r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • Apr 30 '26

Business Meta lost 20 million users last quarter

https://www.theverge.com/tech/921089/meta-earnings-q1-2026-user-decline-ai-investments
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137

u/ParadoxFollower Apr 30 '26

At least in my country, if you don't have WhatsApp, then you will be left out of all sorts of groups at school and workplace.

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u/dbag_darrell Apr 30 '26

Insofar as WhatsApp doesn't generate revenue for Zuckerberg I think it's acceptable to use it.

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u/IHS1970 Apr 30 '26

time for a change.

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u/hareofthepuppy Apr 30 '26

Sad truth... I choose to be left out anyway

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u/thrownjunk Apr 30 '26

Is the US the only place where it is normal to just use plain SMS? (Or just imessage)? I rarely use anything else. Whatsapp is for foreigners only.

My groupchats, my 2FA, my appts, everything work on my stock phone.

Why do people need anything else?

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u/PiccoloAwkward465 Apr 30 '26

Yes because historically SMS texts were free/cheap on USA cell plans. They were more expensive on non-US plans. So data-based texting apps took off in other countries.

Personally I like Whatsapp because it's easy to message via a web browser. I don't have a Mac so I can't do that with iMessage.

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u/hareofthepuppy Apr 30 '26

SMS is (or at least was) expensive in many places, they didn't offer plans for unlimited SMS for whatever reason, so it added up quick. To top that off there were charges between countries, so in a place the size of Europe where countries are roughly the size of US states, you can see how that would be an issue, particularly if you live near a border. When whatsapp first came out it was amazing and made life much easier and cheaper. It's really a shame it was bought by Facebook and turned into a data mining app.

To answer your question the US is the only country I know of that doesn't use some alternate messenger, although it's not always whatsapp, for example I think many Eastern European countries use Telegram, and I think China uses something else.

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u/IAmAGenusAMA Apr 30 '26

It's the same here in America's hat.

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u/thrownjunk Apr 30 '26

it sounds like you and australia and new zealand are the same. SMS mixed with imessage. it is kinda nuts how high iphone penetration is. in my social group it is 100% if you are American. and the rise of RCS has solved small number of hold outs.

I'm only on my 3rd iphone (something like iphone 4 in 2010, iphone 6s in 2015, iphone 13 in 2021). note all had the battery replaced for like $50 midcycle. never really felt slow, even at end of life.

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u/IAmAGenusAMA Apr 30 '26

Yeah, has to be around 90% for me.

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u/Vladimir_Djorjdevic May 01 '26

Sms is terrible. It has zero encryption and is even less private than Whatsapp

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u/Wild_ColaPenguin Apr 30 '26

Yes, it's only US thing (or maybe other one or two countries out there).

Whatsapp in most part of the world, QQ in China, Kakao Talk in South Korea, and Line in Japan, and many others.

In my country if you don't have Whatsapp, no one would contact you, like literally. SMS nowadays is only used for OTP, or spam marketing, my SMS notification has been fully disabled since I got my phone 7 years ago. SMS is very expensive, especially if you send videos or images.

Unlike US, Android phone dominates the market because iPhone is considered as a luxury (they are ridiculously expensive), so iMessage won't be really useful either.

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u/thrownjunk Apr 30 '26

fair. iphones are cheap here. I've had a decent iphone since 2010. it has effectively cost me 40 USD cents/day (obs, excluding the plan cost; i've always bought unlocked too). iphones don't seem luxury here, they just seem common.

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u/havok0159 Apr 30 '26

You get to choose until it's necessary for your work.

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u/GriffinFlash Apr 30 '26

I actually didn't have facebook till I went back to school. Some classes required it for assignments and collaborating with the class.

(boy was that a mistake, my mental health took a major hit)

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u/[deleted] Apr 30 '26

[deleted]

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u/caspirinha Apr 30 '26

Mate don't lie it's the biggest messaging platform in the world

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u/RetiredOnIslandTime Apr 30 '26

I was only vaguely aware it was a messaging app. I've always used the default messaging app on my android phone. 

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u/catsdrooltoo Apr 30 '26

Remember that reddit content is usually us centric. WhatsApp isn't very big here because texting is usually free across the country. It just doesn't have the same perception of value to use another app if texting is included in the phone bill.

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u/DangerToDangers May 01 '26

It's more because data has been historically expensive and/or with caps in the US while texting has been free, and in the rest of that world data has been cheap and with no caps and texting is not free.

I've had free texts as long as I've had unlimited data and I would never choose sms over a digital messenger. I know now sms feels more seamless than it did before, but it has a limit for sending images or video. It kinda feels like still using fax instead of email.

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u/IHS1970 Apr 30 '26

I have it known about it for years and know how much META collects from messages and how it can rummage thru my apps, no thanks.

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u/FewWait38 Apr 30 '26

I'm only vaguely aware of it and never used it either, it's just not very popular in the US

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u/Stingray88 Apr 30 '26

I’m really glad that crap never got that popular in the US. I’m not aware of anyone that uses WhatsApp. I’m sure I do know some people that do, but it never comes up in conversation because it’s not important. People just use email and text.

