It is a US thing. The majority of folks in the US still use SMS for text chat. The alternative is buying into a proprietary platform like WhatsApp, but not everyone you talk to is going to be on WhatsApp/FB Messenger/iMessage, etc, so you end up having 5 different chat apps installed on your phone at any time. SMS has been the only real ubiquitous one despite all its flaws.

I don't live in the US, and SMS support has been essential in convincing people from my parents' generation to give signal a try. I personally also like not ever having to open my phone's stock message app when I once in a while do get an SMS

I don't send many SMSs, but I receive them: package delivery notifications, automatic appointment reminders, a message to say my car has been repaired, 2FA codes.

I found it useful to have all these messages in a single place, although this change probably won't inconvenience me too much. However, I don't see any benefit.

Why the rest of the world has converged on using a free closed source messaging service by a for profit company because of the privacy boggles my mind. I'd rather just stick with SMS if I can't feasibly use signal.

Well over 50% of users of HN are from the USA, so what do you expect? Just because something is European doesn't naturally make it better.

Where do you live where people do not use SMS? In most countries I've been to and lived in in Europe SMS was very much used.

Same here. I also considered this being a US-only thing. I couldn't care less about SMS.

In fact, I hope getting rid of SMS support adds some capacity to the team for features/fixes I care the most about.

SMS is used heavily by companies in Sweden too, for pretty much all notifications and often chat too. This is going to be a pain in the ass.