I'm in France with friends in the UK and Germany, and have never been asked to join a group on anything else other than WhatsApp. Not once.
(Well, at some point a year or two ago there was some controversy around WhatsApp, and some groups tried to migrate to Signal, but that all died out within a month -- never quite started, actually).
Believe it or not, I had almost never heard about iMessage and its specific quirks before the Beeper story (and still don't understand why the colors of the messages in green or blue matter).
Well.. I’m further north east and my experience is somewhat different. My only point was that Europe is not as homogenous as some people keep implying (most people still primarily communicate in their native language which creates a lot of more or less isolated bubbles)
> and still don't understand why the colors of the messages in green or blue matter
Because it indicates a fallback to standard SMS/text messaging which means all the more advanced features (which everyone expect messaging apps to have these days) stop working if you get a text from an Android device.
(Well, at some point a year or two ago there was some controversy around WhatsApp, and some groups tried to migrate to Signal, but that all died out within a month -- never quite started, actually).
Believe it or not, I had almost never heard about iMessage and its specific quirks before the Beeper story (and still don't understand why the colors of the messages in green or blue matter).