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WhatsApp is popular in Europe because of its network effects, not because of any unique features it may have. If it were made unavailable, users would switch to
by commoner 5y ago
WhatsApp is popular in Europe because of its network effects, not because of any unique features it may have. If it were made unavailable, users would switch to Signal, Telegram, or the European-developed Threema.
Businesses would favor this change, since they would no longer have to pay WhatsApp for every conversation they initiate after exceeding their free tier.*
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29711001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29711001
- tluyben2 5y agoThreema is a paid app though so that would not happen imho. For people who care somewhat less about end to end encryption, Telegram is by far the easiest: it just works, everywhere and you have all your data everywhere. I understand that it is a safety feature that it is hard to run the other ones smoothly (independent) on different devices while keeping your history but it is a huge annoyance: in whatsapp you cannot even switch android<>ios with history intact. Matrix (Element in my case) works a lot better with end to end encryption in tact and my history there on all devices but it sometimes 'lost keys' on one of them (? No idea what happens, I did report it) so I have to login again (which is a pita); that is better than the alternatives imho.