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Comment by IkmoIkmo | Hacker News Reader

Really? All my friends, my boss, the shop I just bought a new suit at, my municipality, they're all on whatsapp nowadays. It's a pretty big deal to just cut it out of my life. It's a platform that's approaching something like 'have an email address' or 'have a phone' in practical terms.

There are workarounds but they're not as painless as simply deciding to 'use an alternative chat alternative'. It's like saying you don't like English? Well try esperanto and good luck functioning in the US. I've given some extremely exaggerated examples, particularly this last one haha, but I've found reliance on Whatsapp to be substantial and on the rise.

I do agree by the way that this isn't that big a deal. I'm completely fine to continue using them, but if I wasn't the proposed 'just stop using them, there's chat alternatives' really doesn't fly. It'd be really shitty.

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I don't use neither facebook nor whatsapp and I live perfectly fine. It's not like you stop breathing.

In my experience telling people that you prefer a different medium from whatsapp is not a big deal.

I also have neither, but it's extremely hard.

Some people will understand why you don't have Facebook, but not having WhatsApp is downright mad. Specially if you work with technology.

The only people I know that don't have it are luddites or very old people, and even they are far and few between.

> The only people I know that don't have it are luddites or very old people, and even they are far and few between.

I don't have it and no one I interact with at work had asked for my WhatsApp. I work in tech but NOT in the SV bubble. Everyone I know uses Google Hangouts.

Messenger apps have always been regional, back in high school everyone I knew used MSN Messenger while people I knew from my old hometown were all on AIM.

Still, Whatsapp has extremely high penetration in some countries outside the US. E.g. in my country of origin (The Netherlands), 9.8 million people use Whatsapp, 7 million people daily (of 17 million inhabitants). I now live in Germany, where Whatsapp had 30 million active users in 2014 (population: 80 million). If people have some other messenger it's typically Facebook Messenger.

tl;dr: there are a lot of countries/language regions where Whatsapp is the absolutely dominant messenger.

"Specially if you work with technology."

I think you mean especially. And no its not uncommon to not have or use Whatsapp. Nobody on my current team uses it and nobody on my last one did either. We use IRC and Slack and that is enough. And none of us are Luddites or old people.

Yes, thanks for the correction.

As it's been said before, it's very geographically dependent. In here, there isn't a local shop or service that doesn't advertise its WhatsApp number. Even the city hall's ombudsman answers via WhatsApp. Not email, not phone.

I'd love to be able to communicate through open protocols such as IRC and email alone. But that's not the world I, and I would wager, most, live in.

Depends on where you live. You'd be a monster here if you didn't use WhatsApp :D

In my opinion, you're a monster if you impose using a certain product on your environment.

Yes, and that's what you do if you, knowing 99.9999% of people use whatsapp, force your friends/family to install something else. So, use whatsapp, and don't be a monster.

Nobody I know uses whatsapp. Everyone has this thing called a phone they run whatsapp on, I assume you can ask for this weird old thing called a phone number.

I will double check, but I think the setup and configuration is already complete for most people's phones, so no additional install needed.

Texts are pricey. Calls are inconvenient. Whatsapp is a de facto standard and I bet a big % of people who got a smartphone, got it because they needed it to use whatsapp, or use whatsapp exclusively.

So doesn't that make that position downright dangerous? As a 3rd party to this argument, now I agree with the other guy.

edit: to clarify I mean I should join the opt-out side to help stop it from becoming socially unacceptable

The Facebook/WhatsApp hegemony really is dangerous in that aspect. It grew from 'just social media' into something that is starting to usurp communication that used to take place via open platforms. In the Netherlands one of the largest banks (ING) even stopped supporting communication with its customers via email, suggesting the use of Twitter or WhatsApp instead for digital communication.

It is perfectly possible not to use them (I don't), but it is not without downsides.

If ING is able to suggest Twitter/WhatsApp as communications mediums instead of email, then it means they are either incompetents, or it means that they are doing it on purpose, due to Twitter/WhatsApp conversations being superficial and the services very volatile. Maybe they don't want you to store your conversations forever in an easily searchable archive. Maybe they don't want you writing long and clear messages describing your problem.

Either way, it's time to switch banks. And it's a good thing that you told me about it, as in Romania we also have ING and was considering then for my business account.

>It's a platform that's approaching something like 'have an email address' or 'have a phone' in practical terms.

Not even remotely. I realize that WhatsApp is a big thing, but I've never even used it or have anyone in my circle who uses it. And I work in the tech industry.

Do people really feel social pressure to use a specific app?

Not even remotely. I realize that WhatsApp is a big thing, but I've never even used it or have anyone in my circle who uses it. And I work in the tech industry

I can't deduce from your profile where you are from, but can people stop extrapolating the situation in the US to the rest of the world? There are many countries where is Whatsapp is far more popular than SMS or any other messenger, country-wide.

I've never used WhatsApp and have never had anyone ask if I use it. It seems it's largely country or age based. Here in the US it's certainly not a requirement.

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