[Al-Khwarizmi]

I guess it feels worth it if you actually like it.

I've always hated WhatsApp but use it due to network effect: in my country you pretty much can't have a normal social life without it (and even things like customer service often use it as well).

When they started threatening with charging money, it felt like a punch to the gut. So I'm using this product I hate because I'm pretty much forced, as I'd rather be using Telegram or various others that I strongly prefer, and now that they've captured entire societies and communities with their free app, they're going to make ME pay?

My feeling is that capitalism is just not a good model for messaging apps with network effects. Regulation is sorely needed, at the very least for interoperability (like the phone network), and maybe more.

[sebastiennight]

I think your chronology is wrong.

It is extremely unlikely that you used WhatsApp "before they started threatening with charging money" but would have preferred Telegram at the time.

Why?

1. Because WhatsApp was a paid app from the beginning ($0.99 after the first year of using it)

2. Because WhatsApp was bought by FB in early 2014, who made it free.

3. Because Telegram was founded in late 2013

[Al-Khwarizmi]

I have bad memory in general, but of this in particular, I'm very sure. Because I remember that some people actually switched to Telegram upon receiving the message saying they had to pay before some deadline or they would lose access to WhatsApp, and I thought "at least this is a silver lining, some people are switching to Telegram".

I also distinctly remember that I didn't pay by the deadline (although I planned to cave in later) but finally the threat didn't materialize and I didn't lose access (or maybe I did, but for a day or two). Some people did pay and didn't get any advantage over those of us who didn't.

This was in Spain, so maybe the issue is that the specifics vary per country. In particular, I think your point 1 wasn't really true here. WhatsApp monopolized messaging (including even elderly population) because it was free. You wouldn't convince most people here (and especially the elderly) to pay for an app, it would be dead on arrival. Perhaps the charge after the first year you mention was somewhere in the official small print, I don't know, but I'm pretty sure everyone was using it under the assumption that it was free. They only tried charging a fee that single time I'm mentioning, and they backtracked fast.

[ta8903]

It's definitely not unlikely because I very clearly remember WhatsApp being a paid app from the beginning, but I also remember no one actually having to pay for it. Couldn't tell you how exactly it worked but I've used it since I was a kid to talk to my friends and family, while we didn't even know how to do online payments.