Do people still use Meta’s products?
this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
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WhatsApp has this weird grip on my country's people, it's insane.
Instagram and WhatsApp... So hard to get people to stop. Particularly where smaller countries and people who travel are, where WhatsApp is the default phone.
So shitty.
If anyone wants to talk to me, they’ll have to use one of the myriad ways to keep in touch that don’t involve Meta. I refuse to continue to be their product and help them keep the idea alive that they should somehow be unavoidable. Meta relies entirely on the relational networks of people, so I removed my node from their system and made their product a little worse for anybody interested in engaging with me. Life is better without Meta dopamin/rage addiction anyway.
I also enjoy not being reachable for the majority of people in my life, but for different reasons.
They are reachable though.
That’s the point - you are not unreachable if you’re not hooked up to Meta’s products. Far from it - at least from a European perspective. Threema and Wire are good European alternatives to Messenger, that are actually private. But also, the telephone has been invented, and so has sms and e-mail. The important thing is the human relationship, which continues to exist regardless of the app or technology you use to speak to each other.
Sure, I won't use anything meta.
But it can be hard like I said. You want to make an appointment with a doctor, an electrician, flower delivery? They want your WhatsApp. You can't make an appointment without it. They can't fill out their billing system. They won't call you on your phone because your number is long distance.
Everyone just expects WhatsApp. Makes it hard.
I’m sorry, but I’m not sure I understand completely. Why would your phonenumber be long distance to them?
Because people have cell plans (and no land lines anymore, like most places) that they brought from their own country or region that a lot of the time a phone call would be long distance. Or have text fees for reminders, or a combination of both. So the solution, a long time ago, was a single method that has no fees for either.
As an American the thought of your doctor requiring WhatsApp to communicate with you is just a foreign concept lol
sure but first, as an american, you have to make sure the doctor in question is ‘in network’
None of our doctors, in network or otherwise force us to Zuck’s apps lol.
sorry, the joke was about your ‘weird’ whatsapp communications vs our totally fuken stupid healthcare middlemen only exist to extract money from the doctor/patient relationship.
I wouldn’t call being forced to use a privacy invading, personal data harvesting, foreign-owned communications platform by nearly every facet of your society “weird”. I’d call it “deeply troubling”.
Imagine if every state had a different cell phone carrier or go back even further to when it was long distance even just blocks or cities over. Now imagine a technology comes in that doesn't care what carrier you are on, or if it's long distance.
That is kind of what happened to countries. Especially if you have people who work in one and live in another or have clients in another.
So even though now maybe it isn't long distance, or carriers talk to each other, everyone is used to the way they have been doing it for free.
Perhaps this new European government push to get away from American Big Tech will free you guys of this burden
Unfortunately yes
A premium tier for WhatsApp? The app I want to get rid of but can't because employers can't be assed to send emails or make phone calls first?
What kind of shitass employer would require the use of WhatsApp? Do they make you use TikTok to clock in?
A huge portion of Europe runs on WhatsApp. And many places use it as there primary communication for customers.
Well I blame them for making a terrible decision there. Europe does a lot of things right, this is not one of them.
Agreed.
Indeed. It had a very quick spread when it first came out and as such it became the default way to message and call people. Nobody sends SMS. I mostly do calls through WhatsApp: I live in a foreign country and thus calling from my country's number I would occur in additional costs. I do have a phone number for the country I live in, but I don't charge it as that would require me to pay 2 phone numbers. However, across Europe internet plans do not charge extra when in another country and thus calling through WhatsApp I do not incur in extra costs.
When WhatsApp first came out that is why it became a big thing: you don't have to worry about the limit of SMS anymore. You paid 1€/year for the app and got the most basic plan which provided internet and you could send all the messages you wanted to anyone.
It’s also worth pointing out that it wasn’t always a meta app.
It's everywhere. Been looking at moving to Latin America (Uruguay or Panama specifically) and many businesses there don't even have/publish regular phone numbers. The tour companies I traveled with said you can't get anything done without whatsapp.
Man, that would be a showstopper for me. I wish they would wake up
users are presented with a clear choice between two paths
There is a third path. Just stop being a user. Maybe that choice isn't clear enough. Push notifications are fucking evil. I removed the app and use FB as a PWA about once every six months. I might use it more if it had content from my friends or anyone I gave a fuck about, but instead it's all promotions and suggestions.
Without the little red number creating FOMO on my phone, I have no impulse to check it. Yet I check Lemmy several times a day. I check Bluesky every couple of days. Because every time I open them, someone I want to hear from is posting something I want to see. You should try that, Zuck.
I haven't touched a facebook product in almost 15 years and my life has been nothing but better for it.
Shit yeah that's about how long for me. Gods, I remember talking about how cool and futuristic Facebook was back in like 08, but in my defense I was a middle schooler. I rapidly saw it morph into a hub of unpleasantness and bailed.
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Meta claims the subscriptions will "unlock productivity
Productivity... on Facebook? God they are desperately need to sell you something here.
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How long until the premium version also has ads? It's the clear trend at this point.
Yup, its predictable. "No ads for money," then "no ads for money and light ads for free" then "no ads for lots of money, light ads for money, unbearbale ads for free" is literally always the model these fuckwits push too now.
These bastards got market place on lock. Luckily with graphene I sand box the tracking apps in another profile(for now). Fucken sucks though. Work/family use what's app as well. We need alternatives, but most people just dont care or think about it.
My family still uses WhatsApp all of them, except my kids (I never allowed them and I have very tight control of their devices). After a few months of not being able to send me memes and shit, they started installing Signal one after the other. Long story short, the family group is now on signal.
Keep it up asshole, keep pissing people off.
I hit this today when I went to check a local restaurant's Instagram for the menu (like many I've come across, they treat Instagram as their website)
Nope
Between this and Twitter I'm pretty annoyed at how much harder it is to get local information without just physically going to a place compared to 5 years ago. I'm not gonna pretend it used to be perfect, but this is getting spectacularly shitty
Instagram is one of the shittiest social media since it goes out of its way to become unviewable for those that aren't logged in. So its a really shitty platform to use in place of a regular site.
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Who in the fuck would do this?
Guarantee that your data still gets used to feed you ads with the "premium" subscription.
Pays us to spy on you!
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