What's more, several cell phone operators' plans include unlimited WhatsApp, but only a few GB of other data... meaning when your data limits are reached you can still use WhatsApp for the rest of the month, but not i.e. Signal or Telegram. That makes is rather hard to convince people to switch.

So yeah, pretty damn close to critical infrastructure. I'm still going to delete my account and see what happens, but unlike the siblings here I can't disagree with parent, at least for Brazil.

[Edit] When I delete my account I'm going to lose old conversations, but that doesn't bother me anymore because I already recently lost them once when I switched from Android to iOS... WhatsApp has no way of keeping your history in that case. And otherwise there's really no friction to deleting an account, since you can always recreate it.

It's too late to go back. People are already used to the trade-offs, convenience rules above all. People may be "sort of concerned" about privacy, but they shrug it off. If privacy was high-value, any privacy-conscious competitor would've taken the market by storm.

Network effects amplify the marginal impact on the individual, because they lead to a monopoly with no true competition. Sure, you can leave whatsapp for signal, but you can’t talk to that community group on WhatsApp from signal. From an individual’s point of view the market power is an absolute monopoly.

The only solution to these problems is organising to the level of a mass boycott, or regulatory intervention. The former is impossible because too many people don’t care about the company’s behaviour (not because they’re ignorant, they just don’t care) and the latter is slow and a very hard and unfun pursuit for campaigners.

Nothing we say to non nerds will be of sufficient magnitude on an individual level. It’d have to be collective action.

Personally I’m far more worried about Facebook undermining democracy right now. That’s sufficient reason to shut them down.

There's nothing in their way to expect such a thing, except the lobbyists.

WhatsApp is already DOA in my circle of friends, it might come back but the odds aren’t great.

Getting out of the EU would be a massive blow to any established social media company that depends on network effects. It doesn't matter as much for smaller companies that are still growing (eg. early Facebook still managed to grow by only offering services to college students).

Sounds like a recipe for disaster and the perfect way to stifle innovation

Forcing a specific standard is problematic, but it would be reasonable to ask any communication service to provide a fully documented and public API with features and access equal to the features and access of the official application.

Random nerds make integrations to whatever application/protocol is in vogue, business still gets to have complete freedom in where their take their API and thus their product.

---

I would even go as far as to say that every web-service should be machine-consumable in that fashion, but that's beyond the point.

However, I think that public services (paid for by taxes) should be open and accessible. That is, the government should mandate certain properties ("it should be open") and not certain implementations ("it should use this specific protocol / app").

Another commenter gave the example of Brazil schools sending parents important information via WhatsApp.

Now I'm not against the schools doing that if it's one of multiple options and if the parents have an actual choice. I think the government should mandate that at least one open choice be made available, without necessarily detailing said choice.

In my view this wouldn't stifle innovation. If you come up with some new communication app that's better than anything else, if it's open and many people pick it up, there's no reason for the schools not to use it instead of the older / inferior option. This would also allow schools to choose one among several open solutions according to their particular needs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsbury_Commitment?wprov=sft...

"the promise of mail delivery [helped] grow the nation and economy instead of serving only existing communities."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Service_Act?wprov=sfti1

Also, private mail exists and it's definitely useful.

Digital messages are usually built on top of the internet (which would have similar problems) and every service can be used across the entire network.

Why would you want a small, self-interested, unaccountable group of private investors to mandate how technology works?

Sounds like a recipe for disaster and the perfect way to stifle innovation

Depending on the particulars of your government, perhaps it looks more appealing now.

If the choice is between being tracked, which results in many things being free (as in beer) with otherwise almost no practical visible consequences for most people (different ads?), or having to pay for each and every service but no tracking, I think you would face a huge backlash if you forced the latter.

A solution could be to have free access if you accept tracking and pay otherwise, but I believe this is illegal under GDPR.

Imagine if Hollywood or TV studios had any saying over Digital TV standards. Streaming would never exist and we would be used to a "pay-per-view" model forever, with mandatory and built-in DRM.

This is not about enforcing how technology works. It just ensuring that no monopoly can occur. Common standards don't stifle innovation, closed ones do.

