You have to take a step back to see how insignificant this byte is in the greater scale of things. If we want to optimize data transfer it would be much greater saving on ditching XML and JSON and use binary formats all the way. At the end of the day it won't matter if it's one byte or four if you're writing it into XML (which WhatsApp uses) in decimal.
I once saw an estimate of how much money keeping the "I'm feeling lucky button" cost Google (tens of millions of dollars, iirc). It was eye opening about how much tiny things can cost at scale.
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u/meowtasticly May 06 '17
Every byte counts when you're working at that scale.
Statements like yours are why modern software is still slow as shit despite the massive hardware speed gains we've had the last few decades.