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Comment by bloqs | Hacker News Reader

Americans, do people not use whatsapp over there? In Europe everyone uses whatsapp for literally everything, with a sprinkling of Telegram if you are into something a little subversive and Signal if you actually care about privacy.

The only time I use text/sms is to recieve codes for things, and I'm doing that less and less.

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Lifelong US citizen here - I've barely heard anyone mention it in person my whole life. If it wasn't for reading about it in discussions like this, I would probably never even think about it. iMessage, social media DMs, and regular SMS seem to be the most common in my experience. Signal/Telegram are pretty much only used here by tech people and/or people discussing not-so-wholesome things and I'm always surprised to see people on HN talk about moving their whole family to one of these apps or using them more casually in general.

> If it wasn't for reading about it in discussions like this, I would probably never even think about it.

I'm the same, but in the sense that I can't even begin to understand that people will marginalize each other based on the colors of their text messages, or that it would even matter at all. Having lived in Asia for the last ten years, having multiple chat apps is just so normal, most of my friends use WhatsApp, some use Messenger. Friends in China is WeChat, some friends from Japan and Thailand use Line.

We're not talking about normal people, we're talking about teenagers. Adults see the green bubble and understand someone in the group is using Android and as a result their messages are insecure, and they generally don't care about that. If you're an adult and concerned about security in your chats then just use WhatsApp. You'll never get teenagers to adopt that approach though.

In my experience the only Americans who use WhatsApp have family outside the US/Canada. There's a very large proportion of the population living entirely inside the Apple ecosystem.

US carriers stopped charging for SMS around 2010 or thereabouts (cannot remember), or they included so much in the plan that it may as well have been free, so most people just stick with the convenience of not having to install another app on their phone. For photos my friends and I just emailed them to each other. I usually tried to move the conversation to Skype/AIM/MSN though after cell devices were more developed. Now its discord and telegram for everything for me with SMS sprinkled in.

No, they don't. Also facebook seems to be still a big thing in the US. Really funny how the culture is different.

The only time I use SMS is for to receive codes for two factor authentication. Nobody ever receives an SMS from me.

It was so annoying having to send and receive SMS back when I was working with some USA people. Over here in Mexico everyone uses WhatsApp, as well as friends that are in Europe.

Mainly use WhatsApp to chat with European friends or a group chat that includes someone with android. Else it’s all iMessage, Telegram, Signal, and Slack / Discord for more community groups. And the occasional Instagram or Twitter DMs. (And that’s not even mentioning WeChat, Facebook Messenger, GroupMe, …).

Amazing how fragmented the messaging space has become.

Nobody I know (locally) uses whatsapp. I'd be surprised if a majority have even heard of it.

I live in northern Europe and the only people I know use WhatsApp are immigrants and children of immigrants that use it to communicate with people in the old country.

Where is northern Europe? Because here in northern European UK, everybody uses WhatsApp, which is convenient because also my southern European Italian friends do, and my relatives in equatorial Africa.

For me (also northern Europe) it seems that everyone uses WhatsApp.

I know a large number of Northern Europeans and I speak to them all via whatsapp. Unusual!

I have a lot of European and Israeli neighborhoods, and unfortunately they are very deep in the WhatsApp ecosystem. It's painful.

I only use whatsapp for contacting friends from outside the country.

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