If your analogy was something about governmental bodies was worse than private entities when pushing for a standard network standard, then you would have a point. But unless I am deeply wrong, TCP/IP, GSM, LTE, DVB, even FM radio and PAL were standards that only became dominant after governmental bodies sanctioned as standards and no one misses AppleTalk or Novell's IDP because of "government meddling".

Even still, the argument is not for killing private protocols or stopping private companies to innovate and develop new technologies. It's "just" that these innovations should be made on top of open standards instead of displacing them. Don't forget that Google Talk and even Facebook's messenger started on top of XMPP. They closed purely for business reasons, not technical ones. Had the FCC told them "do whatever you want with your network and your client, but anyone speaking XMPP should be able to communicate with your users", we wouldn't be in this mess.

It took Congress to mandate open standards and to spell out that healthcare institutions must offer a public APIs to patients. We are only now starting to be able to download health records from hospitals as a result of this despite it being technically possible for decades. In fact there are still many patients that are required to request stacks of DVDs containing their health records, and this is their only option.

Obviously this is more a commentary on how shitty healthcare in the US can be, but also a good example IMO of how sometimes government intervention in technical standards requirements can greatly benefit consumers.

The only, weak, solution would be to force the EU ISPs, on an European level, to block FB. Blocking on itself will not be easy (technically speaking) and good luck to have a consensus on that among our countries.

I completely fail to understand why many US companies, operating on US grounds care about GDPR at all. I would not and, please, sue me. Even the ones that block access from EU are overreacting.

Besides, who says "the nerds" are trustworthy anyway? They keep arguing among each other about which operating system or programming language is best, and why should we take their advice when software security vulnerabilities keep being discovered?

Not disagreeing with your point - it's become too easy to just randomly click "agree" on any TOS and trade away your privacy/security for convenience - but don't make it an "us vs them" type of thing. To me, this is purely corporate interest being prioritized ahead of public needs because most politicians either have no spine or answer to lobbyists more than the common person.

Um, the original WhatsApp company was pretty much run by nerds, I thought, who made a product with UX so good they organically built a user base so large that FaceBook paid $16 billion for the company?

The only thing that surprises me is how long this change took. I expected them to do this when they removed the subscription.

The founders of WhatsApp has failed us by selling for FU money. I was happy paying them a fee in the beginning.

Then authorities have failed us by aproving the merger.

It's never too late. Spread the message and show people alternatives. I do.

Eventually abandoning WhatsApp will slowly get easier as alternatives propagate, and using two messengers really isn’t a problem now.

Convenience > Privacy, which is an interesting conundrum.

This makes privacy a feature more than a USP (unique selling proposition). I predict that some "privacy" focused products and search engines will need to pivot to something more than just "we don't steal your data."

In the late 80s and 90s, we had influential technologists that sold what became the Panopticon as a liberating force that would unleash creativity and usher in a new era of freedom. Most now work for one of the FANGs. The rest made a face saving effort via EFF.

> If privacy was high-value, any privacy-conscious competitor would've taken the market by storm.

Which VCs would fund them? VCs, even our gracious hosts YCombinator, are gate keepers of who & what gets funding.

Has YCombinator, with genuine educated and well informed geeks at the helm, ever supported a decentralized proposal?

Consumers can only choose from what is on the menu.

And "privacy conscious" competitors were not on the menu. Or maybe I did miss these. This is possible, so can you point out which VC funded "privacy conscious" startups failed against competing venture funded centralized systems?

To this day, non-geeks are not aware that it is possible for them to have their social apps while insuring their privacy.

Everybody uses Whatsapp. It is now so entrenched into society that it turned to be part of its popular culture. When people say "I'm part of a group of old car enthusiasts", they meant they are part of a Whatsapp group in which they discuss old cars.

Countless online services and apps were replaced by Whatsapp over the years, from the top of my head: all IMs, customer service apps, e-commerce (specially for SMBs), email and collaboration in general. I can't remember the last time I received a proposal or contract to be signed outside Whatsapp. My attorney asks me to send him all sorts of documentation, copies of IDs and legal evidence via Whatsapp because email is not as easy to use as the IM.

Well, it's lunch time. I got to order my Burguer King meal via their Whatsapp order taking bot. How convenient.

