Because when Whatsapp was born, SMS were paid (and not cheaply). In my country, sending one SMS cost 0.19€ at the time and didn’t allow pics to be send. Meanwhile, with 10€ I could have 1-2GB of data that allowed for tens of thousands of messages to be sent while on mobile data and unlimited messages while I was on a wifi connection.
Its funny that thats the current situation of international phone costs. Sms and calling internationally is expensive while I can download a global(/local to the country) esim giving me data for cheap.
And not only. I can make a voice or video call to my family abroad with any IM app (whatsapp, telegram, signal, discord… pick your poison) for free because I have tons of gb of data in my cell plan. Meanwhile, making a phone call will cost me dearly.
WhatsApp was also an independent company and worked really well compared with other apps. I remember checking alternatives like… 5 years ago and no other app was able to do video calls reliably. Since then Signal caught up and works great now but everyone is already on WhatsApp. EU was working interoperability requirements. That’s pretty much the only way to escape WhatsApp now.
I’ve been dealing with issues like that for around 30 years now, even since I started using Linux, so I’m used to it. You will never get 100% of features working on a alternative, open source, privacy respecting OS. If I want to share location I can copy coordinates from CoMaps or something. For live sharing there are self-hosted options.
Because when Whatsapp was born, SMS were paid (and not cheaply). In my country, sending one SMS cost 0.19€ at the time and didn’t allow pics to be send. Meanwhile, with 10€ I could have 1-2GB of data that allowed for tens of thousands of messages to be sent while on mobile data and unlimited messages while I was on a wifi connection.
Its funny that thats the current situation of international phone costs. Sms and calling internationally is expensive while I can download a global(/local to the country) esim giving me data for cheap.
And not only. I can make a voice or video call to my family abroad with any IM app (whatsapp, telegram, signal, discord… pick your poison) for free because I have tons of gb of data in my cell plan. Meanwhile, making a phone call will cost me dearly.
WhatsApp was also an independent company and worked really well compared with other apps. I remember checking alternatives like… 5 years ago and no other app was able to do video calls reliably. Since then Signal caught up and works great now but everyone is already on WhatsApp. EU was working interoperability requirements. That’s pretty much the only way to escape WhatsApp now.
Signal still doesn’t do live location sharing I don’t think?
Signal requires Google Play Services to share location so it doesn’t work for me on Graphene OS at all.
Molly does location sharing just fine without Play Services.
Oh. That’s the kind of annoying thing that makes people not want to switch OS.
jesus wept, why… no, it’s rhetorical, not asking why it’s just beyond stupid and dangerous to have that information at meta’s disposal.
I’ve been dealing with issues like that for around 30 years now, even since I started using Linux, so I’m used to it. You will never get 100% of features working on a alternative, open source, privacy respecting OS. If I want to share location I can copy coordinates from CoMaps or something. For live sharing there are self-hosted options.