Which countries in Asia still count it as the most popular messaging app? China is on WeeChat, Korea has KakaoTalk and LINE is everywhere else. It is pretty amazing that Meta had three messaging apps and none of them are close to something like LINE in terms of ubiquity or utility.
My understanding is that WhatsApp is pretty big in India and my experience is that WeChat is pretty ubiquitous within SE Asia. The Singapore govt uses WhatsApp now for much of its govt comms and a lot of small business uses WhatsApp. Also recently in the news, you can book an Uber via WhatsApp . I'd be curious how WhatsApp does in Japan and South Korea.
Also my hunch is that Aus and NZ use WhatsApp heavily too
Literally all of India uses WhatsApp. Non-WhatsApp users (exclusively Signal/Telegram/Mitron or whatever homegrown flavour of the day) are a rounding error.
The recent privacy notice from WhatsApp gave some boost to signal and telegram, but it got nowhere. WhatsApp has become an integral part of Indian's life, it would be hard to break up that relationship.
Not Asia, but SMS is dead pretty much in Haiti, and everyone uses WhatsApp. Internet usage is low enough to even be an alternative to phone calls in most cases (especially for the young adults category).
Asian messenger apps like LINE are really more of an “everything app.” I use LINE to chat with everyone. In Taiwan it’s a given that that anyone you meet will have LINE. Businesses have a special business line account that staff can use. You can book your hotel, vet apt, reserve a table, etc because every business has LINE. You can pay for things with it by letting someone scan your code or or pay for things online by clicking a link that opens line so you can authorize the payment.
As far as the messenger goes, it works really well. They’ve done the best job I’ve seen at making chat history searchable or let you jump to a date instead of scrolling backwards for an hour. They also allow you to send cute stickers, and they are used constantly.
The amount of personal data left in chats would be worrying for sure. Not to mention security culture is not really tight here. I’ve had hotels ask me to send a picture of my credit card for payment a few times.
As far as other things being compromised, I’d just deauth line from my bank account.