At least for bills and govt services I wonder, who approves something like that?

Where we are (EU) schools have been told not to touch WhatsApp, so official school-parent communication goes via other channels.

However parents still end up creating WhatsApp groups for each class to exchange messages and chase lost bits of homework and so on.

Feels like it's almost like like a virus ... <sigh>

Yes, that one is another good example.

My kids' school has 3 different learning management systems (not integrated, BTW) to which students need to submit their homework/assignments. Well, at least in theory.

In practice, parents take photos of homework and send them to teachers via Whatsapp completely ignoring a formal system maintained for that purpose. Poor teachers have to save the time to upload files from their phones/computers to the system later and keep things organized from school's internal perspective.

I thought about proposing to school's IT that they changed the process, allowing parents to email files to a certain inbox, which an app would collect the files later and push them into the system automatically. I ended up not going ahead with the proposal because I already knew their reaction to me: "Whatsapp makes the process simpler".

For them, their phone is their first computer and they never really used e-mail.

Some of them can't recall their e-mail addresses or less their e-mail passwords.

This happens even if Android is the most popular phone and requires a GMail account to be properly set up.

They just create a new GMail account when they get a new phone or somtimes just keep using the GMail account from the previous owner instead.

this is the best description I've read so far.

Honestly in that rare instance sheds you need to chat with an Intercom website, would much rather do it in WhatsAppWeb or via cell

From the business side.

Big companies use bots and ticketing systems based on the WhatsApp API.

Smaller stores can handle with WhatsApp for phone or Web.

Some places might also try to use a more clever bot where you write down what you want and the bot gives a canned response if it thinks it understands what you meant (often just looking at keywords). These can be frustrating to use, just like those voice call bots that use voice recognition.

https://www.ordering.co/whatsapp-ordering

EDIT: They do have an example that you can try out, around the middle of the page

In my circles WhatsApp usage was pervasive and I was one of those who really pushed for it.

Soon after it became obvious that Facebook was still Facebook even with WhatsApp on board we started pushing for Telegram (remember this was probably before Signal existed in its current form and long before Matrix became mainstream.)

It took two years or so calendar time, a few hours work I think - mostly advocacy - and included moving people from early teenage to late eighties, but was mostly painless and definitely worth it because of usability alone, even if the most important point was to keep our social graps out of the hands of future Cambridge Analyticas and whoever else Facebook wants to sell it to. (And I've hopefully learned not to underestimate grannies..!)

Today I'd probably pushed for Matrix, but as mentioned above that was not an option then.

Signal is also really nice despite one or a few big security problems (remotely exploit in the desktop client being the big one for me). Also it is US centric with all the problems that comes with it, it prioritizes security above everything and UX actually suffers from it and it isn¨t open, so as far as I can see we are locked in should they turn bad.

isn't this illegal? Portugal had such a problem, but i don't think anything happened since this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15905843

It's also the cheapest. Because its free with WiFi, and cost less than US$1.00 per day with a data plan. Compare that to phone calls that cost about US$ 0.15 per minute or SMS that cost US$ 0.06. It may not seem much, but when you factor the local minimum wage in urban areas: $1.87/hour or US$ 0.03/minute the difference becomes significant.

Perhaps the closest alternative here would be Telegram. It has niche users like government, NGOs, political organizations and group chats for people with similar interests (like Facebook groups are used in some countries).

I guess, WhatsApp has become like our tropicalized version of WeChat.

Its used to chat with friends, family, group chats (leaving a group chat unannounced is a big faux pas). Almost every class gets a WhatsApp group for coordinating coursework.

Most stores and restaurants, big and small, accept orders via Whatsapp and that way one can avoid the third party app delivery fees. It is also used to send bank transfer confirmations, and gps location pins to coordinate deliveries because our addressing system is not that good.

I even did most my last loan application via WhatsApp. And also discovered last year that the only way to contact one bank about an ACH transfer was via WhatsApp or by visiting a branch.

So basically, it's the most used and most affordable main way to reliably reach anyone or any company. From the largest bank, to the smallest mom and pop store. From my company's founder to the newest intern.

The only thing I still get by plain SMS is multi factor authentication tokens or the ocassional spam message.

