With end to end encryption, this is important to remember too. And it wasn't owned by Facebook when it started gaining traction. Don't make the US decision seem smarter.

You make a good point about the mass adoption mostly happening before FB took ownership. Back then, Whatsapp was definitely a better choice for a lot of non-US places vs paying for SMS, and perhaps it is even now. iMessage has E2E encryption, but regular SMS doesn’t so WhatsApp seems better in that case as well.

It more than quadrupled since the acquisition, hardly "mostly before FB".

It wasn't owned by Facebook when people decided to use it. Facebook bought it after it became popular.

> I’ll take sms/mms any day of the week

That's because in the US there were unlimited SMS plans. In other countries they used to charge per message.