I hate WhatsApp. Or rather, I hate how much of a grip on the market WhatsApp has.
Basically everybody uses WhatsApp over here; it’s a given that you’d have WhatsApp if your age is below 55 or something. 55-year-olds are also expected to have WhatsApp, actually, if they have a smartphone… Which would be expected of a 55-year-old. I don’t know what the cut-off age is, but it’s high!
There’s Signal, for example, which has equivalent functionality, but people just don’t use it. The point of communication is to communicate, there’s no point in being alone on Signal while everyone else is on WhatsApp.
I suppose that what’s keeping the crown on WhatsApp’s head is the fact it’s closed-source. If there was a way to write an app like Signal that also interopped with WhatsApp I’d switch in an instant. Now, because of the Digital Markets Act, this should happen eventually… But it seemingly isn’t happening.
I’m trying to wean myself off of Google, too. It’s really hard though. Google has really entrenched itself into my life in a way that I simply hadn’t realized. Before I knew it, I look around and everything’s Google: my entertainment, my communication… I’m using a Tuta account now, for sign-ups and the like. I’ve also ditched Google Drive and associated services. But it’s simply impossible, right now, to get rid of everything.
Slowly, though, I’m moving further and further away from these gigacorps.
It’s not ideal, but it’s still better than dealing with the American iMessage nonsense.
I don’t really know what iMessage even is… I know it’s the iPhone message app. Is that all it is? Just RCS or something?
iPhones aren’t particularly popular here.
It is basically just Apple’s IP messenger, that only works on Apple devices.
However, it also handles SMS messaging, and it merges those conversations automatically, so people on iMessage just use iMessage for their default messaging, and the app will send over IP to other iMessage users and SMS to non iMessage users (Signal used to work this way and it was nice).
Since it’s the default and Americans blindly buy iPhones, it leaves most not realizing that third party cross platform messaging apps even exist.
On top of that, Apple does fuckery at the telecom level, so once you register your number for iMessage, ALL SMSes will go to an iMessage server instead of your phone until you explicitly unregister. So take a sim out of an apple phone and pop it into anything else and suddenly, no more SMS.
…That’s so silly…
I really don’t understand Americans’ obsession with Apple anyway…