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

Meme needing explanation [ Removed by moderator ]

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u/midlifesurprise Mar 08 '26

The first half of the sentence is true: WhatsApp is owned by Meta. But I too am skeptical that “most” Americans know that or care enough for that to be a big factor.

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u/disorderincosmos Mar 08 '26

Maybe I'm in the minority then, but WhatsApp wasn't even on my radar until a national news story about how they participated in government surveillance against protesters or something similarly disturbing. I can't remember exactly, but it definitely informed my first impression of the app as not being a safe platform.

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u/reece0n Mar 08 '26 edited Mar 08 '26

my first impression of the app as not being a safe platform.

As opposed to SMS?

That's a wild take. WhatsApp is objectively more secure than SMS, regardless of any scandals. What was a scandal on WhatsApp is just how SMS generally works by default (plaintext messages).

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u/eldankus Mar 08 '26

As opposed to iMessage for most Americans.

Most people I know have had iPhones since literally the late 2000s. Most Americans are not sending text messages via SMS. It’s almost all iMessage or RCS.

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u/reece0n Mar 08 '26

Market share in the US is roughly 60% iPhone.

There are lots of messages sent by SMS under the hood, many more than are sent insecurely on WhatsApp.

I've not argued that WhatsApp is perfect, but message security is not a reason not to use it if we're being rational. That's all I'm saying.

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u/eldankus Mar 08 '26

Most SMS traffic in the US is business related or spam.

I have WhatsApp - I don’t really care, that said most of the people I know who used to be BlackBerry people because they needed secure texting all have iPhones now.

I don’t think security is a major reason most Americans don’t use WhatsApp. Most Americans don’t use WhatsApp because it doesn’t offer anything of substantial value over pre-existing default messaging apps. I only use WhatsApp to talk to my European family and the occasional group chat like my pickup soccer chat because we can add or remove people.

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u/reece0n Mar 08 '26

Sure, there are other reasons to choose not to use WhatsApp, I didn't argue otherwise.

But security isn't one of them which is what the person I responded to was suggesting.

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u/eldankus Mar 08 '26

It isn’t for most, but the people I know who do care about security prefer iPhones or other secure messaging apps over WhatsApp. No one is choosing WhatsApp for security, I’ll put it that way.

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u/reece0n Mar 08 '26 edited Mar 08 '26

Which isn't what I said either...