WhatsApp

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WhatsApp is a proprietary mobile messaging application and is owned by Facebook.

WhatsApp is extremely popular in Russia, Brazil, Mexico, India, Spain, Italy and Germany, and amongst the geographically dispersed migrants from those countries. One of the driving forces for the popularity of WhatsApp is that it is often significantly cheaper to send messages via a data plan (or wifi) than it is to pay the excessive rates that some countries charge for sending messages via SMS. WhatsApp does not support third-party clients or chatbots.

It has been repeatedly blocked in Brazil by court order. In Brazil, WhatsApp is used as a popular form of social media: a lot of people use WhatsApp for large group messages to distribute links, memes and videos, many of which are political or social in nature. The blocking of WhatsApp in Brazil is more blocking a "broadcast" social networking site like Twitter than it is like that of a person-to-person messaging service.

Brainstorming

How to POSSE

Rosemary Orchard is considering POSSEing to Whatsapp to let people follow her without forcing them onto other services. David Shanske knows about a possible way to do so: https://github.com/hoehermann/purple-gowhatsapp or https://github.com/sigalor/whatsapp-web-reveng for a description of the API

WhatsApp Web client

WhatsApp has a desktop/web client. Due to the way end-to-end encryption is implemented in WhatsApp, this is not a true fully-fledged client. All messages sent using the web client are sent first to the user's phone and then sent on from there. It does not work without the mobile client. This means that it won't work if your phone has run out of battery or you wish to access your WhatsApp messages in a country where you do not have mobile service.

The afterthought feeling of the web client is in part because WhatsApp has found most of its popularity amongst users, and in countries, where PC ownership is low compared to smartphone use.

Outages

2015 Brazil

WhatsApp was blocked in Brazil for ~12 hours (of original 48 hour order).[1]

2016 Brazil

WhatsApp blocked in Brazil for ~1 day (of original 72 hour order).[2]

2022-04-28

Outage around the world 2022-04-28: WhatsApp is currently down for multiple users around the world

The popular messaging app WhatsApp, which is owned by Meta, is currently down for multiple users around the world. There seems to be a widespread outage that has been preventing users from accessing the platform as of Thursday afternoon.

Criticism

• 2015-01-21 Andre Garzia: WhatsApp doesn't understand the web
• Whatsapp blocks links to rivaling messenger telegram: [3]
• 2015-07 WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook account of third-party WhatsApp API developer blocked [4]

Further reading

• 2014-02-20 You May Not Use WhatsApp, But the Rest of the World Sure Does, Wired News

See Also

• mobile
• messaging
• comms
• Criticism: Shut down one particular Spain political party's main channel days before their general election! https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1121083347785195522
  • "WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, just shut down the massive channel used by Spain's independent leftist political party Podemos.
    
    And it did this just days before the general election
    
    This is actual, extreme election meddling by a foreign corporation
    https://twitter.com/juanmalpr/status/1120459372994420736?s=19" @BenjaminNorton April 24, 2019
• Criticism: is deleting accounts blocked by a country: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pranavdixit/hundreds-of-kashmiris-are-disappearing-from-their-whatsapp
• Criticism 2020-07-02 The Guardian: What's wrong with WhatsApp
• Outage watch: https://twitter.com/hashtag/whatsappdown?f=live
• Criticism: conduit for disinformation: 2022-10-03 NBC: Right-wing disinformation ramps up on WeChat ahead of midterms, report finds / Researchers say failing to address the narratives could have a significant impact on Asian American voters in November.
• 2023-03-09 The Guardian: WhatsApp would not remove end-to-end encryption for UK law, says chief / Meta’s head of chat app says it would not comply with the requirements set out in online safety bill

  “The reality is, our users all around the world want security,” said Cathcart. “Ninety-eight per cent of our users are outside the UK. They do not want us to lower the security of the product, and just as a straightforward matter, it would be an odd choice for us to choose to lower the security of the product in a way that would affect those 98% of users.”

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