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Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

news.ycombinator.com

21–30 of 132 posts

Re: Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

#21
Interestingly, a couple minutes before WA went down my messages were being sent while only displaying a single tick (as in the other parties could see my single-tick messages).

Thought it was quite weird/concerning that that could happen.

Re: Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

#24
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can still text regularly though, so it isn't that much of an issue if there's a real need to communicate. Edit: I feel like every response I'm getting is: 'but texting is expensive, especially with foreign contacts'. Sure, but do you really need to send 100 texts in the odd hour that Whatsapp is offline sometimes, or can they wait? Parent wrote 'This is a big issue in Europe', which is what I'm responding to. I…

Sitting in Africa and I have clients in Europe - some things just don't lend themselves to email coms.

Phones still work, right? For things that can't wait for Whatsapp to get back online, I would imagine a phone call would then be an option? Or open up a Jitsi Meet just for the time being and share the link through mail?

There's so many alternatives, I'm always surprised that a Whatsapp outage seems to mean the end of the world to many people.

Re: Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

#25
post #17
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can still text regularly though, so it isn't that much of an issue if there's a real need to communicate. Edit: I feel like every response I'm getting is: 'but texting is expensive, especially with foreign contacts'. Sure, but do you really need to send 100 texts in the odd hour that Whatsapp is offline sometimes, or can they wait? Parent wrote 'This is a big issue in Europe', which is what I'm responding to. I…

The bigger issue is groups, who may not all be in your contacts, as well as services relying on whatsapp as infrastructure.

I have groups like that. If I open the app now, I can still see all their phone numbers, in case I really need to reach someone urgently.

Re: Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

#30
post #21

Interestingly, a couple minutes before WA went down my messages were being sent while only displaying a single tick (as in the other parties could see my single-tick messages). Thought it was quite weird/concerning that that could happen.

Typical case of degraded mode of operation, I presume. That’s how well engineered systems should behave when they’re about to go down.

My guess is that this particular outage was caused due to a scaling constraint somewhere in the stack.

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