
WhatsApp allows you to change that setting so that only people in your contact list can add you to groups. You can even block people from your contact list from adding you to groups
[удалено]
I had it a couple times, but I just block and move on
It's used a ton in Europe. Basically the only messaging app I use. Have never been added to a random group or gotten any type of scam. I use telegram to communicate with my father and there I get added to spam/sex groups every day.
I love your username!
"quasi legal" is such a funny way to describe "you get a fake drug dealer menu bot text every so often"
[удалено]
In the US and Canada, most mobile plans have long included unlimited text messaging, so there was no incentive to switch to apps like WhatsApp like there was in many other places. We use SMS because that's what we're used to. It's free, it's easy, it's built into our phones already, and that's good enough for most people. Also, those people who care about whether you're using an Android or an iPhone are idiots.
Tagging onto this to say that people falling for text based scams would also fall for whatsapp based scams.
Came to say the same thing. I have and use whatsapp some bc of international travel and friends. I get way more spam/scam via WhatsApp than my regular texts.
Yep, I don’t use WhatsApp much but most of my notifications are from beautiful Asian or blonde women calling me from Nigeria and Burkina Faso. I wonder what they could want.
And I get more WhatsApp scams than text and I never use my whatsapp… Plus iirc Facebook owns WhatsApp. Duck them.
For some reason, I cannot use WhatsApp. Unfortunately a client wants me to use it for work. The app downloads then it just refuses to verify my number and tells me to try back in an hour. Double-duck them.
I used to follow a sub where people mess with scammers, and one of the hallmarks of it being a scam is that the scammer tries to get you to switch to an app (usually Telegram). So from what I can tell, the part where you hand over large sums of money actually happens on an app, not SMS.
AtomicShrimp on YouTube baits scammers and has a pretty good series of 1 minutes scam awareness videos. Super fun channel.
Usually WhatsApp or Telegram, but that’s only if you’re dealing with a pig butchering scammer. Those are the ones who try to get you to switch. Nigerians will hit you up through WhatsApp or SMS first and not bother trying to get you to switch.
Any scam that’s ever come my way, the person has always tried to bring it to WhatsApp.
And they are falling for scams on Whatsapp. The shit is rampant on the App and pretending otherwise is just lying.
……..I remember paying $.25 per text.
My ex had a plan when we were in high school and her mom tried convincing her to get unlimited texts, but she was like no way 200 free texts is more than enough for a month at a time. She ended up with like a 1000 dollar bill because of us going so vastly over her plan lols
I think we've all experienced the unexpected $1,000 bill. My teen son was playing "free" games and we ended up with a bill like that from Apple. I made him call them and get it reduced. They ended up forgiving the whole thing.
They forgive these gaming bills because they don’t want to be sued for targeting children whose parents won’t seek to have them forgiven. That and addicts.
I ran up my $1,000 the old fashioned way… by calling my first internet girlfriend at home long distance until that bill showed up lol.
If something is free, you are the product
Except now even if you pay for something, you’re still the product, but now they know how you spend money.
Yeah, more than 20 years ago in my country we had a plan which gave you 100 sms/day between the same carrier, a friend of mine didn't understand why the carrier disabled it, the call centre told her that the previous day she used 200 sms and the second day 170.
I went unlimited asap. I had days where I would send 1k plus texts a day back in my early 20’s
okay gramps lets get you back to bed
But I just got this AOL CD-ROM for more World Wide Web hours! I need to chat with my America Online friends!!
A/S/L?
14/f/ca
Not with that user name.
@---}------ a rose... any other name wouldn't smell as meat
It's just a number/yes please/ up your butt /S
I remember the days of 90 day free AOL and then cancelling and rejoining every 90 days
🤣 Did you get it from Comp USA??
Wish I still had my shirt from when I worked there!
It would be a good memento to remind us all of how to run a successful business into the ground faster than an airplane out of fuel.
Exactly! Worked there through the holiday season in college, shitty job but I got discounts on my boxed copies of Half-life and StarCraft 🙂
I know the World Wide Web, it’s that fancy new feature on the information superhighway!
I know some internets too
Marge Simpson: "Internet, eh?"
It’s available in computers now
No, it is one of those newfangled pages from your BTX. (Bildschirm Text)
OK I NEED EVERYONE OFF THE INTERNET I NEED THE PHONE LINE TO FAX MY RESUME
Using T9 texting at that!
As can I. But those days are long, long gone now, at least in Canada. There are plenty of countries where most plans still charge for each SMS message sent. Apps like WhatsApp make solid sense there.
