The only people that believe I’m worth contacting have already switched to Signal and the ones that refused to switch lost contact with me. Their loss I guess.
never heard anyone use whatsapp in sweden, everyone is expected to use something that supports sms as a fallback. Usually facebook messenger or whatever the iphone thing is called.
Far as i know the only popular truly separate platform would be something like snapchat or kik or whatever, which is used by teenagers.
Yeah they’re all on Facebook Messenger which sucks. I’ve managed to switch a few in my surroundings to Signal but I still need to keep Messenger for holdouts.
Thankfully I have managed to get everyone to switch from Messenger to Signal, atleast for talking to me haha. Two other family members being privacy oriented too really helped getting the rest of the family moved over.
Because in my country historically the telecom companies are charging 0.30€ per SMS (text) and 2€ per MMS (text with photo).
So WhatsApp when they launched with their “1€/lifetime” offer on the iPhone 3GS they were the right app at the right time and became the de facto replacement for any kind of messaging. It’s insane how basically overnight they replaced msn messenger and Skype because it was so convenient (Microsoft never did a smartphone client for msn messenger, only unofficial ones. It was available on dumbphones but it used SMS from the plan to send/receive, nobody used it because you needed to be a millionaire to afford it)
SMS now in my country is only for receiving OTP codes, for the rest is WhatsApp, because still in 2026 the telecoms are still charging 2€ for each MMS sent and nobody wants to risk huge bills. This includes iMessage because if a chat suddenly goes green and you didn’t notice, it costs dozens of euro
You need at least 2 people to form a conversation.
One of them has Whatsapp, Telegram, signal, MSTeams, smoke signals and those flags that ships used to communicate.
The other only has Whatsapp.
They are going to communicate over Whatsapp.
Even if the dude with 1000 communication methods meets another dude with 1000 communication methods, they are going to use WhatsApp, because they are used to using Whatsapp with everyone, so it’s just easier to have everyone on WhatsApp.
oh, my wife and i are [mode of communication] geeks. she knows 3 different sign languages, i know a really rare one, we both speak just enough of like 17 different languages to order food and find the library and bathroom wherever we go. Also in semaphore. Partly because we sing, partly because we like people. The first time you learn a new language it changes the way you think about the world just by giving you new words and structures to place those words. It’s beautiful.
Because it’s unfair to assume that everyone has the necessary education or awareness of what the internet is and what online privacy means that we take for granted.
Why would anyone use WhatsApp when there’s Signal?
Because most of the world is already on WhatsApp, and changing to Signal would isolate you from most people and businesses.
Sounds great - if I wasn’t already using Signal, that just might persuade me 😁
The only people that believe I’m worth contacting have already switched to Signal and the ones that refused to switch lost contact with me. Their loss I guess.
Must be more popular in your country, in Canada I don’t know a single person on whatsapp
It’s very big in western Europe. Here in the Netherlands everybody is on WhatsApp pretty much since it’s creation
I think the whole europe except some countries
never heard anyone use whatsapp in sweden, everyone is expected to use something that supports sms as a fallback. Usually facebook messenger or whatever the iphone thing is called.
Far as i know the only popular truly separate platform would be something like snapchat or kik or whatever, which is used by teenagers.
Checks out
Yeah they’re all on Facebook Messenger which sucks. I’ve managed to switch a few in my surroundings to Signal but I still need to keep Messenger for holdouts.
Thankfully I have managed to get everyone to switch from Messenger to Signal, atleast for talking to me haha. Two other family members being privacy oriented too really helped getting the rest of the family moved over.
Damn shame
I could move to Signal, open up a chat with myself and chat for a while but I think it would get pretty boring pretty soon.
I thought people on here of all places would understand the impact of the network effect.
Because in my country historically the telecom companies are charging 0.30€ per SMS (text) and 2€ per MMS (text with photo).
So WhatsApp when they launched with their “1€/lifetime” offer on the iPhone 3GS they were the right app at the right time and became the de facto replacement for any kind of messaging. It’s insane how basically overnight they replaced msn messenger and Skype because it was so convenient (Microsoft never did a smartphone client for msn messenger, only unofficial ones. It was available on dumbphones but it used SMS from the plan to send/receive, nobody used it because you needed to be a millionaire to afford it)
SMS now in my country is only for receiving OTP codes, for the rest is WhatsApp, because still in 2026 the telecoms are still charging 2€ for each MMS sent and nobody wants to risk huge bills. This includes iMessage because if a chat suddenly goes green and you didn’t notice, it costs dozens of euro
There’s a setting in iOS to disable that from happening btw
Well Signal would be pretty much the same as WhatsApp, it sends over internet not mms or sms
The problem is that everyone assumes you have WhatsApp.
You take clothes to the laundry? The “your order is done” notification is sent via WhatsApp
Any kind of work stuff is also on WhatsApp
You order food delivery? WhatsApp
Amazon started to send delivery notifications via WhatsApp instead of email/sms
And luckily meta is charging businesses 5 cents for messages via API or otherwise even otp codes would be via whatsapp
At least here, being reachable only on signal means being a digital exile
I agree, but the other people all use it 🫠
Network effects
Couldn’t be me… but some people don’t care that Meta can read their messages. Or they still don’t know but I doubt it.
Mark Zuckerberg has a term for these people…
“dumbfucks”
-Markie Zuc
I know we’re all saying network effects, but I don’t know what the fuck network effects means.
Network effects dude. Network effects.
It’s a simple concept.
You need at least 2 people to form a conversation.
One of them has Whatsapp, Telegram, signal, MSTeams, smoke signals and those flags that ships used to communicate.
The other only has Whatsapp.
They are going to communicate over Whatsapp.
Even if the dude with 1000 communication methods meets another dude with 1000 communication methods, they are going to use WhatsApp, because they are used to using Whatsapp with everyone, so it’s just easier to have everyone on WhatsApp.
i think those are called semaphore and they’re cool as hell. i have a set of flags around here somewhere
Of course the random dude I replied to on Lemmy owns a set of semaphore flags. What else would I expect?
oh, my wife and i are [mode of communication] geeks. she knows 3 different sign languages, i know a really rare one, we both speak just enough of like 17 different languages to order food and find the library and bathroom wherever we go. Also in semaphore. Partly because we sing, partly because we like people. The first time you learn a new language it changes the way you think about the world just by giving you new words and structures to place those words. It’s beautiful.
Because it’s unfair to assume that everyone has the necessary education or awareness of what the internet is and what online privacy means that we take for granted.
I don’t get to choose what app my European friends use
signal is extremely popular across europe
i’ll get right on telling them that. again.
You genuinely don’t know? 😬