this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2025
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Is this really the case?
Maybe it's a regional thing. I'm in the northeast US, and nearly everyone I know uses Facebook Messenger as their main form of communication, even people who don't touch Facebook at all. I hate Messenger for the same reasons that people hate WhatsApp, but I still have to use it because my entire social circle does. If I want to message someone outside Messenger without giving my phone number out, I use my Google Voice number.
I've only ever used WhatsApp to talk to work contacts overseas, and I've only ever used Signal to talk to paranoid drug dealers, which is a use case that's mostly been replaced by Telegram now.
In my region in Europe, it really is. EVERYONE uses WhatsApp. I'm not sure the last time I saw someone use SMS, its all WhatsApp. iOS, Android, its all there.
Outside of North America, most other countries' use WhatsApp as a choice for personal and business uses is WhatsApp. Rest are mostly dominated by Facebook messenger. Excluding China which has WeChat domestically.
How Meta was ever allowed to buy WhatsApp without triggering anti-trust laws is beyond me.
Some numbers
Many of my European and South American friends are having a hard time because that's where all their families and friends back home are, and it's hard to get them to use something new, especially the older folks.
It was still called Facebook when they bought it.