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Europe's infatuation with WhatsApp is bizarre. The EU is supposedly a bastion of privacy but goes all-in on a proprietary, siloed communication channel. Given t

Europe's infatuation with WhatsApp is bizarre. The EU is supposedly a bastion of privacy but goes all-in on a proprietary, siloed communication channel. Given their predilection for enforcing standards usage, you'd think there'd be a move for a federated SMS successor that works with IP clients to counter the risk of dependency on an American company with so much power.

hahahahhaah 9mo ago
That might be more likely now given recent events
_cenw 9mo ago
My pet theory is that it's just because don't have a critical mass of iOS users to make iMessage viable and still wanted features at least half a decade before RCS got to a usable state.
wongarsu 9mo ago
WhatsApp became popular long before Meta bought it in 2014. Signal and Telegram both came late to the scene, both around the time of the WhatsApp acquisition. Whatsapp was simply in the right place at the right time with little competition, and a combination of network effects and Meta mostly leaving it alone make it hard to get enough traction for anything else The US has more of an Apple-monoculture and apparently moved to unlimited SMS plans much earlier than Europe, so iMessage was able to fill the same niche
- blitzar 9mo ago
  Green bubble / blue bubble social and culture wars are not a thing in Europe.
  - shiroiuma 9mo ago
    They're not a thing almost anywhere outside the US (and maybe Canada).
  - Longlius 9mo ago
    They're not really a thing in the US either, outside of people trying to engagement bait on social media.
- wanderingstan 9mo ago
  And to give them credit: WhatsApp also had brilliant engineering that was able to scale with their popularity.
chronid 9mo ago
Not bizarre at all. Many EU countries mobile users have "prepaid" SIMs. Whatsapp came at the perfect moment - mobile operators were starting to offer decently priced data plans but were also still very stingy with SMS (which was a bit of a cash cow for them, infra costs were very low) and essentially never added at the time advanced features (like MMS) to any prepaid plan ever. Many of these operators never really recovered from becoming dumb pipes. Now the network effects have set in and it's hard to remove "naturally" WhatsApp, combined with the rise of VoIP spam callers which operators are too happy to tolerate (like they tolerated things like premium ringtones and numbers until they were forced not to)
- mullingitover 9mo ago
  > VoIP spam callers which operators are too happy to tolerate The fact that this still hasn't been solved in the year 2026 makes me wish nothing but bankruptcy on the entire legacy POTS system. Burn it all to the ground.
- shiroiuma 9mo ago
  >Whatsapp came at the perfect moment - mobile operators were starting to offer decently priced data plans but were also still very stingy with SMS (which was a bit of a cash cow for them, infra costs were very low) and essentially never added at the time advanced features (like MMS) to any prepaid plan ever. Right, this explains the history of why Europeans (and others) don't use SMS any more and use chat apps, namely WhatsApp. But still, that was many years ago, and there are many other (and better) chat apps out there now. The EU has been agitating a lot against US tech dominance, but they seem stuck on WhatsApp from Meta; they should have been moving to something else a long time ago.
  - chronid 9mo ago
    I don't think the dependency from Whatsapp (it's arguable other apps are "better" or not and on which axis) is critical. WA has alternatives (up to "no app at all" thanks to RCS). The real issue with US tech dominance is B2B (i.e. Microsoft)
surgical_fire 9mo ago
Whatsapp was just too convenient at a time no good alternatives existed, and when Smartphones were not ubiquitous. It was free while SMS was not, and it ran on basically every cellphone that existed, no matter how shitty it was. Network effects mean that replacing it is extremely hard. I tried getting people I know into Signal, Telegram, anything else. All those attempts were short lived. I can't see it changing without some actual external intervention (e.g.: Meta being barred from operating it in Europe, etc). The example was just mentioned as an extreme thing that would move this particular needle, not as something I think can oe will realistically happen.
general1465 9mo ago
Not that bizarre when you are paying something like 5-10 cents per SMS (~2010), you will quickly find alternative solutions. WhatsApp was just there, communication for free. Then you Viber, Telegram and others. I had an iPhone and I was considering iMessage to be just fancy name for SMS, so I have avoided using it. Only years later I have found out that it was actually communication platform similar to WhatsApp, which can fallback on SMS.

