In many countries, WhatsApp's data usage is zero-rated, which makes WhatsApp more attractive than Signal, Telegram, etc.

Whatsapp has 3 billion active users.

Countries like Mexico or Spain have adopted it as the default form of messaging. Only today I used it to chat with our lawn maintenance guy, our car washer, and someone who's repairing our espresso machine.

I could maybe try to convince friends and family to use another app but I won't be convincing an entire country.

Yeah, it's a tradeoff. I don't mean to be glib, but on one side we have a loneliness epidemic, mass misinformation campaigns, and centralized control, and on the other side we have better information about restaurants, easier after-school arrangements, and community blogs. I really don't mean to say that the benefits are not real benefits - they are! I just think their price is way too high.

I would rather prefer the good old days with wonky WordPress sites and mailing lists. It is true that most business owners moved to Facebook at some point, but the price to pay is having all content undiscoverable and inaccessible, unless your user has a Facebook account.

People in my community are bragging about getting off social media - it's like a new status symbol around here.

Being off their social media products is one thing, I am myself, but being off of WhatsApp is like being off the grid in most countries.

In the early 2010s not being on Facebook meant you couldn’t really engage with university clubs, neighborhood groups, etc.

Now a lot of that stuff is on WhatsApp.

I'm with you. But it doesn't work 100%.

I dumped Meta probably a decade ago, and anyone who wants to get in touch with me does so through e-mail.

But I still have two relatives stuck on FB Messenger. Even if I contact them via SMS, they still respond to my dormant account in FB Messenger, because Messenger is where all of their friends are. To them, it's the only messaging app, and have no idea why it doesn't work sending messages to me.

Of the people who accumulated in my Facebook friends list over the years, the only ones I know who actively use Facebook still are almost entirely using it to have stupid political arguments with each other. It really has snowballed and bred derangement.

You can enable email notifications specifically for Facebook events btw. I quit, but leave that enabled.

In some countries it has become difficult to live without a WhatsApp account. I'm doing it, but it's a pain since WhatsApp is used for everything that phone calls were once used for: schedule appointments, keep in contact with your kids' teachers, buy and sell goods, etc. The same numbers often won't pick up the call, or it will be simply turned off (since it's used just for WhatsApp).

Imagine living without a phone, or whatever is equally important in your area. Sure, it is possible, if you're at the right level of masochism.

Facebook isn't the worst of it. WhatsApp is, in those areas where it is the de facto standard app for texting. This is not the case for Americans so they are mostly blissfully unaware of it, but just imagine literally not being able to text anyone.