… is it possible to do any kind of business and/or have regular conversations without having to use whatsapp as a main way of communication?
If you’d like you can say in what country you’re living.
USA here. No we don’t use WhatsApp at all. I communicate with all friends and family on Telegram or SMS. For work we use Slack. I refuse to have any Facebook anything installed on my phone (I don’t use social media anyway…except for Lemmy now I guess if that counts haha)
Yes? And America? Wtf kinda country forces whatsapp?
I don’t think the implication is that the government is forcing anyone to use WhatsApp, but that in some places it controls enough share of the messaging market that people are forced to use it because that’s what everyone else is using.
Remember when it used to be $0.10 or like a quarter per sms message or something ridiculous? Back when you didn’t have a proper web browser etc on your phone. You know before smartphones were a thing. The companies were able to hold us hostage for text messaging etc because of that.
Now imagine you live in a country where they tried to do that post smartphone’s. Everyone in those countries de facto turned to alternate services like WhatsApp for texting and even calling. So it wasn’t like a government mandated thing. But it was more of an effective mandate because of carriers. This includes most of the world outside the United States. Over in Europe. WhatsApp is common for this very reason. South America again same thing. All because of carriers trying to overcharge but forgetting the internet had become a thing in everyone’s life.
My company used to use WhatsApp for official communication. Then it came out that Facebook was going to start collecting a whole crap ton of information from users, so I downloaded Signal and told my small group of coworkers that WhatsApp was not secure for official communication. They all downloaded it and eventually the whole company moved to it.
All it takes is a few people to switch over in a friend group or work setting and for them to advocate for its benefits to get large groups to move. Gotta keep pushing for it.
Edit: This is the US where most people use SMS for personal communication though.
US here. Companies I work for use Teams, Zoom, Outlook, WebEx, RingCentral, GChat for comms.
Personally among friends and family, we use Signal.
Nobody I know uses WhatsApp or even has it installed.
USA here - I work for a fortune 500 technology industry company…We use MS Teams internally for most stuff, mostly use MS Teams for organized conf calls internally and with customers, and then use regular text messaging for one-off messages with each other and customers. We don’t use whatsapp at all for anything - I am pretty sure I don’t even have a whatsapp account.
None of my friends use whatsapp either. I communicate with most of my friends and family via text message, a few of my more paranoid friends will only chat via “Signal”, and then for bigger group chats we use Discord.
‘MS Teams’ Shudders
Unfortunately, after you eliminate all the collab services blatantly handing their data to government-backed built-in spy services, and all the services with off-shore backend servers, and all the services with poor track records for security, MS Teams is one of the only options left…as shitty as it is. Our customers insist on it, so we bend to their will.
I’m from Europe, and for years I’d been using WhatsApp because everyone expected me to even though I didn’t feel comfortable using it at all (because I care about my privacy and apparently not all of my friends/family members do). At some point I was forced to accept new terms that basically said it was okay for them to sell my data and that’s where I drew the line and told everyone that I would no longer be using WhatsApp and that if they wanted to reach me they could call me, text me or message me on Telegram. I immediately uninstalled it.
I noticed friends and family found it a bit odd and inconvenient that I’d stopped using WhatsApp. And many companies seem to use WhatsApp to contact their customers (why can’t they just email me instead…) and it seems they automatically assume everyone uses it, which I find a bit annoying. But ever since uninstalling it no one has been able to convince me to reinstall it and I plan to keep it that way.
Japan. I’ve never used whatsapp. It is neither popular here nor important for business communication.
Filipino living in Singapore, married to a Japanese:
Philippines - Facebook Messenger (they love Facebook there) Singapore - WhatsApp (everyone uses it here, especially businesses, so it’s hard not to have it installed) Japan - Line (I think it’s because of the stickers and emojis?)
German here. My last employer was visibly confused when I told him that I neither have a Whatsapp account nor a smartphone, and didn’t want either one. Apparently it was his preferred way of changing shifts last minute and he was pissed that I didn’t want to participate in that bullshit. So you want to send me a notification after effing midnight that I have to come in at 5 AM instead of 6 AM? Miss me with that shit.
Luckily I found a better job elsewhere (and they do NOT require any social media accounts - if they want to change something, they call me and ASK whether I am ok with it).
That’s crazy, my employer won’t even call my cell phone unless it’s a dire emergency, which pretty much never happens.
My employer is the same and they added it to my pay when they did have to once.
Mine used to give me a stipend and when they stopped that I told them I won’t be using my personal phone for work anymore. They never called or gave me shit over it. My old boss called me once after that but that was to go get a beer.
Did you get a beer with him/her?
Yup, we ended up doing happy hour on a semi regular basis with a few people from work up until the pandemic.
USA here. Only reason I have WhatsApp is to stay in touch with friends in Europe and South America. Not a single one of my American friends or relatives uses it.
Yep. USA is really just iMessage/SMS, with maybe Discord/GroupMe sometimes
My friend group uses google the same way apple users use imessage. The implementation has changed many times over the years (google chat, sms integration, hangouts chat, whatever), but it’s always basically been the same thing and it’s usable from any device. That’s my main complaint about ~~signal ~~ and telegram: if I’m at home, forget using my stupid tiny phone, lemme do it from my PC that I’m probably on anyway.
edit: tried to strike out signal, but it’s ignoring the formatting I guess.
You can get signal for Linux, windows, and macos
That’s good to know. I think when I tried it before, I ran into issues signing into multiple devices at once. Chances are, I just got the apps confused in memory though. Thanks!
Norway. I’ve never used WhatsApp and don’t know anybody that uses it. Everybody is on Facebook messenger, snapchat or discord.
In Italy everyone and their mom use Whatsapp, even if I need to communicate with a business like for ordering a medicine at a pharmacy, I can call them on their land line (absolutely no thanks) or I can send them a Whatsapp. I have telegram just for public group chats and matrix for the fediverse group chats, no one irl use signal or matrix, a few have telegram but WhatsApp is the standard here
French here.
I chose to “force” my way out of WhatsApp and facebook messenger. All my friends and family used it, as well as some colleagues. I managed to move my family group chat to signal, and then chose to lose all the other group chats and see how it would work after a few months. In the end, the most important people to me moved with me. As for the other ones, it made planning for events and such a bit harder, but it didn’t prevent me from keeping in touch with anybody.
The Netherlands and I barely use anything else to communicate with friends and family. Whatsapp is pretty much the only means of communication people use here.
Estonian here.
I use WhatsApp to talk to my mom and we aren’t allowed to use it for work. Only our locally hosted Skype instance for business talk, even teams is off limits for more secret stuff since its not fully locally hosted.
