[Evil_Saint]

Wow. I assumed you could use Whatsapp on the web but you literally can't. You have to have an Android or Iphone. I guess maybe there's a way to fake it with emulators on your computer but that's a lot of work that you shouldn't need to have to do.

[brailsafe]

Well, it is tied to your phone number, idk if hardware lock in and vendor lock in are in the same camp exactly

[CountHackulus]

You can use Whatsapp on the web, but you can't create an account on the web.

[Evil_Saint]

Worse they require frequent logins on device to keep the with client working. Just making the account on device isn't enough. You have to maintain it as well.

[pbmonster]

The requirement is not exactly "iOS or Android", the requirement is "SIM card with valid phone number". Otherwise, you could use it on iPads and Android tablets, which you normally can't.

WhatsApp accounts are directly tied to a single phone number, both for user discovery (that way, you can simply message everybody in your contacts who has the app - just the way user expect it to work) and for spam prevention.

Creating a smartphone messaging app without this feature would be orders of magnitude more difficult, you simply can't get normie users to go around "hey, what's your WhatsApp user name?"

[Hackbraten]

None of my phones can run WhatsApp, even though they do have SIM cards. That's because none of them runs iOS or Android.

[manmal]

An Android emulator with Play Services should work in theory, but I haven’t tried it. They could have extra checks to prevent that.

[paper2d]

You can install whatsapp on degoogled phones as well! No need of play services.

[notpushkin]

This.

I think there’s also an unofficial Python library, so you can write a simple script that keeps your account active (and use the web client).

[fsflover]

> degoogled phones

It's still Android. How do I do it on a GNU/Linux phone?

[teddyh]

Waydroid.