5 ms·

You do know that whatsapp is literally used by small businesses in 3rd world to conduct....business right?

rubyist5eva 5y ago
Facebook doesn't care.
aaomidi 5y ago
Have you considered that any change done is going to mean winners and losers. If Facebook permanently goes down then those businesses would move to a different platform. Would it suck? Probably. Would the world be a better place without Facebook? A ton of people think so. Me included. This is the same argument people have used when we talk about health insurance in the US being scammy. If we ever decided to address it it means a good chunk of people lose their jobs but also means that the health of this country goes up. Which one is more important?
- mitigating 5y ago
  But people moving from Facebook to another social media or messaging platform is just changing the company. That new company could do whatever things you don't like that Facebook is doing. Your example seems to mean that we move to another healthcare system as in method of implementation not just moving from one company to another.
  - grey_earthling 5y ago
    > But people moving from Facebook to another social media or messaging platform is just changing the company. This is not necessarily true. There are social networks and messaging systems implemented as open protocols.
    - mitigating 5y ago
      That's a fair point. I'm going to make an assumption here but those systems aren't moderated or controlled centrally? So I see two issues with these if they become popular. 1. This only increases misinformation since there's no censorship at all 2. What prevents people from using the service for illegal purposes (I think this becomes a problem once services become popular) 3. Finally won't it just be banned eventually? If some court in any country issues a ruling to control it and it can't be controlled that will just escalate. Especially if it's something like pedophiles.
drcongo 5y ago
Maybe that was a bit of a....mistake?
- oblio 5y ago
  And the alternative is... ?
  - drcongo 5y ago
    It's quite possible to run a business without WhatsApp. Lots of businesses have been doing it for quite a long time.
  - celsoazevedo 5y ago
    Email, SMS, good ol' phone calls, Signal, <insert local app/platform here>, your own website, etc, on top of whatever you use right now. If you're in a country that relies a lot on Facebook or Whatsapp, that's where the main focus will be, but at least try to have alternatives just in case something goes wrong.
    - Spivak 5y ago
      So 4/4 of those are platforms controlled by a single company or a few large corporations. This really isn't a win in any meaningful sense. It should be fine for huge corporations to exist and provide services really efficiently at scale while also being forced to play nice and respond to the will of the people they serve. If we collectively can't stop Facebook from doing bad thing and being bad stewards to their own platform then you won't be able to stop whatever would replace them either.
- golergka 5y ago
  It was a mistake to communicate with the users on a platform that they use? Instead of trying to get them on signal, losing 90% of leads in the process and making each of your sales cost x10 much?
CodeGlitch 5y ago
Unfortunately they are about to be taught a hard lesson in what "free" really means.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  That'll depend on the length of the outage, other tasks they can do during it, and the uptime and market penetration of any competing services. I don't think much of a lesson is going to occur here. It'll be a brief blip that impacts few meaningfully.
- justapassenger 5y ago
  Big tech free services have WAY better uptime than commercial alternatives.
  - oehtXRwMkIs 5y ago
    That's not what they meant by free.
jamal-kumar 5y ago
I've been doing a pretty good job of moving my client's communications to Signal out here. I feel bad for everyone who relies on whatsapp bots for making stuff happen, though. These are getting really common out here for a lot of things and it always worries me that it's such a linchpin. They're really handy and save a lot of bullshit phone calls from having to be something people deal with for simple stuff like pharmacy delivery. I can get food from the local place down the street that's only really open for lunch and totally off the map for uber eats, for example... if this persists a few more hours those mom and pop type shops aren't going to have as great a day.
walrus01 5y ago
Maybe an event like this will spur some people into... not doing that? Yes I'm aware of the ubiquitous nature of whatsapp in many developing nations. Have also successfully got a lot of people moved onto using Signal for anything they care about.
- Sahbak 5y ago
  Signal has and will go down just like facebook. Cloudflare/aws having issues affects an insanely high percentage of the internet. People still use them. Outages rarely cause anything, they happen, people move on.
quixoticaxolotl 5y ago
It's a little irksome how other commentors are quick to dismiss this very valid point. SMBs in Asia aren't using WhatsApp because they've forced the platform on their consumers; it's their consumers who are using WhatsApp who've forced a choice on the SMBs. WhatsApp has very wide consumer penetration, and its use by businesses is meant as a convenience wrapper for customers. Now, does switching from WhatsApp to some other not-very-widely-used platform cause customer engagement / retention to drop? I would wager very much so! It's a matter of priorities - people go where there is least friction, and WhatsApp otherwise provides a seamless friction-less experience.
- parthdesai 5y ago
  It's very first world centric point of view. I doubt some of these commentator claiming whatsapp being down is good for the society have ever been outside of the first world and have seen how it actually helps people in need.
- Symbiote 5y ago
  But doesn't that mean it will be easy for the SMBs to move to any replacement service?
  - quixoticaxolotl 5y ago
    At the cost of losing customers, is my point :)
    - qwertox 5y ago
      Uff, I see no reason to smile about it.
- cwkoss 5y ago
  Maybe these business will diversify their communication mediums because WhatsApp is down - seems like a good thing for society.
  - 5y ago
cmorgan31 5y ago
You need a contingency plan for when vendors go down even in 3rd world countries. It just so happens a lot of us would not mind this vendor failing entirely. It’s unfortunate that we have so little choice in the matter but ultimately the same advice holds true for all of us smugly throwing insults while keeping our billing in AWS.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
el-salvador 5y ago
El Salvador basically runs on WhatsApp. From the small food stall to CEOs and maybe even government.
- Symbiote 5y ago
  > The country where I live With your username, I think you can risk naming the country without any additional loss of privacy.
  - el-salvador 5y ago
    Edited :)
dustinmoris 5y ago
You do know that <insert-extremely-damaging-thing> is literally used by small businesses in 3rd world to conduct....business right?
toomanybeersies 5y ago
At the start of this year I started working for an employment service company that covers the Indo-Asia-Pacific and South American markets. I was amazed to discover how pervasive Facebook, Inc. has become in the developing world for conducting business and navigating everyday life. For a lot of people in developing nations such as the Phillipines and Indonesia, Facebook is synonymous with the internet. This has been buoyed by their push to bundle uncapped/free data for Facebook with mobile plans in markets with high growth of mobile internet access. It's interesting, because I'm always reading articles about how "Western teens aren't using Facebook any more", which is true, but it's also irrelevant, because they're not really a profitable market, teenagers have short attention spans and no money. Facebook's growth strategy is to become the one stop shop (in lower income nations) for everything you want and need.
luaybs 5y ago
Not to mention all the small businesses that rely on Instagram too. Here it's used as an e-commerce platform.
turtlebits 5y ago
Don't businesses fall back to SMS/phone or e-mail? Doesn't seem like a good idea to rely on a single corporation.
ivanmontillam 5y ago
In Latin American 3rd world countries, people also conduct business via Instagram. They create Instagram accounts and post products as posts, with a caption of "DM me for price". It also turns on every alarm on my mind, when they start calling these "Instagram pages". It blurs the line between a real website and an Instagram account (In Spanish, "website" is "página web" as well). I've also heard: "My business went to hell because Instagram killed my account" and that's when I reply: "Have you ever thought of owning a real website?"
fortran77 5y ago
He’s a HN 10xer. He doesn’t care about anyone outside his Palo Alto cold-press-Koffee-Klatch, despite what he virtue signals. It’s amusing seeing people here trip over each other to say some variety of “I don’t use Facebook.”

