this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2023
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WhatsApp isn't only for boomers. Pretty much everyone with a smartphone uses it.
Never met an it-pro using that thing. And beside some boomers and younger technically challenged, i have never seen one using it. To each his own. People actually use facebook too. Or even twi... Errr. X.
It is extremely widespread in Europe. In Germany, a good 50 million people (out of 80) use it every day. I would describe myself as very tech-savvy and privacy-conscious and would normally never use it , but since everyone in the family and friends use it without exception, there is no escape. plus quite a lot of business now use whatsapp for contact / support.
Same here (South America). You can not use it yourself but it will mostly keep you out of the loop on everything. Most of the phone companies don't charge you whatsapp message data just to make it more inescapable.
How is that even a thing? are your data-plans that shitty that this bit of whatsapp-traffic matters? Unless you're sending some hour-long movies every days.
Data plans exists, but there is no good middle ground. You have the unlimited 4g connection for 20 USD , or the WhatsApp only for a few dollars.
Most of the people, specially older age or people who already have unlimited data from work phones, do not need 4g unlimited connection, so why spend extra 15 USD (which is a lot in latin America), if you can still communicate perfectly fine via WhatsApp.
Depends on the country, in mine data plans are not that expensive (add some asterisks to that). But they include those "whatsapp free" or some streaming service traffic with no cost to get the edge over other phone companies. All of them mostly have the whatsapp free thing.
I used to live in a different country and it did make a significant difference, as @desconectado@lemm.ee points out below.
You mean the WA-traffic made a significant difference? But how? It's still mostly just text, no?
Here data is expensive, but a messenger wouldn't make a difference (unless you'd exchange a lot of large files) so that any provider would gain a benefit over the competition. Including TV or netflix or tidal hifi, that'd would. Weird...
No, I don't mean that. Whatsapp traffic (files i don't think is included in the deal) is treated by the companies independently of other data traffic. You may not have a data plan, but still get a "whatsapp free" thingy, you can text for free via whatsapp without using data plans.
Ahhh i see. So no data at all but still free WA. That does make sense. And is pretty mean 😊