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WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide Today by a Single Judge

theintercept.com

1–10 of 629 posts

Re: WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide Today by a Single Judge

#3
Unlike in N. America, in Brazil a lot of businesses depend on WhatsApp. You can talk with your doctor, call a plumber, claim insurance. On billboards no one puts a website address or an email, just phone number and WhatsUp. That's an economy cripling move and it's shocking how one judge can do it.

Re: WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide Today by a Single Judge

#4
What most people outside of Brazil don't realize is that WhatsApp is almost universally used by Brazillians to communicate about EVERYTHING, even your doctor [0][1]. My wife is Brazillian and uses it to communicate with her family in Brazil every day. This will have disastrous consequences for Brazilians domestically and internationally. This policy is being put in place by unelected judges and cartel of monopolistic telcos - all at the expense of the people.

[0]http://www.cityam.com/230372/digital-health-wearables-and-ap... [1]http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-brazilians-use...

Re: WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide Today by a Single Judge

#6
The title makes it sound much worse than it is -- it's actually only a 72-hour shutdown. From the beginning of the article:

> A BRAZILIAN STATE JUDGE ordered mobile phone operators to block nationwide the extremely popular WhatsApp chat service for 72 hours...

Re: WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide Today by a Single Judge

#7

What most people outside of Brazil don't realize is that WhatsApp is almost universally used by Brazillians to communicate about EVERYTHING, even your doctor [0][1]. My wife is Brazillian and uses it to communicate with her family in Brazil every day. This will have disastrous consequences for Brazilians domestically and internationally. This policy is being put in place by unelected judges and cartel of monopolistic…

It's almost like Brazil is the most technologically advanced poor-3rd-world-nation

I know from my brief time at Facebook, they use Brazil user-searches in their intro classes to tableau reporting on users' graphs - "show me everyone in Brazil who is 18 years old and posted about subject-X"

Re: WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide Today by a Single Judge

#8
post #6

The title makes it sound much worse than it is -- it's actually only a 72-hour shutdown. From the beginning of the article: > A BRAZILIAN STATE JUDGE ordered mobile phone operators to block nationwide the extremely popular WhatsApp chat service for 72 hours...

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Re: WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide Today by a Single Judge

#10
post #5

Would a p2p architecture thwart this kinda blocking?

You can't fix social problems with technology. The issue here is Brazilian law and the failure to understand the implications of encryption by the courts, not WhatApp's connection architecture.
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