Facebook doesn't care.

Have you considered that any change done is going to mean winners and losers. If Facebook permanently goes down then those businesses would move to a different platform. Would it suck? Probably. Would the world be a better place without Facebook? A ton of people think so. Me included. This is the same argument people have used when we talk about health insurance in the US being scammy. If we ever decided to address it it means a good chunk of people lose their jobs but also means that the health of this country goes up. Which one is more important?

mitigating 5y ago
But people moving from Facebook to another social media or messaging platform is just changing the company. That new company could do whatever things you don't like that Facebook is doing. Your example seems to mean that we move to another healthcare system as in method of implementation not just moving from one company to another.
- grey_earthling 5y ago
  > But people moving from Facebook to another social media or messaging platform is just changing the company. This is not necessarily true. There are social networks and messaging systems implemented as open protocols.
  - mitigating 5y ago
    That's a fair point. I'm going to make an assumption here but those systems aren't moderated or controlled centrally? So I see two issues with these if they become popular. 1. This only increases misinformation since there's no censorship at all 2. What prevents people from using the service for illegal purposes (I think this becomes a problem once services become popular) 3. Finally won't it just be banned eventually? If some court in any country issues a ruling to control it and it can't be controlled that will just escalate. Especially if it's something like pedophiles.

drcongo 5y ago

Maybe that was a bit of a....mistake?

oblio 5y ago
And the alternative is... ?
- drcongo 5y ago
  It's quite possible to run a business without WhatsApp. Lots of businesses have been doing it for quite a long time.
- celsoazevedo 5y ago
  Email, SMS, good ol' phone calls, Signal, <insert local app/platform here>, your own website, etc, on top of whatever you use right now. If you're in a country that relies a lot on Facebook or Whatsapp, that's where the main focus will be, but at least try to have alternatives just in case something goes wrong.
  - Spivak 5y ago
    So 4/4 of those are platforms controlled by a single company or a few large corporations. This really isn't a win in any meaningful sense. It should be fine for huge corporations to exist and provide services really efficiently at scale while also being forced to play nice and respond to the will of the people they serve. If we collectively can't stop Facebook from doing bad thing and being bad stewards to their own platform then you won't be able to stop whatever would replace them either.
golergka 5y ago
It was a mistake to communicate with the users on a platform that they use? Instead of trying to get them on signal, losing 90% of leads in the process and making each of your sales cost x10 much?

