I live in Poland, and most people use Meta's Messenger here, although some people use WhatsApp and some also Telegram (but mostly Ukrainians and Belarusians).
Personally I use regular old plain SMS, Messenger, Telegram or Discord depending on situation.
A lot of young people in Russia know that Putin is evil, especially in major cities. The problem is that they don't protest, as that would put them in danger.
That's a lot of effort, given how many people I am subscribed to. And I wouldn't say that it' "peanuts", after all they redistribute 55% of YouTube Premium earnings, that's a lot more than what other similar subscriptions give.
That's great unless that person's files get corrupted/deleted or hard drive fails. Then having backups in the cloud or at least ona a device on a local network is a good idea.
To be honest as an Android user, if Apple makes their phone less locked down and give more affordable choices for phones I may try an iPhone, as I am a bit fed up with Android, and there are no other real alternatives.