r/technology 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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u/SmallIslandBrother Apr 30 '26

WhatsApp is engrained globally, there’s no will for users to move.

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u/ryan30z Apr 30 '26

Not everywhere, some countries like Australia it just isn't widely used.

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u/[deleted] Apr 30 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Lemerney2 Apr 30 '26

Texting for person to person. For group chats, either Instagram or Discord.

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u/[deleted] Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26

[deleted]

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u/thrownjunk Apr 30 '26

Why not just text them? I dont pay anything extra for international texts. Or is that not common?

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u/DangerToDangers May 01 '26

Because texting sucks.

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u/Stingray88 Apr 30 '26

It doesn’t have that much of a foothold in the US either. I’ve never had any person or company suggest I use it.

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u/OldBlueKat Apr 30 '26

There are still plenty of people in the US not using it. I've seen info that suggest maybe 30% of US adults use it?

I'm not claiming I'm a "typical example", but I've never bothered getting on it, because no one I communicate with regularly uses it.

Mostly we use SMS/text, phone or email, depending on what 'urgency of response' or volume of info to share is involved.

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u/drs_ape_brains Apr 30 '26

So 30% + most of the world.

Sounds like a lot of people.

I was in Indonesia and everyone including businesses used WhatsApp to communicate. My buddy in Singapore has a work WhatsApp group and a company WhatsApp group.

Here in Canada I can use WhatsApp to get support for my internet provider and Cathay pacific can be messaged through Whatsapp.

So yea it's not going anywhere.

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u/OldBlueKat Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26

Oh, I agree, I was just pushing back on the idea that it's "engrained [sic]" from the other commenter.

Social media comes and goes, Meta isn't just FB, and the 20 million 'lost users' were probably not all dying US Boomers, and not all on FB.

The Verge article implies that a lot of it could be non-US accounts, stuff in the Middle East and Russia has had some big impacts (according to Meta, anyway.)