• MudMan@kbin.social
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    2 years ago

    I don’t know what your area is, but everybody here is tech savvy enough to use WhatsApp. It’s assumed to be just… part of how phones work. Both my elderly parents use it. My mom is on multiple chatgroups I had nothing to do with setting up. She only reaches out to me for help if she thinks something is spam or phishing. I can’t stress this enough: nobody texts. Text messaging happens over WhatsApp unless you’re receiving TFA notifications or automated messages from companies or the government, kinda like email.

    As for the business, I’m sure if I had requested a phone call they would have called me, but it was a telecom firm and it wasn’t really a big conversation. Guy just went “here’s my WhatsApp, we’ll ping you there” and we understood it to be the way it was gonna go. I’ve had delivery drivers reach out to me over it when they had my number on hand, unprompted.

    • Retronautickz@beehaw.org
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      2 years ago

      Whatsapp is so big here that it’s not just that everyone uses it, you are practically require, forced, to use Whatsapp.

      I hate whatsapp, but they require it at the university if I want to be informed. Doctor appointments are also. via whatsapp.

      • MudMan@kbin.social
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        2 years ago

        Hah. During the pandemic the government here would reach out to you for vaccine appointments over Facebook and WhatsApp. I personally know at least a couple of people who dabbled in antivax stuff and wouldn’t pick up the phone but still got their shots after the government reached out that way.

        Not that Meta has anything to do with that, but it was funny to me to see the government embrace the vectors of misinformation to shame people into not being idiots.

    • Azure@beehaw.org
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      2 years ago

      I live near a major city, most people haven’t had to learn anything like that over their existence: we have good cell phone reception over wifi too, perhaps that is it.

      Tech is just not reliable enough for me to have any experience working with anyone who I would take seriously or who would work with anyone like that. I thought you should know your experience isn’t the norm, especially in any place I have been in the USA.

      Almost anyone who approached with Whatapp is seen as poor, fly-by-night, and likely a grift here. “Why not use your phone number if you are trustworthy?” Would be the opinion here.

      • MudMan@kbin.social
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        2 years ago

        No, wait, this isn’t a “my area” as “my city” or whatever.

        I mean it works like this country-wide here.

        Nobody in the country can operate without WhatsApp. That’s not a thing. I am not in the US and I’m telling you here WhatsApp is just how sending text messages works. For everybody. Apple or Android.

        • Azure@beehaw.org
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          2 years ago

          I see. I did assume you were from a place that would have had to adjusted to that due to recent infrastructure.

          The US has had telephones since 1800. The culture is not as new.

          • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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            2 years ago

            The dominance of WhatsApp in some European countries is not because telephones are new to them. I hope this was a joke and not a real American view of how other countries are.

            • Azure@beehaw.org
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              2 years ago

              I hope you are joking to act like the Europe is American and talking so authoritatively with just personal experience and frankly you seem very naive. American have to have local numbers spoofed often in order to be scammed by these other countries.

              What are the WhatsApp scam rates?

              Phone numbers were required for business for the longest to incorporate, so it was a way of showing legitimacy. Even now, a physical location gives customers comfort.

              Jesus Christ you just have to be right but you have lived such a small life.

              • MudMan@kbin.social
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                2 years ago

                I have no idea what the last handful of posts on this thread are even about, so I’m just gonna rest my case here. I feel I’ve made my point clearly enough.

                • Azure@beehaw.org
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                  2 years ago

                  Yes, you explained your personal and local experience and it works for you. It’s hilarious that a stable phone network with a private/public partnership to maintain access in one country is not unerstood by those in countries who have only recently set up any kind of “stable” way of contacting their people.

                  We used postal for all federal contact for decades. It’s really narrow understanding of people.

                  But yeah that’s the internet for you.

                  • MudMan@kbin.social
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                    2 years ago

                    The Internet, in my opinion, is the push and pull between the weird fascination to find out when you think people outside the US started using telephones and the knowledge that digging further will not lead to anything useful or constructive.

                    And yet I’m writing this. Now, THAT is the internet for you.