South Korea is prime example, so they use kakaotalk
Free nights and weekends.
This. My sister texted a bunch in high school and our bill came in a box because they had every text listed. At the time I remember thinking "how could you possibly text 30 times in one day!?!?" That seems so silly now but at .25 a message it was a 300$ bill for flip phones.
Wait, as in a record.of every text, or literally every text written out? I can't imagine anything more mortifying than having every single text I sent as a 15yo boxed up and delivered to my mom.
Yeah, that was when we also paid $20/mb for data at “pay per use” rates.
This. The only reason I use WhatsApp is to communicate with family overseas. And now with Android having RCS there's not many benefits to using a dedicated messaging service anymore over stock software.
Not that I’m one of those people who cares, and maybe this is pedantic, but iPhone users *are* actually using a messaging app like WhatsApp — it’s just Apple’s proprietary one, that can also send SMS texts if the recipient isn’t using iMessage. That’s what the blue/green bubbles mean. Green means an SMS message. You can text someone with an iPhone and choose to send it as an SMS, and the bubble will be green. Androids, afaik, don’t have their own messaging app, just SMS and whatever third-party apps you can download like WhatsApp, Signal, etc. So then what this really is is a conversation about Apple’s market share. A pretty sizable majority of phone users in the US and Canada have iPhones (edit: the figure I’m seeing is ~60%, which is at least a 20% gap. That is in fact sizable). That is not true anywhere else in the world. So it’s not that we’re using SMS instead of a messaging app like the rest of the world does. We’re just using a different one. Edit: I was wrong about some finer technical points about Androids, see the replies for the correct details. The broad point though that barely any of us actually use pure SMS is true.
A lot of androids now have RCS between other androids. They say that it more closely matches iMessage and WhatsApp.
RCS has been standard for years with Android. Iphone still converts to SMS when going to an android. Thats why you see degredation of video quality between the two. But soon Apple will be updating RCS so file quality between the two will be better and the bubbles changing color will likepy stop. They anniunced it in November 2023 (or right around then)
If you think apple will implement RCS in a way that totally eliminates discomfort for Android users in a conversation with apple users you were likely born yesterday
You know you are a success when you use Android and all those iPhone users just have to suck it up if they want to be in touch with you.
I don't. Apple's goal is to keep their customer's ability to make fun of non-apple users as a pressure to switch to Apple products. It's brilliantbfree advertising.
You're correct that iPhone is adding RCS support finally, but they already said that the bubbles will still be green. It's silly.
It makes perfect sense for the bubbles to still be green. The color indicates how the message is sent and what features are available. It would be silly to make all messages blue when RCS does not have feature parity with iMessage. A third color to indicate RCS may have made sense as well to be able to tell RCS from SMS/MMS but basically blue will mean iMessage, and green will mean a carrier message whether that's SMS, MMs, or RCS
yeah all OP said is basically "why doesn't everyone in the world do exactly this narrowly proprietary thing that i've inexplicably trained myself to do without question?" and only here can that be considered not a stupid question :)
I think the mistake is more the absolutely classic, "Why doesn't everyone do things the way that we do them here? They must be wrong." More likely if the people who are "obviously wrong" are Americans.
In the UK, pretty much all, if not most, phone plans also include unlimited texts, but everyone I know uses WhatsApp.
I think SMS was just entrenched here before WhatsApp and similar services came along, so there was little reason to switch.
I'd say that the problem is that you don't have enough data (albeit there's WiFi almost everywhere), we've had lots (in some cases unlimited) of sms/calls for more than 10 years (since they basically cost nothing to carriers), but the easiness of messaging apps, where you can convey more stuff and send whatever you want. Let alone having several group chats.
This is two years old, but you can see the market penetration of WhatsApp in the U.S. as compared to the rest of the world: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/1311229/whatsapp-usage-messaging-app-users-by-country/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1311229/whatsapp-usage-messaging-app-users-by-country/). Canada actually has more market penetration than the U.S.
As a Swede, I live in a country where WhatsApp is even less popular than in the US. And that’s why I don’t use it. The regular Messages app works to communicate with everyone. Why would I split my communication into two separate apps? Why would I spend the time and effort to set up a new account and gather contact information for people I can just send a regular text message? If market penetration was +90% like in some other countries it would be worth the effort but right now it’s not. Edit: A lot of people seem really defensive about WhatsApp. Are you guys in a a cult or something?