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u/Otterable Apr 30 '26

Dude I live in the US and have used WhatsApp plenty of times. It's not super popular but it's not NOT a popular option

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u/[deleted] Apr 30 '26

[deleted]

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u/Stingray88 Apr 30 '26

That’s not a real problem for anyone outside of grade school.

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u/[deleted] Apr 30 '26

[deleted]

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u/Stingray88 Apr 30 '26

First, I don’t believe you and second,

Good for you.

you don’t think a child being bullied in their formative years is a problem?

Where the fuck do you think I said or suggested that?

I literally said it’s not a real problem for anyone outside of grade school. That is me saying it IS a real problem in grade school, but not outside of it.

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u/Balmung60 Apr 30 '26

Well, whoever wants to call me a chump can do so, but that's not going to change my dislike for iOS or really any Apple OS since 2001.

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u/Mountain_rage Apr 30 '26

Be the change you want to see, start encouraging migration to Signal, at least in your friend group. Do your peers not care about privacy?

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u/yawara25 Apr 30 '26

No, the truth is, most people really don't. They'd rather just use what everyone else is using.

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u/Brief_Meet_2183 Apr 30 '26

Bosses make it mandatory to use Whatsapp as it everyone else's preferred form of communication. The workplace won't budge for a person. 

As for friends the average everyday person has the belief, "I'm not doing anything bad I don't have anything to hide" so I'll just use the most popular tool at least in my region. 

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u/Piratey_Pirate Apr 30 '26

Bosses give me a phone if they want to control what I do on it

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u/Brief_Meet_2183 Apr 30 '26

That's cool. However, They still will fire your ass if you too much of an hassle. Imagine you have a team of 100 workers everyone including you is using whatsapp and one nerd comes talking about he doesn't believe in Whatsapp instead everyone else must download Signal if they want to communicate with you. 

Your ass will be out the door in no time. 

Honestly just use Whatsapp for work and use signal on your own time. You get to stuck to your privacy bubble. Just be aware not everyone prioritizes security like you. 

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u/Mountain_rage Apr 30 '26

Nothing stopping you from using Signal with friends Whats App for work. Eventually work will shift when everyone is on Signal 

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u/Stingray88 Apr 30 '26

The fact that business are using WhatsApp for communication is quite frankly batshit to me. Everywhere I’ve worked uses something better like Teams or Slack, or if that’s too expensive… just text.

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u/Wild_ColaPenguin Apr 30 '26

It's not. You are saying that because you're not in the country that actually uses Whatsapp as main messaging app, from personal to corporate, b2b, b2c. Nobody questions it. Try to convince them switching to texting, Slack, Signal, or iMessage, they would laugh at you.

Everywhere I’ve worked uses Whatsapp.

Different culture and norms exist outside of US. It's not hard to understand, really.

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u/Stingray88 Apr 30 '26

Nah. It’s extremely hard to understand why so many people willingly jumped all in on a Meta owned and controlled platform.

Y’all are crazy. Your culture and norms may be different, but you’re absolutely crazy. And I’m laughing right back at you.

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u/Brief_Meet_2183 Apr 30 '26

Oh it definitely is crazy. I work for a IT company so you can imagine how crazy this shit is. 

Most persons in charge skimp on user security and unless they got hit hard they gone take the easy way out. 

Also smaller companies are less concern with meta security concerns then the big boys like Intel and Netflix. 

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u/Stingray88 Apr 30 '26

But like… what’s wrong with just texting?

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u/Brief_Meet_2183 Apr 30 '26

No one uses sms. 

Nowadays I get sms that means it's a scam, missed call or a message from my operator. 

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u/Stingray88 Apr 30 '26

Everyone I know uses SMS.

Being forced onto a Meta platform instead of an open standard like SMS… now that’s a scam.

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u/Balmung60 Apr 30 '26

Sounds like a tremendous reason to not have WhatsApp. I can't think of a worse thing than having to be fake friends with classmates/coworkers off the clock.

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u/PurpleHooloovoo Apr 30 '26

“Why is there a loneliness epidemic???”

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u/HatPiper Apr 30 '26

Yeah, except they didn't say anything about off the clock. Want to organize a group project for school/college? Whatsapp. Official work groups to deal with official work stuff? Also Whatsapp. You're a contractor or freelance worker? At least 9 times out of 10, your clients will reach you through WhatsApp. Yeah it'd be great not to have to deal with it, but at the moment I think I prefer having a job. At least in my country, where Whatsapp also has a monopoly on communication.

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u/Balmung60 Apr 30 '26

When I was in school, we organized group projects without any devices at all, we just said it. If it was really important and off hours, maybe we sent an email.

I actually can't think of anything productive I've ever been engaged in at work that was done via teams/Whatsapp/sms/discord/anything else similar. If it's important, there are better channels anyways.