hahahahhaah 9mo ago

That might be more likely now given recent events

_cenw 9mo ago

My pet theory is that it's just because don't have a critical mass of iOS users to make iMessage viable and still wanted features at least half a decade before RCS got to a usable state.

wongarsu 9mo ago

WhatsApp became popular long before Meta bought it in 2014. Signal and Telegram both came late to the scene, both around the time of the WhatsApp acquisition. Whatsapp was simply in the right place at the right time with little competition, and a combination of network effects and Meta mostly leaving it alone make it hard to get enough traction for anything else The US has more of an Apple-monoculture and apparently moved to unlimited SMS plans much earlier than Europe, so iMessage was able to fill the same niche

blitzar 9mo ago
Green bubble / blue bubble social and culture wars are not a thing in Europe.
- shiroiuma 9mo ago
  They're not a thing almost anywhere outside the US (and maybe Canada).
- Longlius 9mo ago
  They're not really a thing in the US either, outside of people trying to engagement bait on social media.
wanderingstan 9mo ago
And to give them credit: WhatsApp also had brilliant engineering that was able to scale with their popularity.

chronid 9mo ago

Not bizarre at all. Many EU countries mobile users have "prepaid" SIMs. Whatsapp came at the perfect moment - mobile operators were starting to offer decently priced data plans but were also still very stingy with SMS (which was a bit of a cash cow for them, infra costs were very low) and essentially never added at the time advanced features (like MMS) to any prepaid plan ever. Many of these operators never really recovered from becoming dumb pipes. Now the network effects have set in and it's hard to remove "naturally" WhatsApp, combined with the rise of VoIP spam callers which operators are too happy to tolerate (like they tolerated things like premium ringtones and numbers until they were forced not to)

mullingitover 9mo ago
> VoIP spam callers which operators are too happy to tolerate The fact that this still hasn't been solved in the year 2026 makes me wish nothing but bankruptcy on the entire legacy POTS system. Burn it all to the ground.
shiroiuma 9mo ago
>Whatsapp came at the perfect moment - mobile operators were starting to offer decently priced data plans but were also still very stingy with SMS (which was a bit of a cash cow for them, infra costs were very low) and essentially never added at the time advanced features (like MMS) to any prepaid plan ever. Right, this explains the history of why Europeans (and others) don't use SMS any more and use chat apps, namely WhatsApp. But still, that was many years ago, and there are many other (and better) chat apps out there now. The EU has been agitating a lot against US tech dominance, but they seem stuck on WhatsApp from Meta; they should have been moving to something else a long time ago.
- chronid 9mo ago
  I don't think the dependency from Whatsapp (it's arguable other apps are "better" or not and on which axis) is critical. WA has alternatives (up to "no app at all" thanks to RCS). The real issue with US tech dominance is B2B (i.e. Microsoft)

surgical_fire 9mo ago

Whatsapp was just too convenient at a time no good alternatives existed, and when Smartphones were not ubiquitous. It was free while SMS was not, and it ran on basically every cellphone that existed, no matter how shitty it was. Network effects mean that replacing it is extremely hard. I tried getting people I know into Signal, Telegram, anything else. All those attempts were short lived. I can't see it changing without some actual external intervention (e.g.: Meta being barred from operating it in Europe, etc). The example was just mentioned as an extreme thing that would move this particular needle, not as something I think can oe will realistically happen.

general1465 9mo ago

Not that bizarre when you are paying something like 5-10 cents per SMS (~2010), you will quickly find alternative solutions. WhatsApp was just there, communication for free. Then you Viber, Telegram and others. I had an iPhone and I was considering iMessage to be just fancy name for SMS, so I have avoided using it. Only years later I have found out that it was actually communication platform similar to WhatsApp, which can fallback on SMS.