• Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip
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    10 months ago

    vast majority of people use the default app their phone choice comes with.

    historically eise, the reason EU uses whatsapp was that there was a time period early on where sms costed money, so people used whatsapp to circumvent that. the U.S didnt have that problem as sms was free for the majority of people in that time period.

    • gregorum@lemm.ee
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      10 months ago

      Also, at the time, WhatsApp was pretty much the only option. Nowadays, there are a lot of other options.

    • WhiteHotaru@feddit.de
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      10 months ago

      39 cents/SMS. I remember this time. This does not explain why it has to be that specific protocol, though.

    • echo64@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      This seems a bit revisionist. Everyone had an amount of smses per month that were free in their contract.

      People switched to whatsapp because it was better than sms.

      • Stupidmanager@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        wasn’t it the long distance thing? charged for sending SMS outside of your network or something. I recall whatsapp was the way to text your parents from one country in to another, even in the EU.

        I know for a fact my fam adopted almost a decade ago, so we can text from USA to EU to SA to Canada. Family all over and it’s free.