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Ask HN: How many lives have been negatively affected by WhatsApp going down?

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Re: Ask HN: How many lives have been negatively affected by WhatsApp going down?

#31

Post by periphrasis »

Some number less than their active user count?

Ask a leading question; get a flippant answer.

I’d find the cries for empathy to the poor affected users more compelling if it weren’t for the fact that anyone of working age can remember a time when these technologies didn’t exist. If it’s a tragedy that you didn’t have access to a novel technology for six hours, then I’d question the health of your relationship to it, and the wisdom of any economic choices you’ve made which depend upon it.

Re: Ask HN: How many lives have been negatively affected by WhatsApp going down?

#32

Post by queuebert »

elzbardico wrote: post #9
junon wrote: post #3

The sad thought crossed my mind: people using Whatsapp to have last calls with family members dying of e.g. COVID, trying terribly to get onto telegram or something but having no luck getting through since everything was degraded. Kinda ruined the few hours of fun for me.

People dying of COVID are usually heavily sedated with a tube down their tracheae. They don’t have last words, they either get better or die.

In fact, they often have terribly ordinary last words, i.e. whatever they said immediately prior to what they thought was a temporary intubation.

Re: Ask HN: How many lives have been negatively affected by WhatsApp going down?

#34

Post by OneLeggedCat »

jhugo wrote: post #22
edge17 wrote: post #18

I think the most surprising thing to me in these comments is the lack of awareness of how real people in the real world communicate with each other in countries outside of the west. At the end of the day, Whatsapp is reliable communication infrastructure and it does get used for all sorts of critical things. It's also a backbone for commerce in many parts of the world. Believe it or not, not every country has billion…

I live in a country where WhatsApp is heavily used for all sorts of things (business communication, personal communication, ordering food from local restaurants, and so on). I was actually surprised by how utterly replaceable it proved to be during this outage. I don't know anyone who doesn't have at least two or three messenger apps installed anyway, and since most work by the phone number, it's pretty seamless to s…

In your country, which messenger did most of you default to?

Re: Ask HN: How many lives have been negatively affected by WhatsApp going down?

#35

Post by jhugo »

OneLeggedCat wrote: post #34
jhugo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a country where WhatsApp is heavily used for all sorts of things (business communication, personal communication, ordering food from local restaurants, and so on). I was actually surprised by how utterly replaceable it proved to be during this outage. I don't know anyone who doesn't have at least two or three messenger apps installed anyway, and since most work by the phone number, it's pretty seamless to s…

In your country, which messenger did most of you default to?

There's a local one which a lot of people already have installed even if they don't use it most of the time. A lot of people have Telegram installed too. WhatsApp / FB Messenger are the most popular but if they're down, between those two you would have most people covered.

Re: Ask HN: How many lives have been negatively affected by WhatsApp going down?

#36

Post by replink »

I live in SEA where everyone uses Whatsapp and the company I work for caters to SMEs. My own experience was that the impact was small. We saw some influx on Telegram, a lot more people called in, or reached out to us via Intercom. The end result of WA going down was people switching over to Telegram or Signal, including myself. I think if WA shut off permanently tomorrow there'd be a fair bit of disruption, but it wouldn't take too much time or impact for people to end up settling on another messaging app or platform. The SMEs we work with didn't seem concerned.

Re: Ask HN: How many lives have been negatively affected by WhatsApp going down?

#37

Post by pedrogrande »

periphrasis wrote: post #31

Some number less than their active user count? Ask a leading question; get a flippant answer. I’d find the cries for empathy to the poor affected users more compelling if it weren’t for the fact that anyone of working age can remember a time when these technologies didn’t exist. If it’s a tragedy that you didn’t have access to a novel technology for six hours, then I’d question the health of your relationship to it,…

Wow! Snarky much?

Do you have any experience living in a country outside a "first world" country? Do you have any understanding how these "novel" technologies can be the backbone of people's business, livelihoods or even emergency services?

Sounds like you are in a comfortable bubble.

Re: Ask HN: How many lives have been negatively affected by WhatsApp going down?

#38

Post by pedrogrande »

kazinator wrote: post #7

It would be pretty irresponsible for emergency services to be dependent on WhatsApp or anything of its ilk.

In some countries, you can run out of mobile minutes or data but be on a plan that provides free access to Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram.

Re: Ask HN: How many lives have been negatively affected by WhatsApp going down?

#39

Post by pedrogrande »

devit wrote: post #24

Whatsapp contacts are phone numbers, so you can just call or text them with the phone network instead if it's essential.

In many countries people rely on prepaid minutes and data and these plans usually come with free access to FB, Insta and Whatsapp. If their minutes run out they could normally still use Whatsapp
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