this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2025
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Privacy
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Outside of North America where businesses use Whatsapp for customer service instead of phone service and advertise their Whatsapp number, that's not an option. People could use Signal as well but keep Whatsapp for contact.
I'm assuming you mean United States when you say North America because WhatsApp is definitely heavily used in Mexico. (Not sure about Canada.)
In the US, most people use plain SMS, or if you break down after constant harassment from your friends and family, iMessage. I've definitely had people "joking" say, "Ew, you're a green bubble!" to me more than once.
I'm outside NA :)
Anyways i only keep whatsapp with me only because nobody uses any other app, it's the universal messaging platform. But i managed to get my family off it and on signal.
It's surprising how little it's actually used in NA, what else do they even use?
The majority of people use text messaging, which the FBI and CISA just recently warned people to quit using due to ongoing and unresolved Chinese hacks of the telecom networks.
But for privacy, some use Telegram (which we know isn't really private, but many think it is), and some use WhatsApp. There's a handful of us that have switched to Signal, Matrix, etc.
For messaging in North America, people use plain text, Instagram DMs, Snapchat, and Facebook Messenger. Privacy is for those weird freaks. I believe there is 0.0% of meeting a random stranger in North America that already uses SimpleX.