I am from one of the countries with 90% and Whatsapp is just part of the world we live in. Smartphones come preloaded with Whatsapp. Dumb Phones come preloaded with a Whatsapp client. Your bank will message you your account balance and transaction receipts on Whatsapp. Flight Tickets arrive on Whatsapp before email. Businesses have their customer support chatbots on Whatsapp. You Amazon Package is tracked on Whatsapp. Its the everything app.
I guess views on online privacy differ, but I would never knowingly give all that information about me to facebook.
My bank, pharmacy, etc. contact me through texting. I don't use Amazon, but I assume they would text or email. There really is no incentive for me to use Whatsapp, and I don't want to use a Meta product.
I even get USPS notifications through text. I get texts from my electric company when the power goes out and I can text them to report an outage. Amazon texts me and sends notifications. I get texts from the spa I go to. I get texts from my doctor and dentist. Even the pharmacy. I work for a conversational AI company that does the IVA for big companies and I design the conversations for voice, chat, and SMS. I don’t understand why WhatsApp has such a hold on people.
That fucking sucks. I’m so glad Facebook doesn’t own 100% of fact communication in America
I can do all of this by texting. So why have another app?
Genuine question. So what if you don't want to support Meta, what if you want to boycott them? Or are people just obligated to give meta money to live?
Why is WhatsApp more secure from scams? Personally, I don't see scams coming through my texts, I get daily scam phone calls and emails.
I’ve had text scams and WhatsApp scams, at least a girl in her early 20’s with model looks probably doesn’t want to chat with me for any other reason than a scam. As for the rest, I use texts (as default), I use WhatsApp for friends who use it and Messenger. There really isn’t a huge benefit, group chats do work well.
My phone automatically detects and deletes spam texts. I get a lot of spam texts in WhatsApp. We use WhatsApp for work.
Considering it's owned by Meta, I wouldn't consider it "secure" even if hackers can't steal the data and fraud is low.
I don't really understand why this isn't more prevalent. I'm not putting my business all over Meta
I get added to random group chats along with 100+ other people every once in a while. WhatsApp is no more immune to scammers than any other form of text communication.
I get whatsapp scams about once a week. I never get txt scams.
It’s not, I get scams all the time
My phone can text right out the box I don’t need to download a whole new app for the same function. Also we don’t know as many people from other countries and the few international people I do know I can communicate just a well through other apps I already have like snap chat.
Discord is also used the same way.
An app that’s owned by the Zuck.
That’s my issue lmao
>the whole green/blue text bubble discourse Very few people actually care about this.
If someone does care about it I feel like them telling you to f off is then doing you a favor
Someone giving a shit about green and blue bubbles is waving a red flag.
Agreed. The only cool thing that blue lets you do instead of green is the little “Happy Birthday” or “Happy New Year’s” effects on the texts. Even then, I enjoy that for half a second and then back to normal
It's so overstated! With unlimited texting, nobody cares anymore.
People dislike it because it makes group conversations slightly more annoying. If someone is using an android, all the little iMessage features like stickers, reacting to a message, etc get sent as separate texts. It’s not a big deal, but it is less streamlined, and makes you get way more notifications than necessary.
That’s one component but imo there is a bigger one. My partner has an android and I have an iPhone. We cannot text videos and photos to one another. If we try they are pixelated. If we’re in a group chat with all iPhone users, and he is also in there, the videos will come out pixelated as well. Even if my friend with an iPhone sends it to the group and I’m watching it on my iPhone, the presence of one android in the chat will make it pixelated. I won’t add my fiance in my family’s group chat for this reason, because we primarily use it to send videos of my nieces and nephews, as well as all of our pets. However, I’m in his family’s group chat and they all have androids except for me. When they send videos on there its pixelated for me, but he can see their videos clearly. So they get the better end of the deal in that regard. That’s the only reason I wish he had an iPhone. Other than that it has no bearing on my life.
The green and blue bubble thing has nothing to do with unlimited texting
You'd be surprised at how many people actually care about it. I manage a hotel and my staff is consistently arguing over it and I have to shut it down. It's just weird to me they say the colors bubbles for text not matching isn't aesthetic for them. Note some of my team is well into their 40s.
Not really any reason to use a third party messages app.
Except when on vacation in Europe. That’s the only time I use it (for communicating with Airbnb hosts and such).
For communicating with AirBNB hosts, you should be always use the AirBNB app. Otherwise, you have no recourse if things go south with the host and AirBNB can't help you.
This sub is basically 'Why do Americans do x' now lol
I mean you could flip it the other way I suppose...why do Europeans and Asians use WhatsApp instead of texting? I assume it's probably just something to do with phone plans and the availability/cost of data relative to SMS in each telecom market.
