• Madis@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    Ironically, it got popular when it still tried to get users to subscribe to a monthly payment. And as it was one of the few messaging platforms to be (in the future) paid at all, I cannot understand why it ever got popular…

    Well, sure, Meta cancelled the subscription plans later but to me it sounded a red flag in the first place.

    • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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      11 months ago

      Whatsapp became popular because it was the only app that ran on everything in 2010, it ran on the newly appeared smartphones as well as on featurephones. Nokia, Blackberry, Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, you name it, it was supported.

    • u_tamtam@programming.dev
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      11 months ago

      And as it was one of the few messaging platforms to be (in the future) paid at all, I cannot understand why it ever got popular…

      Because that way people thought they were directly paying for the service they were using, instead of being the product of said platform, having their personal data harvested and sold to the highest bidder?

      Well, sure, Meta cancelled the subscription plans later but to me it sounded a red flag in the first place.

      The red flag is to look at a free meal and not wonder what the catch might be. Especially to this day, with all we learned about what the tech majors do with all the data.

    • dan@upvote.au
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      11 months ago

      Whatsapp was a paid service in some areas, but only $1 per year.