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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

This is an accident, and in peacetime.

Relying on WhatsApp for anything important (like your business) is madness, and I hope this serves as your wake-up call that giving the US government and a giant US ad network veto power over your basic personal and professional communications is not a good choice.

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Absolutely, plus I have seen a bunch of people going mental about not being able to reach friends or family because WhatsApp is down, when WhatsApp uses the person's phone number as a means of addressing messages, just dial them and talk to them or send them a text... People can be a little dim sometimes and forget that the primary function of a phone IS communications, and not just a platform for running apps.

Texts are super expensive and don't always work between countries, and are even more censored than WhatsApp, and can't always attach images or video or voice (or are even more ludicrously expensive if they can).

It's madness.

Entire Latin America relies on whatsapp. From government services and doctor appointments to pretty much any business there is. It is such a vital part of the infrastructure that I don't know what would happen if it went down. I mean I even got vaccinated via whatsapp here in Argentina.

More people need to use these services and explain to the operators "I don't have WhatsApp".

Silently caving and giving your data to Facebook perpetuates the status quo.

They will offer alternatives if a few percent of people simply refuse to agree to the Facebook TOS.

Due to inadequate infrastructure.

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