Cellular carriers were charging disproportionately for sms and calls, so people where looking for cheap alternatives and unfortunately meta/facebook zucced the entire nation by being in the right place at the right time (with enormous help of word-of-mouth marketing that sealed the deal and some additional help coming from meta I suppose). Government never cared nor questioned why everything was provided for free, zero cost, no questions asked and regular folks didn't have time or even bother to do some research. And on the top of it, local carriers to make things even better, introduced the zero-rate for zucced app which basically elevated this crapp to some divine status. And now we have wechat called ZAP, as a solution for every kind of communication. Nowadays even if you proved that this crapp is doing some harm to you in alot of ways, nobody would care. It's as normal as flipping on a light switch, simply nobody think about it anymore, it's there and that's about it.

South America, Brazil. Everything has been taken by meta. From private to business. If you don't use it, you get that look as if you were some strange unfit person. Try to challenge somebody asking why there is no alternative, you'll get that look again. Doctors, lawyers, real estate, rentals, pharmacy, schools, online classes, local business, everyday communications, online purchases, receipts, invoices, returning items you bought, financial advices, government related stuff (gov won't do a damn thing to include another official channel of communicating, it suites them very well, "Please use whatsapp for your convince, we want you to be satisfied", not the other way around. You ain't survive without this crap. Don't resist or else.