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The fact that the "rest of the world" is using a messaging app that's owned by one company is ridiculous.

Unfortunately on the web it's like this for almost everything, messaging is no different.

I can use email from multiple providers without issue and it interoperates nicely with anyone else who has an email address.

I'm not saying it's 100% that way, but a large chunk works like that. Videoconference, chat, collaborative document editing are pretty much centralized in the hands of private companies, even if open source solutions do exist.

SMS also has crazy weird limitations with messaging across countries due to ISP pricing, even though the messaging apps such as whatsapp have no problem with this.

> SMS also has crazy weird limitations with messaging across countries due to ISP pricing

Yeah, the carriers shot themselves in the foot here trying to monetize this and they opened the flood gates for replacements to come to fruition.

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