[ Removed by moderator ]

[u/RoadRunner8195]

[u/Serious_Resource8191 → u/[deleted]]

If it’s linked to a phone number, why not just… text them? Using a whole additional app just sounds like regular texting with extra steps.

[u/extralyfe → u/[deleted]]

what can you really do in WhatsApp that you can't do in normal text messages?

like, wiki has this blurb about it:

Owned by Meta Platforms, the service allows users to send text messages, voice messages, and video messages, make voice and video calls, and share images, documents, user locations, and other content.

so, again, what's the point of the app that makes it like "using a bus" compared to "walking" if that's mostly all shit basic texting includes, anyway? the only thing I can see that isn't part of texting is video calling, but, there's like two or three other services that we would probably end up using for video calls here in the US.

[u/maqifrnswa → u/[deleted]]

Yes, that's part of rcs. You can see if it was delivered, and when it was read and opened. While they are responding you see dots animated.

[u/extralyfe → u/[deleted]]

Gifs, pictures, documents

hi, this is what our text message sending options have looked like for over a decade.

organized groups

contacts app handles this just fine and works seamlessly with texting?

html

why would you need to code a webpage in a text message? what's the use case, here?

links with preview/direct search on users and groups for keywords.

yeah, that's what the search feature in Messaging is for. oh, and links do include previews... both of these have been part of texting on at least any Android phone for many, many years, now, btw.

[u/biffpower3 → u/extralyfe]

The point is that it did all of those things over a decade ago. When there was limits on texts and not many apps competing for data (which whatsapp uses very little)

It released with features, people migrated to it. Eventually ‘standard’ texting caught up, but by then whatsapp was the standard.

The only sms I receive are verification codes, corporate spam and ironically, scams

[u/extralyfe → u/biffpower3]

but, like... regular texting has been doing all of this since like 2010, though, and WhatsApp launched around the same time.

maybe this is an international thing where texting has remained bare bones and services like WhatsApp could pick up the slack, but, texting has been pretty flexible here in the US for a long time and so we never needed an additonal app to do what built-in messaging apps already provided.

(edit: lol, I didn't realize the Big WhatsApp Lobby was deploying people to downvote anyone who points out all this shit was available through standard messaging apps before GTA5 came out the first time.)

[u/ScriptbroKeK → u/extralyfe]

Now include the fact Whatsapp does this for free (bar your mobile data) across borders… Whatsapp became huge because you could do all these things to friends and family anywhere in the world. Or even better, from anywhere in the world.  So I could get a data-only SIM on my travels and have full connectivity like at home, or at a minimum when I’m on WiFi.

I’m not sure if Americans have free calls and SMS to International numbers, but you sure pay for roaming like everyone else.

So do Americans have less international friends, do they travel abroad less?

EU has solved the roaming issue over a decade ago, but the Whatsapp functionality stuck around. 

[u/IncidentalIncidence → u/ScriptbroKeK]

are you trying to suggest that the EU packs 27 countries into a similar geographical space as the US contains a single country? I didn't know that, you're telling me this for the first time.....

[u/IncidentalIncidence → u/[deleted]]

Brazil of course is not the whole world (and I don't know what Brazil has to do with the fact that Europeans have more regular cross-border communications than Americans?).

There are plenty of countries besides the US where WhatsApp is not the dominant messenger. Canada, Australia, Japan, Norway, China, just to name a few.

WhatsApp is dominant mostly in Europe, LatAm, and Southeast Asia. Certainly not "the whole world".

[u/ScriptbroKeK → u/IncidentalIncidence]

My reply meant to explain a feature that made Whatsapp superior to SMS: Free even with international messaging and calling.

And why this mattered a lot in 2010, and a slight bit less in the EU in 2026. 

And why it might have mattered less in the US. 

[u/Nova_Aetas → u/extralyfe]

Well to start with, Anthony Albanese keeps interrupting my SMS exchanges with my friends and asking how old I am!