… is it possible to do any kind of business and/or have regular conversations without having to use whatsapp as a main way of communication?
If you’d like you can say in what country you’re living.
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.
At work we use Slack and Google Meet.
+1, in the US Whatsapp is the thing you download when you’re traveling abroad, and has no other presence at all
USA here. No we don’t use WhatsApp at all. I communicate with all friends and family on Telegram or SMS. For work we use Slack. I refuse to have any Facebook anything installed on my phone (I don’t use social media anyway…except for Lemmy now I guess if that counts haha)
I’m a proponent of breaking social media into two categories. There should be “personal media” or something where you use your real name and information, and some other name for social media that you use an alias. The fact Reddit/Lemmy are in the same category as Facebook seems dumb. We need a better way to describe it. Depending on how you define it, news sites with comment sections could be called social media if you wanted to, but it’s clearly something different than Facebook.
I’m from Europe, and for years I’d been using WhatsApp because everyone expected me to even though I didn’t feel comfortable using it at all (because I care about my privacy and apparently not all of my friends/family members do). At some point I was forced to accept new terms that basically said it was okay for them to sell my data and that’s where I drew the line and told everyone that I would no longer be using WhatsApp and that if they wanted to reach me they could call me, text me or message me on Telegram. I immediately uninstalled it.
I noticed friends and family found it a bit odd and inconvenient that I’d stopped using WhatsApp. And many companies seem to use WhatsApp to contact their customers (why can’t they just email me instead…) and it seems they automatically assume everyone uses it, which I find a bit annoying. But ever since uninstalling it no one has been able to convince me to reinstall it and I plan to keep it that way.
Norway. For whatever reason, Whatsapp hasn’t really taken off as far as I know. Instead people are all over the place with messaging services. Snapchat, Facebook Messenger, Instagram DM, Signal, Telegram and SMS. I’m sure there’s more.
Japan. I’ve never used whatsapp. It is neither popular here nor important for business communication.
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.
That is fucking horrifying. How did it ever get to that point?
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 ☹️
Salvadorian here. Ppl here definetly use whatsapp as a pretty much jack of all trades, including work stuff. Weirdly enough people don’t care about privacy, despite the fact that any other messenger app is far way superior that whatsapp, people just don’t use it or put any excuse to not even try.
Hell, if you tell em “I don’t have an account/wa installed” like myself, they pretty try to exclude you or advice you to install it and to stop being a pain in the ass to deal with, it’s just plain ridiculous
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.
Edit: This is the US where most people use SMS for personal communication though.
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
Norway. I’ve never used WhatsApp and don’t know anybody that uses it. Everybody is on Facebook messenger, snapchat or discord.
America. Most everyone uses SMS. Unlimited SMS texting is standard for nearly all cell plans.
Yes, whatsapp isn’t popular here, but we are forced to use Facebook Messenger so Zuck’s got it covered.
Philippines.
I’m from Vietnam. It’s the same here. Facebook seems to be really popular on Asia huh?
I blame Farmville and Zynga for that, by the time Facebook introduced video games in there, Friendster got abandoned.
It’s a tragedy. I’m trying to get my (filipino) mom to try signal haha.
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.
Basically the same here. WhatsApp is basically “dial-a-boomer” on my phone.
Little sad that Signal dropped SMS support, but I get it.
NW Europe here.
I can’t stop using WhatsApp without taking a significant hit to my social life.
Australia, I have never used whatsapp
