
I deleted WhatsApp for a year - adamflanagan
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/05/whatsapp-deleting-year-what-i-learned
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larrik
Is WhatsApp more of a European thing? I don't believe I've ever seen anyone
use it (in the northeast US). I usually don't even remember what it is when I
see stories about it. I've certainly never considered signing up for it.

Maybe I'm too old.

Meanwhile my wife tried to quit Facebook, and did alright, but you definitely
miss out on stuff. Especially since my town has a "Chats" group that it seems
the whole town is in, sharing news and bitching at each other (it's better
than it sounds).

~~~
cocoa19
Most people in Latin America, and India have it. I also have plenty of African
friends that use it. Not sure about Europe, China uses WeChat.

The reason is that cellphone carriers used to charge you by the message (I
speak from experience in Mexico), this was expensive compared to the average
wage. Cheaper to just connect to WiFi, and send as many messages as you want.

Also, WhatsApp was one of the first popular and reliable messaging systems for
cellphones. If offline or with poor signal, your messages where enqueued, and
sent when you had signal. Facebook nor Skype had this back a few years ago.

US is a rich country, SMS has been cheap since I've lived in the us (4 years).
3 hours of minimum wage, $30, for unlimited everything, data, SMS, calls.
WhatsApp didn't really solve a problem.

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dagw
_US is a rich country, SMS has been cheap since I 've lived in the us_

SMS is free in most/all of Europe as well, yet people use WhatsApp. So it's
not just price.

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IceyEC
I don't have to worry about where the other person is; I can send WhatsApp
messages to my family back in the US, or to friends here in the Netherlands,
but it doesn't cost me anything. SMS to local numbers is free, but it's not
free to send an SMS to the US

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onion-soup
I literally learned nothing from this article. Why is it even here?

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klez
From the guidelines:

Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam
or off-topic, flag it. [...] If you flag something, please don't also comment
that you did.

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technofiend
It's definitely an India and Pakistan thing: my co-workers from there use it
for wifi calling and messaging, as do all of my co-workers from Argentina
versus people from the US preferring Signal, Telegram or Google Hangouts.

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komeijist
Finally a story I can say something to. Granted, the article isn't very
informative, but to me it is a nicely written depiction of what happens when
you drop WhatsApp. I can imagine the decision is not a dramatic one when
living in a region in which WhatsApp is less used. Where I live however
(central Europe), presenting the thought of not using WhatsApp purposely gives
you weird stares.

As the author states, there are no real alternatives. In theory, WhatsApp can
be replaced by lots of other applications. I settled for Wire, as I would
choose an application that makes use of the Signal protocol while also having
an open source client + server over WhatsApp any time of the day. In practice,
few want to even consider using something that is not WhatsApp. I managed to
convince some close friends to install Wire alongside WhatsApp (can't have
unencrypted SMS as my only communications channel), but it took some
convincing and privacy aware ethics rambling (if that makes sense) to achieve
that. I can't imagine any somewhat sane person wanting to bother with so much
trouble when branching out to alternative solutions. This particular sentiment
from the article especially couldn't ring any more true:

"At the beginning, I often felt isolated and as if I had abandoned friends.
Some contacts ebbed away, while I had to withstand the odd awkward look of
disbelief and discontent from others when I explained that I did not use
WhatsApp."

I can understand the convenience gain by using WhatsApp over regular SMS. That
convenience is hardly unparalled nowadays though, the one thing that keeps
people chained to WhatsApp is it's ubiquity, in the sense that every person
you meet will quite likely have WhatsApp installed (do note that I'm saying
this as part of a somewhat younger demographic).

I find this quite sad. My motivation for switching was simple, I didn't want
to take part in any business Facebook sticks their fingers in. Whether
Facebook uses all the metadata they get through WhatsApp, and for which
(possibly nefarious) purposes is irrelevant, they've been shown to make
unscrupulous use of data that should be private in order to conduct social
experiments and whatnot a long time ago [1]. Am I in the wrong for trying to
be mindful about the usage of my, very personal, data? I really hope I am not.

First time poster here, sorry if this sort of anecdotal evidence doesn't fit
the type of content that is usually posted on here.

Also, what a funny way to send an article off.

[1] [http://veekaybee.github.io/2017/02/01/facebook-is-
collecting...](http://veekaybee.github.io/2017/02/01/facebook-is-collecting-
this/)

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muninn_
I've never even installed it.

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adapiz
I did the same and I'm not really regretting it. It's somehow sad, that I'm
now missing the conversations and plannings of my family and somebody always
has to send me something on another way, but I'm okay with it.

I'm feeling much better, since my phone stopped distracting me all the time
and I lost the permanent need to look at my phone. Of course I'm using
Telegram as an alternative, but the app is not running in the background and I
have to open it myself if I want to check messages.

So in the end, I've exchanged communication to productivity and I don't regret
it.

I don't like the open end of the article. It does not point out, if the author
thinks to use WhatsApp again. It just talks about how we sell our data to use
a service.

