At least in the country where I live the "people near me" features have been removed/blocked from WeChat/Zalo/Telegram because they are overwhelmingly (like 99% of the time) used for prostitution.
Prostitution happens over WA, SMS, plain old phone calls and everything under the sun.
They don't seem to go after the communication channels, they go after the discovery mechanisms.
"People near me" is sort of the opposite of Omegle.