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Comment by JepZ | Hacker News Reader

Everybody is talking about Facebook these days, but is anybody considering to delete his Whatsapp and Instragram accounts too? I mean, aren't they part of Facebook nowadays?

Wouldn't it be consistent to abandon all Facebook services?

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I do, abandoned Instagram, Whatsapp, and FB for a year and I don't miss a thing. Keep in touch with real friends instead of checking the virtual ones.

If you have international family/friends, WhatsApp is the most ubiquitous and easy to use option I’ve come across.

And why alternatives like Telegramm are not an easy to use option?

That might be an option, but not as ubiquitous and easy to use. We’re dealing with people who barely read and speak a single language, much less English.

Honest question: Is it really? That can be just my network, but I've never stumbled upon anyone using WhatsApp here in Poland. I only know this name because I follow tech news. Almost everyone uses Facebook's Messenger, some people use Telegram, sometimes Hangouts, gamers use Discord, techies Signal or Jabber and that's pretty much it.

Of course, my observations are limited to me and I don't have any numbers. My interactions are with people in Brazil/US/UK/Australia/India/South Africa/Kenya/Spain/Central America.

I know WeChat is more popular in East Asia, and I know a few Telegram/Signal users, but I can find about almost everyone on WhatsApp.

When I was in the Nederlands last year they actually had public signage advertising a WhatsApp group chat (for emergencies and the like) for the surrounding community.

I was surprised by how popular it is.

I'm from Brazil, live in the Netherlands. Whastapp is ubiquitous in both places. Not using it today is akin to not having a mobile phone years ago.

My friends from Germany, Switzerland, and France all primarily use WhatsApp I've no idea why.

Whatsapp still sends (for now) way less data than Facebook and also has much better security. I wonder how long it will continue.

WhatsApp sends the most important one, your social graph aka contact list and how often and when you interact with whom. I also assume the content of the messages you send and receive can be read and monitored.

> I also assume the content of the messages you send and receive can be read and monitored.

Whatsapp uses the Signal protocol for message encryption[0], so they ostensibly cannot read your messages. They probably have a good handle on who you talk to and when, though.

[0] https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/

They could obscure cell numbers too - they chose not to

Never used Whatsapp, haven't used Instagram for a very long time. It's only Facebook I need to cut off (and recent news are only the courage providers for something I've been considering for years already :P).

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