Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 132 posts

Re: Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

#33

Post by graup »

Last week, KakaoTalk (the main messenger used in Korea) was down FOR A WHOLE DAY because of a fire in their (1!) data center. Let's see how long it takes WhatsApp to get back online.

Re: Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

#34

Post by adamcharnock »

donkeyd wrote: post #14
jansan wrote: post #10

This is a big issue in Europe. Everyone I know does text communication exclusively through WhatApp.

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…

This is slightly impractical for non-critical communication for me because many of my friends are foreigners like me. Example issues:

- many people I talk to have phone numbers from different countries. Making such communication expensive.

- also, I suspect many people around me have not updated their WhatsApp number for a while (or have multiple SIMs)

- no one here optimises for SMS or call minutes. Some people will be on data only (either data only SIM, or Wi-Fi only)

Re: Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

#35

Post by pmontra »

vijaykodam wrote: post #28

This is the time when people search for alternate messaging apps like Signal, Telegram :) Totally forgot that I have installed both those apps and opened them today after more than a year.

I sent a couple of WA to a friend, noticed the clock icon, didn't think about it until when I saw these news one hour later. If I really had to hear from her I'd call her or at least send her a SMS (maybe the first one of the year, to anybody.) Same thing if she were one of those friends I'm using Telegram to chat with. I assume that most of them have both WA and Telegram, WA for sure.

Re: Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

#36

Post by zarzavat »

donkeyd wrote: post #14
jansan wrote: post #10

This is a big issue in Europe. Everyone I know does text communication exclusively through WhatApp.

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…

It’s generally bad etiquette to send SMS because it forces the other side to potentially have to pay money to reply. And if it’s cross-border then just forget it. Unless you are both on iPhones.

Re: Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

#37

Post by KoftaBob »

Seems like a good time to plug Session: https://getsession.org/

Open source, doesn't require a phone number, and a big strength is that it's decentralized, which makes it much less vulnerable to outages like this.

"Session utilises the decentralised Oxen Service Node Network to store and route messages. This means that unlike P2P messaging applications you can message Session users when they are offline. This network consists of community operated nodes which are stationed all over the world. Service nodes are organised into collections of small co-operative groups called swarms.

Swarms offer additional redundancy and message delivery guarantees even if some service nodes become unreachable. By using this network, Session doesn’t have a central point of failure, and Session’s creators have no capacity to collect or store personal information about people using the app"

Re: Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

#38

Post by the_duke »

pelario wrote: post #27

Seems global outage: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/25/whatsapp-is-down-globally.ht... Each time this happens I try to recruit more people to use Signal.

Signal is just another centralised architecture.

You should recruit people to Matrix , which supports Federation.

Re: Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

#39

Post by berkes »

arcanemachiner wrote: post #32
pelario wrote: post #27

Seems global outage: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/25/whatsapp-is-down-globally.ht... Each time this happens I try to recruit more people to use Signal.

Is this not just another centralized point of failure?

I'm presuming GP does not put Signal forward as a solution to outages. But instead uses the opportunity to talk about messengers and show that there are alternatives in general.

At least, that is what I do.

Re: Tell HN: WhatsApp Is Down

#40

Post by vsnf »

arafsheikh wrote: post #30
staindk wrote: 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.

There are many ways systems can fail. Do you really feel as confident about your guess as your statement implies?
Post reply on HN