When I installed Whatsapp and Viber my social life got back on track. I was wondering for few years where everyone was.

East europe.

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.

Australia here.

None of my friends or clients have ever contacted me in whatsapp.

I use telegram with my friends.

In SEA it seems like everyone is using Line. Fuck me I hate line.

I’m in the US and we use SMS instead of any specific app. It’s a pretty shitty protocol, but it’s at least not tied to any company.

Maybe in 2040 we’ll get an upgraded protocol when companies megacorps actually decide to try and bridge protocols.

US here, and yes, easily. I have WhatsApp installed on my phone but it’s probably been over a year since I used it last. SMS, email, and Facebook Messenger are the media of choice in my social circle. Work communication is over Slack and email.

But if someone wanted to use WhatsApp to talk to me, I’d use it without being bothered much.

We get it Americans, you don’t use Whatsapp.

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.

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.

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!”

Super-frustrating and makes me feel pretty helpless tbh.

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 lose 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 via WhatsApp.

P.S. Shameless plugin for /m/Signal

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).

We use whatsapp at work because a majority of people have iPhones, not an issue but group chats with Android users (half of the department I’m working for, myself included) cause issues with the actual texts.

From what I’ve looked into, simplified, Apple is at fault for not properly implementing cross-compatible version of imessage. (Iirc, it’s RTC but can’t quite remember all at the moment)

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.

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