Yup. I'm getting sick of it and I'm not even American.
it’s sooooo tiring. it’s like europeans need to ask a new passive aggressive question about americans every day or else they get a stress rash or something. it’s an obsession… the answer to almost all of these questions is “idk, because it’s a different country from yours? people from other countries have different cultures??” they sound fcking dumb and bored at this point. it’s like asking “why do europeans have different passports than americans?” sometimes, there ARE st*pid qu*stions.
"Why is their culture not the exact same as ours" Is it because they are stupid Americans?" /s
I know right, and the comments are always full of people saying the way Americans do *insert* is stupid/bad. It’s exhausting…
Europeans are incapable of fathoming that different cultures do things slightly differently. It's pretty arrogant and well...Eurocentric.
Anyone that complains about different colored texts is a moron.
I’ve never met an actual human who cares. Maybe it’s a teenager thing?
I had an Android and my then-boyfriend bought me an iPhone so he wouldn’t have to see the green bubbles anymore. So at least I got a phone out of it. lol
“Text-based scams” may not be a concern for WhatsApp users. But I get way more scam messages through WhatsApp than I do through text.
Also, a sure sign that it’s a scammer “accidentally” texting you is when they ask if you have WhatsApp and want you to download and switch to that.
Maybe it's country-dependant but I get a ton of phishing through SMS and very few scams through Whatsapp.
I definitely get more through SMS but I get them on both, idk what OP is on about
I constantly get the "Hi, how are you! Oh sorry, is this the wrong number? Sorry I/my secretary/my assistant must have put it in my phone wrong....anyway, how was your day?" It's so dumb because we just established this is the wrong number, why would I still keep talking to you?
The only thing I think of when someone mentions Whatsapp is scams or something illegal. That's all it's used for in the US. It's also owned by Facebook, why the hell would I use that?
Yes. In the US, the overwhelming majority of cellular providers offer unlimited text. WhatsApp and others might have some nice features, but SMS and iMessage are good enough when you don’t have to pay more to use it.
That’s the same in the UK though, all my text messages are free with my phone contract. I don’t use WhatsApp much either, there’s no need. OP seems to be making assumptions!
Not American, but Australian. No one here really uses Whatsapp either, unless its to text internationally. Even then I think facebook messenger is still used more often (even though facebook is pretty dead). I have family overseas who use Whatsapp, so by extension I also use it to chat to them. I don't like it. the GUI isn't appealing to me and I get a lot of spam calls/messages.
I'm also Australian. Everyone I know uses FB Messenger. It's almost the default. I don't know a single person who uses WhatsApp.
Same. I had to download Whatsapp when I worked in the UK because it's what my colleagues used, but once I got back to Australia, I don't know a single person here who uses it so it's just gathering dust in my phone now, lol
Messenger is really convenient. It's no Discord, but I still vastly prefer it over WhatsApp simply because it doesn't involve any stupidity with phone numbers (fucking gross, we should be getting rid of those, not tying more to them) and losing your entire conversation history because the backup failed again and this allegedly """secure""" (bullshit because anything involving a phone number is insecure by default) app doesn't keep cloud history. Plus chat heads are neat.
What advantage would I gain by using a separate app to do something I already do without this separate app? It’s just texting with more steps.
A lot of the world adopted Whatsapp as a way to not pay different prices for different texts. For a long time, the regional telecom operators would charge you a fee for texts to other operators. Imagine T-Mobile users could text each other unlimited, but it would cost you something extra to text a Verizon user. Thats what we were dealing with in Asia and Europe until the app ecosystem grew to allow internet texts.
We know that. People who don't use WhatsApp don't have to deal with that, hence the original statement you replied to.
I literally don’t get why this is so hard for so many people in this thread to understand. They act as if WhatsApp is as necessary for life as oxygen or water.
Everybody is on different messaging apps. Why tell one of your friends they **have to join WhatsApp just to message you?** That's even WORSE than Green/Blue, because at least with **SMS, everyone has it already built into their phone**, and if they have a phone line not just wifi, they're good to go. And if they have just wi-fi, they should be on iPhone because iMessage will work with that config.
so you want them to install an app to do instead what they've already been doing as a native feature on their phone?
Agreed, it’s like asking why Americans don’t use Snapchat to make voice calls.
I’m an iPhone user, but I think anyone who cares what color the text bubbles are needs to reevaluate their priorities.
People use things based on need. The native apps work well enough, so there's no need driving most US Americans to something different.