Being a parent, WhatsApp is the norm. And it's pretty impossible to change the entire society. so sadly for anything about my kids I use WhatsApp.

Is it common for people to reach their limits? I understand it may happen by accident when you turn off wifi then forget to re-enable, but normally one takes care of their data quota or their plans and usage is such that they never or rarely use it completely, right?

I imagine one also has the option in both prepaid and postpaid plans to get more data for the rest of the month if it ever happens that they need more. It'd just be more expensive since it's out of package.

At least now I have unlimited data via a prepaid plan so I can freely tether when cable internet goes down weekly.

Reason is that it is also an interface for SMS, and SMS in Brazil is obscenely crazy expensive, some operators might charge 1 BRL per message or stuff like that (for context: 1 BRL is the price of a cup of coffee or of a bottle of water), using iMessage and having it to switch to SMS without you noticing can rack bills that are easily bigger than your wages.

Of course not everyone knows that and it isn’t the default so I can see how this is a deterrent in practice.

Pretty much correct in some countries.

My family (not in Brazil, but also not in the same country as me) all have Whatsapp. So I have it to keep in contact with them. They have it because everyone there has it. It's circular, it's the "network effect" but it's true. I can't entirely switch unless they switch too, and they can't switch unless their friends and co-workers switch. etc.

I have used drfone software on computer (mac) to transfer whatsapp data from android to iphone. It is a solid software with clear instructions.

There are several third-party tools that allow to convert the history from Android to iOS. I recently switched and was able to keep all of my history.

Messenger has that feature too. Actually for both Messenger and Telegram it's much easier to provide it, because they don't encrypt the message, they just store them unencrypted. So they don't have anything special to do to give access to them from any device.

You can keep the unencrypted DB files.

I've deleted my account twice and each time I exported all my data to HTML (without uploading to Google). It's possible.

WhatsApp is "critical" now only now due to its network effects, but you can transition away to something else.

Right now I have maybe a dozen friends and family members on my matrix server. I helped them set up the app, configured their communick accounts, made a few video calls to ensure it was working, etc. Current step is to help my wife to do the same with her friends. Slowly but steadily, we are moving our communication network away from WhatsApp and into Matrix.

Each one that we move makes WhatsApp less "critical" and makes us more free from monopolistic assholes. We don't need the Government to control any of that, in fact I believe that waiting for the government to do anything is not going to achieve anything.

Seriously, though. See my other responses. Switching does not need to be an atomic operation, also learn about Matrix bridges.

It was also pretty easy to get my family using Signal because it uses your existing address book. The need to send a Jami address is a huge hurdle for the non-technical.

We have to switch to decentralized open source solutions. I have tested Jami and the video conferencing functionality works great on Android.

Adding another app — my vote goes to Signal - and making a lot of noise on WhatsApp is one option. If I recall correctly, WhatsApp has statuses. Changing yours to “Keeping WhatsApp for business transactions only — find me on Signal for private chat” is one idea. The people on this board have the power to move their friends away from terrible software. Use it.

If you're not interested in switching, then this thread is not for you. A Hacker News poll is not scientific research.

It may take a long time and huge effort to switch, but people are starting to do it.

And a reasonable answer is "your assumption is wrong, I don't plan to switch at all". I have no doubt that some people will switch, what I'd like to know if that movement is niche or mainstream.

But then I'm off the opinion petitions should collect both for-and-against responses; government petitions should be required to do so.

I'm sorry, but that is a different question, and you're welcome to ask it. This type of thing is a bloody epidemic on the internet, where people will ask a question; "Do I use Atom or VS Code?" and millions of idiots will pile on saying "Just use Emacs". Aaargh! Just stick to the confines of the question! Too many discussions have gotten derailed on stack exchange, reddit, microsoft answers...nowhere is safe.

These kinds of sermonising replies would still be OK if the author first spent some time answering the question on its own merit and then talked about alternatives. Otherwise, it's preachy and irritating.

If I choose to stop using my ISP, I have no need to "go offline". I can simply switch ISPs and I still get the exact same internet. This is why we must not fall for this "critical social infrastructure" trap. No one company deserves our business. We can and should go elsewhere.

