UK here. Most people I work with will have Signal or Telegram. However my kids and the parents groups and schools all use WhatsApp.
None of them could get their friends to switch from WhatsApp. Nobody gives a shit at all about Meta and their dodgy data practices. Convenience is king. “aLL mY frIEnDs aRE oN WHatSaPp!”
They will literally be excluded if they don’t use it.
Super-frustrating and makes me feel pretty helpless tbh.
Unfortunately, iMessage’s proprietary format is far more common than RCS in the US, it works better than RCS, and apple makes a lot of money using it to keep people tied to their ecosystem, so it’s unlikely anything is going to change without government action
Though I wouldn’t say Androids get it. More like Google Messages and a very few select apps get RCS. It’s a standard protocol in theory. In practice, not so much. I think there’s like 3 total apps. You’ll probably never see a FOSS RCS app, or one that isn’t tied to a big corp. Server implentations of RCS also aren’t standard, but most use Google Jibe.
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.
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.
México. Everyone uses whatsapp. For personal communication or work. Businesses have their accounts you can order stuff through. Nobody uses SMS or pretty much any other chat app.
Microsoft Teams is the official communication tool for business where I work, no need to use whatsapp tho a few colleagues use it for fluff, as for personal/family, some of my family use whatsapp but I don’t (I use Discord), if we want to talk to each other we use “good old-fashioned” phone calls :D
Murican here: Yes, I don’t really use apps at all to communicate with people I know outside of work. The last time I used Whatsapp was when I was dating this girl who originally from Brazil. After we broke up I never had a need to use it.
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?)
Lost a bunch of contacts after ditching WhatsApp a few years back but eventually managed to get most of my valuable ones to use Signal.
Work-wise everyone uses WhatsApp, for example my team has a group chat that I am not a part of, so I am losing some info on that side.
When traveling I also get a lot of prompts to use WhatsApp for example two hotels we stayed at this year did concierge only via WhatsApp.
Most of my friends are in signal, but I still use WhatsApp for those who aren’t, and for my family. Never really used WhatsApp to communicate with business. (UK)
I’m in Canada. My s/o once had an employer force their staff to use WhatsApp and it was horrible, lol. The notifications were constant and the whole getting work stuff while at home was annoying. But she never had that happen before or after that one employer.
I’ve never had an employer use WhatsApp, they communicate by text if I need to be reached when I’m not working (rare for me), or email/Teams if I’m at work.
Unfortunately in most of the world it is pretty much required in many cases - I’m part of 3 work related Whatsapp groups (2 mandatory), many University groups (not mandatory technically, but much information posted there isn’t posted anywhere else), and most people I know mainly use Whatsapp as their IM platform.
Many businesses use Whatsapp for contact too these days.
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.
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