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Comment by bastardoperator | Hacker News Reader

Why login to anything at all? Why use whatsapp, telegram, or signal when every phone already does this and has been doing this for years? I have all of my friends and family in specific groups devoid of any specific apps.

To be fair people were saying the same thing 20 years ago when AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger and Yahoo messenger were the big thing. All messaging platforms will eventually die is my experience thus far.

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SMS is slow and bad at rich media. Unless you're talking about iMessage - then you are logged in with your Apple ID - it's exactly like WhatsApp/Telegram + closed for people outside of your hardware ecosystem.

I have people in my groups that are on android. Doesn't seem to be an issue for them. Then again, if I want to have a real conversation, I just call them.

What would happen if those people on Android tried to convince you to let's say telegram?

Why rely on electronics at all when you can just send smoke signals? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In many countries, SMS isn't free (or didn't used to be). That's the reason why Whatsapp was successful in the first place, it was cheaper to use Whatsapp over data than to use SMS for texting.

A single data point: In Haiti, SMS was 1 HTG/message. With 10 HTG, you could activate a plan for the whole day that was more than enough to use WhatsApp for unlimited text and pictures (MMS was not a thing). Now, SMS is only used for carrier ads and 2FA.

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