Messaging should be like the internet. If I don't like my messaging provider, I should be able to switch and still message everybody. Ideally, I would be able to bring my identifier with me. Luckily, SMS already provides this. I therefore recommend old-fashioned SMS/MMS for messaging. If you want something more "modern", I would recommend Matrix, as it is the only "modern" messaging system that wants to allow people to switch providers while still messaging the same people.

But does it really do so in practice? If I'm using Element/Matrix and a colleague is using WhatsApp, or Signal, or Telegram, or Briar. Can they reliably send me messages? Can I reliably send them messages?

I've been told it's possible, but more than one person I know has tried and failed. Is it common? Reliable? Possible?

Or theoretical, and unachievable in practice?

Have you done it?

Matrix is not the provider. Matrix is the protocol/idea. Element is both an app and a service.

What is common, reliable, and achievable in practice: I decide I no longer like New Vector (who run the matrix.org home server). I switch to Purism's matrix server. I no longer am doing business with New Vector, yet I can still chat with everybody that is using New Vector's matrix service.

I know that Matrix isn't the provider, that's why I mentioned Element/Matrix. I know that you can communicate between services that are all running on top of Matrix. That's why I specifically asked about other services. As I say, your comment seemed to imply it was possible, but most of the information I have suggests it isn't.

https://matrix.org/bridges/

I've heard that they are sufficiently unreliable as to be unusable, that was was some time ago, and things may have changed.

To be clear, I send messages from my Matrix client to my Matrix server, software running on that server bridges it to WhatsApp/Signal as appropriate, same for incoming messages. Photos work as well.

I think WhatsApp relies on a data connection to your phone, and the bridge will disconnect whenever that drops. Having set this all up, I'm a pretty big convert to Matrix - just need to get the world on board. I'd love to have an SMS bridge as well, see how far I can go.

That would be great since I have no idea at all.

It's been ~6 weeks since I set it up and it's been working since the first time without any modifications, so I honestly forget some of what I did. The general flow is: configure the bridges (config.yaml), integrate them with Synapse (registration.yaml), add your Matrix user, then configure the bridge users.

After re-reading my comment, I can see how one would think that. I apologize for the confusion. I was actually trying to draw a distinction be between messaging systems that are provider agnostic and those that aren't. SMS and Matrix both allow multiple competing providers to interoperate. WhatsApp does not. That is why, I believe that we must not consider Whatsapp "critical infrastructure". No one company should be "critical".

I don't think you realize it's basically a privilege to be able to change your ISP. I have two options and have switched last month - it took three months of figuring out who should fix broken fiber (look at me, I have FTTH, another privilege).

so if you say you can 'simply switch' your ISP, you're in a lucky place.

When I switch from WhatsApp to GroupMe, I have an entirely different set of conversations. They are totally separate systems.

Also, if you were willing to switch to a satellite or LTE carrier, would you be able to switch? If you did switch, you still have "the internet".

WhatsApp is free on carriers in many countries (including large portions of Asia and South America), contrasting with other messaging platforms which use a standard data plan. It delivers messages reliably, group messages just work, and it works properly for mixed content messages. And data is (relatively) cheap in most countries where WhatsApp isn't free.

People can contact me on signal but I mostly use WhatsApp for group chats and I'm not so important that everyone will install a newaapp just to include me in a group chat.

Even my 14 year old got all her friends on Signal (without my direct influence) because they are very aware of instagram/FB addiction and want to stay away from it.

That still leaves 12 more to switch but it could happen.

But that is all the more reason to get rid of it. Of course this makes life complicated. But if we don't make these hard choices and 'sacrifices', it will never stop. They will keep eroding away at our privacy and freedom. It will only become harder the longer we wait.

This kind of things will keep happening though as long as we allow monopolies and closed platforms. We should really be more careful with accepting these companies into our lives.

EDIT: got some answers re SMS. Fine, though that doesn't explain why there is so much overlap/redundancy with social media applications. At a glance, it appears I could do the very same things (groups, multimedia) messaging people on facebook without having to install an app, and if people are on whatsapp they're almost 100% on facebook.

