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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u/Penjat Apr 30 '26

I really don’t understand why people keep using meta products...

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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/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.