CodeGlitch 5y ago

Unfortunately they are about to be taught a hard lesson in what "free" really means.

ceejayoz 5y ago
That'll depend on the length of the outage, other tasks they can do during it, and the uptime and market penetration of any competing services. I don't think much of a lesson is going to occur here. It'll be a brief blip that impacts few meaningfully.
justapassenger 5y ago
Big tech free services have WAY better uptime than commercial alternatives.
- oehtXRwMkIs 5y ago
  That's not what they meant by free.

jamal-kumar 5y ago

I've been doing a pretty good job of moving my client's communications to Signal out here. I feel bad for everyone who relies on whatsapp bots for making stuff happen, though. These are getting really common out here for a lot of things and it always worries me that it's such a linchpin. They're really handy and save a lot of bullshit phone calls from having to be something people deal with for simple stuff like pharmacy delivery. I can get food from the local place down the street that's only really open for lunch and totally off the map for uber eats, for example... if this persists a few more hours those mom and pop type shops aren't going to have as great a day.

walrus01 5y ago

Maybe an event like this will spur some people into... not doing that? Yes I'm aware of the ubiquitous nature of whatsapp in many developing nations. Have also successfully got a lot of people moved onto using Signal for anything they care about.

Sahbak 5y ago
Signal has and will go down just like facebook. Cloudflare/aws having issues affects an insanely high percentage of the internet. People still use them. Outages rarely cause anything, they happen, people move on.

quixoticaxolotl 5y ago

It's a little irksome how other commentors are quick to dismiss this very valid point. SMBs in Asia aren't using WhatsApp because they've forced the platform on their consumers; it's their consumers who are using WhatsApp who've forced a choice on the SMBs. WhatsApp has very wide consumer penetration, and its use by businesses is meant as a convenience wrapper for customers. Now, does switching from WhatsApp to some other not-very-widely-used platform cause customer engagement / retention to drop? I would wager very much so! It's a matter of priorities - people go where there is least friction, and WhatsApp otherwise provides a seamless friction-less experience.

parthdesai 5y ago
It's very first world centric point of view. I doubt some of these commentator claiming whatsapp being down is good for the society have ever been outside of the first world and have seen how it actually helps people in need.
Symbiote 5y ago
But doesn't that mean it will be easy for the SMBs to move to any replacement service?
- quixoticaxolotl 5y ago
  At the cost of losing customers, is my point :)
  - qwertox 5y ago
    Uff, I see no reason to smile about it.
cwkoss 5y ago
Maybe these business will diversify their communication mediums because WhatsApp is down - seems like a good thing for society.
- 5y ago

cmorgan31 5y ago

You need a contingency plan for when vendors go down even in 3rd world countries. It just so happens a lot of us would not mind this vendor failing entirely. It’s unfortunate that we have so little choice in the matter but ultimately the same advice holds true for all of us smugly throwing insults while keeping our billing in AWS.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

el-salvador 5y ago

El Salvador basically runs on WhatsApp. From the small food stall to CEOs and maybe even government.

Symbiote 5y ago
> The country where I live With your username, I think you can risk naming the country without any additional loss of privacy.
- el-salvador 5y ago
  Edited :)

dustinmoris 5y ago

You do know that <insert-extremely-damaging-thing> is literally used by small businesses in 3rd world to conduct....business right?

toomanybeersies 5y ago

At the start of this year I started working for an employment service company that covers the Indo-Asia-Pacific and South American markets. I was amazed to discover how pervasive Facebook, Inc. has become in the developing world for conducting business and navigating everyday life. For a lot of people in developing nations such as the Phillipines and Indonesia, Facebook is synonymous with the internet. This has been buoyed by their push to bundle uncapped/free data for Facebook with mobile plans in markets with high growth of mobile internet access. It's interesting, because I'm always reading articles about how "Western teens aren't using Facebook any more", which is true, but it's also irrelevant, because they're not really a profitable market, teenagers have short attention spans and no money. Facebook's growth strategy is to become the one stop shop (in lower income nations) for everything you want and need.

luaybs 5y ago

Not to mention all the small businesses that rely on Instagram too. Here it's used as an e-commerce platform.

turtlebits 5y ago

Don't businesses fall back to SMS/phone or e-mail? Doesn't seem like a good idea to rely on a single corporation.

ivanmontillam 5y ago

In Latin American 3rd world countries, people also conduct business via Instagram. They create Instagram accounts and post products as posts, with a caption of "DM me for price". It also turns on every alarm on my mind, when they start calling these "Instagram pages". It blurs the line between a real website and an Instagram account (In Spanish, "website" is "página web" as well). I've also heard: "My business went to hell because Instagram killed my account" and that's when I reply: "Have you ever thought of owning a real website?"

fortran77 5y ago

He’s a HN 10xer. He doesn’t care about anyone outside his Palo Alto cold-press-Koffee-Klatch, despite what he virtue signals. It’s amusing seeing people here trip over each other to say some variety of “I don’t use Facebook.”