this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2024
734 points (98.4% liked)
Technology
59594 readers
3363 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
If you don't live in a place with WhatsApp as the dominant chat app I don't think you could get it. I don't have FB, Instagram, Snapchat, Google, Outlook, or any form of social media, I am as disconnected as can be. But WA is truly inescapable.
Need to ask a very specific question about taxes? The government support person only answers through WhatsApp. Need to file an insurance report and even check if it was approved? WhatsApp. Need to schedule a certification exam? Whatsapp. Hell, more and more companies and government services are moving to WA only customer service/support, like not even help you if you show up in person and in some cases their phone lines (which are "always busy") just direct you to their WhatsApp.
Its also the only way of reaching coworkers/classmates. Not for like socializing or messing around, but for group work, file sharing, scheduling meetings, sharing important/urgent announcements, etc. And good luck getting mere acquaintances to install a secondary chat app just to talk to you, when we can barely get our friends to install adblockers in their browsers. Well, there are other secondary ways to reach them, Facebook Messenger and Instagram DMs, but we both likely agree on what to make of these ones.
I hate Facebook and am aware of their practices, but they have reached an absolute dominance over communication in most of the world. You can't just ignore them in day to day life.
The people who say "just don't use WhatsApp" really don't understand. They may as well be saying "just don't use email"
For millions, possibly billions of people, it's a straight-up requirement for partaking in modern society.
Like somebody else here said, the EU has handed Signal, on a silver platter, the chance to become a mainstream messaging app, and rather than embrace it, Signal have comprehensively rejected it.
Honestly, what are they doing?