South America, Brazil. Everything has been taken by meta. From private to business. If you don’t use it, you get that look as if you were some strange unfit person. Try to challenge somebody asking why there is no alternative, you’ll get that look again. Doctors, lawyers, real estate, rentals, pharmacy, schools, online classes, local business, everyday communications, online purchases, receipts, invoices, returning items you bought, financial advices, government related stuff (gov won’t do a damn thing to include another official channel of communicating, it suites them very well, “Please use whatsapp for your convince, we want you to be satisfied”, not the other way around. You ain’t survive without this crap. Don’t resist or else.
Cellular carriers were charging disproportionately for sms and calls, so people where looking for cheap alternatives and unfortunately meta/facebook zucced the entire nation by being in the right place at the right time (with enormous help of word-of-mouth marketing that sealed the deal and some additional help coming from meta I suppose). Government never cared nor questioned why everything was provided for free, zero cost, no questions asked and regular folks didn’t have time or even bother to do some research. And on the top of it, local carriers to make things even better, introduced the zero-rate for zucced app which basically elevated this crapp to some divine status. And now we have wechat called ZAP, as a solution for every kind of communication. Nowadays even if you proved that this crapp is doing some harm to you in alot of ways, nobody would care. It’s as normal as flipping on a light switch, simply nobody think about it anymore, it’s there and that’s about it.
That’s absolutely awful. I wish there was something we could do or some advice that might help but I have nothing. I hope some radical change comes along in the future and fixes this ☹️
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).
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.
If you want the real answer, I had already typed him realized it could have been a woman so then did slash her. Them would have been easier if I had started that way. The way I did it I’m not sure which was easier. But it’s what I did and I’m sticking with it.
Australian here. Don’t know of anyone who uses WhatsApp. Different organizations and demographics uses a range of different platforms like Facebook messenger, MS Teams, Slack, Discord etc. From my perspective those are all about the same level.
At least most official comms either government or business is SMS, phone, or email.
Happy for other Aussies to correct me of course, thsrs just my quick perspective
I wish my contractor subby group admin would use discord. We will have several site visits which need up to six people in attendance and there is only the whatsapp for organising it. I often think it would be easier to have a discord with different rooms for each site visit. That would mean id only reveive notifications about my specific not work and not every single interaction.
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.
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.
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!
For now I haven’t had to use it for work or school, but it’s really common for organizations and student groups, so I’d be missing on a lot if I completely stopped using it (France).
I’m in the US. Never used Whatsapp in my life, and don’t know anyone that does. I just text people. It would be weird if someone tried to get me to use WhatsApp and tbh I’d probably just say no.
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
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