Apparently the "critical" nature of this is the facility of sending high rates of pictures and videos to others. I suspect mere FOMO owing to group-chat being localized there is enough to keep some people from cutting the cord, not the ability to communicate to multiple people in itself. People really are addicted to each other.

This Privacy policy change whill allow Facebook, who bought WhatsApp, to extract all these data for their own purpose, before it was not the case.

whatsapp also had the advantage of being simple to use requiring only your phone number and it worked on pretty much any phone you had from symbian feature phones to the latest iphone helping it to gain widespread traction among people.

It means I can freely share my WhatsApp number with my bank, my boss, the delivery person, the plumber, the clerk from the nearby cafeteria, clients, the driver of the tow truck, or my teachers, anyone.

But there is no way I'll share my Facebook or Intagram name/id with themn. That's more private and usually only done for friends or acquaintances.

If we do nothing then the problem only gets worse.

I considered just accepting it and moving on, but I've thought again and I'm trying to get as many contacts onto Signal as I can.

At least there will be another option and as much as I love matrix I think Signal is the best balance between user friendliness and privacy.

I made the mistake before of giving multiple options which just scares non-tech people off, so now I'm just pushing Signal.

I guess what I'm saying is that the network effect is just too damn strong (for me at least).

How do you know? Have you asked them?

Many of my family and close friends did install a new messaging app when I asked them. How do you think WhatsApp became so popular in the first place?

Take a look at https://communick.com. You can sign up for a 14-day trial and get to invite 10 people to your plan.

Hopefully the reason this is at the top is not this sentence.

This hallucinatory idea is exactly what Facebook PR, a.k.a. "damage control", wants people to believe.

You have no contract with Facebook. You pay them nothing. There is no legal recourse whatsoever. You cannot enforce "your end of the bargain" because Facebook undertakes no obligations to you.

Say what you want about the quality of your internet or cellular provider's service, etc., or how much you hate a company, but the fact is they have to fulfill their contractual obligations and provide service, they cannot just do whatever they want, whenever they want, as Facebook can.

If the internet/cellular provider does not deliver, then there is no Facebook. Whereas Facebook could disappear if their advertisers stop paying and the internet would still be here, because people would still be paying for internet access, and internet users would still use the internet to do all the same things they do now, and more.

Practically speaking, you may treat a tech company like a common carrier, like a telephone/internet/cellular provider. After all to the user it may seem no different. It is accessed through a "phone" and it seems to work like the service they pay for through an ISP or cellular provider.

But the minute you say this is like a "contract" you are submitting to pure delusion. You have no contract with Facebook as a user and you pay nothing. You're a product not a customer. Facebook has essentially zero exposure to liability from user complaints and that is why you are reading so many complaints about them, e.g., on HN. The best a user can do is rant into the aether and pound sand. There is no contract to enforce!

Then there is the absurdity of pretending that access to one company's computers is equivalent to access to the entire internet. This is like saying cancelling your subscription to AOL is like cancelling your account with your ISP. Today, no one is naive enough to equate AOL with the internet, as people once did. But Facebook believes people are naive enough to equate "Facebook" with "the internet". No doubt the AOL phenomena is a running joke at Facebook. The more things "change" the more they stay the same.

Do whatever you want, but let's refrain from propagating illusions that tech companies want people to believe.

See Also: Weechat in china, LINE in Japan.

Living in the US I considering myself lucky that I'm not locked into a singular platform for communcation, payments, services, etc like many others.

If this is a poll about what I intend to do? Nothing, facebook has me by the balls and will for years to come.

Maybe certain small groups or individuals will be willing to switch with me, but it's not like I'm uninstalling WhatsApp any time soon.

I'll just link my comment from the other article about the Whatsapp changes:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25672109

Plus I'm sure they've linked all the data they can in their backend already. It's hard to believe the notice we all got this morning was really going to realistically change very much of anything.

This process was turbocharged by COVID19

Most unemoloyed people with no steady income turned to last-mile delivery of all kinds of random goods and services... All done via whatsapp

Its frictionless. Like a website chatbot. Except its free and you can do it on the move.

I dont think it will take off here becuase businesses here have built web infrastructure for e-commerce.

Whatsapp is to ecommerce what smartphones where to connectivity.

