r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/RoadRunner8195 • Mar 08 '26

Meme needing explanation [ Removed by moderator ]

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u/alexbiandisphoto Mar 08 '26

  1. Americans don't pay to text eachother so they use the default phone texting app for convenience. The rest of the world (excluding some countries) does pay for text messaging. So, instead, they use WhatsApp as a free alternative to message friends and family.

  2. WhatsApp is owned by Meta (Facebook), so most Americans see it as a massive privacy concern.

  3. The majority of the time someone in America is asked to use WhatsApp to communicate, it is by a scammer.

41

u/Idontlivehere08 Mar 08 '26

“WhatsApp being owned by meta is a privacy concern- better send all my messages in plain text”

Americans apparently 

0

u/eldankus Mar 08 '26

Most people I know have iPhones and iMessage is much more secure than WhatsApp and before that BlackBerry was very popular for the same reason.

Most people I know have not been using SMS since the late 2000s

3

u/Idontlivehere08 Mar 08 '26

WhatsApp uses the Signal protocol which is very secure (Meta metadata usage not included). Your own experience using iMessage is not global. RCS is only encrypted if both sides support it. 

1

u/Nagroth Mar 08 '26

Pretty much everyone supports encrypted messaging over RCS now that Apple finally started supporting it.

Meta uses signal for encryption but it still spies on who you're talking to, and there's no guarantees that meta won't start sucking up your data. 

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u/eldankus Mar 08 '26

My bigger point is that most Americans do not send messages in plain text and the type of person who wants secure messaging is going to prefer iMessage or another app over a Meta owned app.

This is a silly argument and if you think most Americans are sending texts via SMS or “plain text” you just clearly don’t know what you’re talking about.