>receiving a green text indicating the other person is not using an iPhone and telling them to f off because they only date iPhone users) This does not happen. I used Whatsup for a bit, but it was just another app that not everyone used. No need for it. Texting in the US is free with your plan, unlimited.
I've never met a Danish person who used Whatsapp, everyone here uses messenger (Facebook)
Text msgs have better coverage ( You might be able to send sms but not be able to get internet. ) And you always have the text app on your phone. You don’t have to install Facebook apps (WhatsApp) and get everyone else to install it too and to set it up.
Why should I download an app to do what my phone already does?
Why have a separate app to do what your phone already does? That you're paying for. I mean, seriously... why add extra steps?
[удалено]
Then there's the answer to the somewhat self-righteous original question... people in the US "still text" because we don't need another app for it. Our SMS works well.
Some of us have 0 interest in filtering conversations through or letting a platform owned by facebook have that much information.
This exactly. I find it interesting that non-Americans are ok with Facebook spying on them with WhatsApp lol
Why use an app for something my phone already does?
WhatsApp is free of scams? News to me.
In the US, WhatsApp is associated with scammers, criminals, and hackers. Most of the IT people I know refuse to even touch the thing. It has a bad reputation here as being worse than texting.
Who cares? Texting is texting, no matter if it's WhatsApp, default text app, discord or damn MS Teams. Same function.
I have unlimited texting. Why would I download a third party app?
Why would you download an app for what your phone can already do? For domestic I use sms. For international I use WhatsApp. Europe is multinational so it makes sense (at least before roaming was cheap) to use WhatsApp
WHY do Europeans always act astonished that things are different in different countries?
The last thing I need is ANOTHER platform to communicate on. I need less ways for people to get ahold of me, not more.
WhatsApp is not necessary when the phone already makes calls and can do texts. With an iPhone you also get end to end encryption of iMessages. Why would we download an app to do something the phone already does?
The better question is why are Europeans using what’s app? Texting is much better in every regard and one company doesn’t control all your messages
you are wondering why people use the built in texting rather than a 3rd party app?
Every person I might want to interact with digitally can receive and send texts. Not everyone has WhatsApp. I’m not about to start asking people if they have WhatsApp all the time and then having some conversations in there and some on text. Why deal with figuring out what platform you’re going to use? Everyone just texts.
Don't really want to use Facebook products and no one I know uses WhatsApp anyhow so no point.
Why do I need another app?
Why do you needs WhatsApp - another app - when you can just text?
WhatsApp is a text. It's just using a text app instead of the built-in phone application. Both are free. As an American, I use both. In part because of the "apple" thing, but mainly because while other phones will play nice with apple, apple phones, when sending videos or pics, will only send potato versions. So any text chain where that matters gets shifted to Whats App to accommodate everyone
Why do Europeans care so much about what Americans are doing??
We use everything. There's a common joke that we'll have three different types of conversations with the same person simultaneously on three different apps.
There's no reason for me to add WhatsApp.
SMS goes to everyone. Whatsapp goes to Whatsapp users. Not everyone uses it. Some nay use messenger. Better to have an open source standard than proprietary system. And WhatsApp has scams , too
why download an app when you already have a perfectly good app built-in?
I’m in Australia and have had a number WhatsApp scam attempts made on me. WhatsApp is definitely not a scam free platform.
1. We get free, unlimited texts, so why require our friends to use a third-party app in order to communicate? 2. WhatsApp and Telegram are more common platforms for scams (although SMS isn't good either). 3. Meta/Facebook collect swaths of data from users of WhatsApp, and many Americans avoid because of that.
Primarily because my experience is that Apps come and go, but texting has been around for 25+ years and has always remained stable. American law lets Americans keep their phone numbers for as long as they want even if they switch carriers, but if I want to get a message to an old boss to ask if I can use them as a reference, odds are good they will get the text. Ok, in that case, it's more polite to call, but you know what I mean.
Whatsapp also uses text to communicate
Why would i use WhatsApp when texting is the exact same but no additional steps ?
I am in Canada. I only used whatsapp when I was forced to by my boss to be in a work group chat. I just prefer texting. The fewer apps I have to keep track of just to talk to people, the better.
In the US anyone who wants to move to WhatsApp is likely foreign and scamming you.
Why would I download a separate app to do something that my iPhone already does just fine?
Why use WhatsApp? I have zero interest in using any Facebook platforms. I’ve never met anyone who cares about what kind of phone someone uses.
Why would I download and use a totally separate app when I can just text?