Whatsapp is used (at least here in the EU) for a lot more than staying in touch with your friends. E.g. having a young kid, it's used for: the class' group, arranging playdates, etc. Not using Whatsapp makes it much harder to arrange your social life and that of your kids.

Then there are also many organizations/companies that use Whatsapp to set appointments, for chat support, etc.

In many EU countries Whatsapp is pretty much replaced SMS. Only a small minority of folks have Signal or Telegram. iMessage is probably the only other thing that shows as a blip on the radar, but only a portion of the population has iDevices.

I agree that this is a bad situation, but WhatsApp became popular when it was still independent and their profit model was charging 1 Euro per year (which was much cheaper than SMS). Now abandoning Whatsapp is difficult due to network effects.

This is such a bullshit HN comment. I don’t like WhatsApp/FB either but critical mass is important.

It's more like:

If people won’t go to the trouble of using your preferred method of getting in touch with you then you don't have enough social clout.

If seesawtron won't go to the trouble of using WhatsApp (an alternate way than Signal) of getting in touch with his friends, is seesawtron really their friend?