[ronsor]

Every time the "backwards Americans are still using SMS!" snark comes up:

* SMS is cheaper in America than in Europe where carriers gouge their customers for it.

* Usually this means the non-Americans are just using WhatsApp (owned by Meta/Zuckerberg) instead, which is hardly something to be proud of.

[calyhre]

I don’t know a lot about the rest of Europe on this, but here in France it’s been more than a decade SMS are unlimited in mobile plans, and these plans are quite cheap.

We also have free roaming in the whole Europe.

[nitwit005]

Whatsapp came out 16 years ago. Yes, the main driver for adoption was avoiding fees. They still emphasize it being free to this day.

The adoption of messaging apps caused a lot of carriers to reduce or eliminate the SMS fees, as they saw the business was evaporating.

[jorvi]

Carriers actually massively jacked up SMS fees, just not for consumers.

One of Signal's main cost centers is activation SMS messages. For many other small players it is a significant factor too.

[Zak]

Ignoring pride, WhatsApp has major advantages over SMS/MMS, including high-quality media, group chats that actually work, free international messaging, video calls, and (unless they're lying) encryption.

I would be pleased if everyone who uses SMS with me switched to WhatsApp. I would be more pleased if they switched to Signal, but the UX benefits of either one are significant.

[nixosbestos]

Finding and eating roadkill is cheap too, free even. Free protein in this year? Yeah, I'd rather do that than use fucking SMS for anything.

[throw83947y]

Dogs eat roadkill and poop. Dogs are very popular. You may have a point!