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Comment by FiloSottile | Hacker News Reader

“All of them” in what sense?

I use WhatsApp dozens of times a day, and interact with business accounts every couple months at most.

Good for you, you probably do not live in a country under digital colonialism where the gov allowed facebook et al to force internet providers to tax the pop with absurdly low and expensive data limits and then "not count" things like facebook and whatsapp and one music app.

In most of the global south, 100% of business have a whatsapp. In those places it pretty much replaced telephone and the green whatsapp icon is now what the current young generation recognize as the we did the black telephone outline on a business front next to a number.

and if you own a business, or is self employed, it is even worse: you live by that app.

Are you saying this is a worse alternative to other communication methods with businesses? What would you use with them that has better encryption?

The lack of encryption between myself and a business is less offensive than replacing an open standard (plain old telephone systems, eMail) with a proprietary and closed one, backed by a single, private corporation

I don't think they've been replaced, though?

De jure or de facto?

Neither.

i completely agree with your sentiment, but i will also say this.

As an expat, this feature has enabled me to transact with locals from the convenience of my phone, even though i don't have any local line and i will not bother to get a local SIM card, nor do i want to have a US SIM and a local one interchangeably.

It also enables me to be very effective when requesting services on demand, and cutting thru the on-hold time, disconnected calls, or the needless chitchat.

I have many bad things to say about WA, but making living more difficult in a foreign country is not one of them.

All of that can be achieved in the same way via email.

All of that can also be achieved by pigeon post.

The only difference is that email is more sane and actually does the job.

See, that's the problem.

Telephony is an artificial monopoly. There's not a single reason why you cannot call everyone around the globe for mostly free, as whatsapp proves. Yet here we are.

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