3rd world countries skipped fixed wires and laptops and went straight to smartphones over air

This is the same process.

SMS was unreliable, at least back when it was used. It was common for someone to receive it hours later or at least many minutes later, when it was too late. Informing someone you just got the message they told you about in-person a while back was a common occurrence. You also don't know when a person received your message, so you would opt to call them anyways if they take too long to reply with something even if they were just busy. Basically, the 2 checkmarks on each message is the killer feature.

Spam is also a problem with SMS.

Email is something that never really took off in mobile devices. I suppose everyone saw it as the same thing as SMS, with the same issues. Perhaps worse, since an email client needed to poll the server for new messages. SMS is something people did since before smartphones. Dumbphones didn't commonly have real support for email. Also, email on a mobile device meant you had to setup the mail client, and you didn't have to setup anything with SMS, just give people your number.

Whatsapp: free (besides internet usage - but some providers offered unlimited/extended whatsapp data), audio messages, send photos/videos/audios (not from audio message)/documents, can do video and audio calls from the same screen, without moving away from the app

There's just no competitor with same parity of features (with the same quality) and easiness to use.

Telegram has calls, but they just don't work for me: either my parents can't hear me properly, or there's a HUGE delay in the audio call, I keep hearing the reconnection beeps...

I'm just off an audio call to my parents on Telegram, had to drop off and use whatsapp because it was unusable

I remember when my dad told me his cousin from Venezuela suggested an app to him that allowed him to make free calls to anyone who also has it. I told him that was probably not right and he might have downloaded malware on his Android... Turns out he was right and the app took Brazil by storm

On top of that, media, voice clips and cross-platform compatibility.

Then I could communicate with people who are on another platform using that platform but keep using WhatsApp for people who haven't moved over. Hopefully over time there would be a complete migration.

Personally I'm probably a bit odd here in that I don't mind facebook having my info. So they may show me a personalised ad - big deal.

I typically send normal SMS messages.

The impression that I get is that WhatsApp is not "a thing" in the US?

The OP is literally a poll of other services. In any case, it would be to cancel with your ISP to go to another ISP.

What use is switching to some messenger that no one you know uses?

Obviously you can always fall back on SMS and e-mail, probably, but that is a path to social isolation in many cases.

So, it’s not exactly the same as having two ISPs to pick from but to pretend that your choice is completely free and unconstrained is also a dangerous lie to tell yourself and others.

To solve this … well, I don’t know. Probably regulation? Benevolent tech giants that for some reason decide to push open, federated messengers?

Speaking from experience, I have a hard time remembering which specific platform is preferred by specific contacts. It's a minor annoyance, but it's always present.

How many messenger apps do you run, and how many is too many?

For me, the limit is 2. Note that currently I am forced to keep 5 different apps to keep in touch with my contacts.

Is the phone company allowed to share your contacts?

At least for the UK, this is not at all the case. It’s perfectly feasible to socialise and do business without going anywhere near WhatsApp.

People's requirements and experiences differ greatly. WhatsApp may be essential to you, but it's not essential to everyone.

Leaving WhatsApp is nothing at all like cutting off your internet connection.

It is just one out of literally dozens of available text messaging apps, and it is owned by one of the least ethical companies that exists today.

It baffles me people are still saying this.

You can only message people that are using the SAME messaging app as you. I can't just up and switch apps and expect my 30+ friends and relatives and housemates and coworkers to switch with me!

No, Matrix supports bridging with about two dozen protocols,¹ many of which support multiple clients (at least 7: IRC, RSS, Email, SMS, Mastodon, libpurple —actually a library supporting multiple protocols including IRC and XMPP— and Twitter) — some of which have dozens if not hundreds of clients.

¹IRC, Slack, RSS, Gitter, Discord, RocketChat, iMessage, Facebook Messenger, Email, SMS, Mastodon, libpurple, GroupMe, Skype, WeChat, Tox, Mumble, Twitter, Mattermost, Keybase (Edit: this one was discontinued), Google Hangouts, Telegram, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Signal — https://matrix.org/bridges/

What XMPP address format can I use to talk to a Matrix user ID? ... and vice versa...

You can't switch unless you can convince literally everyone you know (I'm in UK) to switch.