Brazil gets a WTF WhatsApp moment

Another interesting point is the ease in which a service used by millions can be shutdown.

One of the many vaunted advantages to Internet services is that they should be resilient.

I would argue that that such a service should be difficult if not impossible for a single agent to close otherwise, it demonstrates their vulnerability to less official interference.

Limited?

'...in an effort to exert pressure on the company, which has a limited presence in Brazil'

'...estimated 100 million Brazilian users of WhatsApp'

I wouldn't call 100 million users a 'limited presence' in ANY country.

"...sad to see Brazil isolate itself from the rest of the world"

Somewhat exaggerated, I think. I'm sure Brazilians use more than a minor social networking app to communicate with the rest of the world.

My concern is...

...that if they can't get to the evidence, sooner or later they will dispense with the need for it.

WhatsApp nobbled?

Just Donald Trump field testing his Security Heightened Intertubes Termination (SHIT) blocking system [TM] with Bill.

"Used by over 90 percent of Brazilians"?

So Brazil must be the only country in the world where over 90 percent of the population have smartphones. Interesting.

Just another example...

...of a public affliction to dangerous electronic toys. Maybe these people should try e-mail and wean themselves off the APPs?

Tidbit on brazilian reality

This article covered nicely the underlying reason of the ban that happened yesterday. Our marco civil law was supposed to leverage the playing field and guarantee data isonomy to anything - telcos would only be responsible to get data from point A to point B.

However, Amos Genish (Vivo's CEO) goes constantly on media to say how whatsapp is a pirate service (really, just google the combination of "his name", "vivo" "whatsapp" and "pirata"), as it provides text and voice services without being regulated like the ISP's or telcos utilizing their infrastructure, phone number AND not paying any kind of fees. The other telcos are kinda meh about it and go as far as "breaking data isonomy" by making whatever you use with the application free - that means in most of then you have a normal data plan and unlimited access to whatsapp. Our Bahia's state MP (Public Ministery) went as far as "investigating" the Tim telco about it's unlimited access deal, with ground as to why "you're prioritizing some kind of data over another". Surprisingly, they said they give customers some advantages and better deals... and it worked! Since then, Claro and Oi also followed suit, integrating facebook, twitter and whatsapp usage in their consumer plans. By the way, Vivo still refuses to do that kind of deal and keep going to the media against those apps.

It's all fine and dandy, but we all know telcos would LOVE to tap on that lost SMS/voice call revenue, and go as far as to lobby our politicians to harden the instance on those apps, claiming "they can't expand or provide better service because we are not profitting as much as back in the day" yadda-yadda.. which is weird, considering their profits go up year after year (http://www.teleco.com.br/opcelular.asp). Our regulation agency (Anatel) does a fairly good job at keeping things in a sane level and are not easing politics bs into the life of the every-day-and-unaware-consumer, which is a good thing.

But how all of this came to be? Simple - price gouging. When I got my 1st cellphone in 2003, the minute cost of a call was ~R$1,80 to the same telco and R$2,70+ to others. SMS were around R$0,70 each and kept decreasing a little bit and being incorporated by whichever plan you choose (in the end, you still paid like R$20 for your SMS's for a "normal" plan). A unlimited plan goes above R$500 here, while the minimum wage is R$788, and you can't even rent a livable place for less than R$800 on most big cities. Then whatsapp, viber, telegram and etc all came along, making people stop using those expensive services and utilizing our broadband infrastructure to get our communications needs filled with the help of those apps, hence why all the hate.

The landscape is finally changing for the better on that regard - Tim and Oi waived fees and made any call to any telco a fixed and sane price (at Tim I pay R$0,75 for the 1st call I make and every call is "free" for the rest of the day), proving that it's still possible to profit from those services without gouging your customers. Claro and Vivo are still on the old business model, but profits are still going up, so do w/e is working out for you, I guess.

Bring me the head ...

Put a bounty on the CEO's head (Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia) of any such business. It may encourage a improvement in behaviour, and make great headlines along the way.

'If the judge in this case had given WhatsApp customers sufficient notice that the service would go down for two days, and if she had ordered the telcos to provide download links to other messaging applications in the lead-up to that downtime, well then we might have seen a very different outcome.'

Don't bet on it. Facebook mainly bought Whatsapp (and gratuitously overpaid for it) because it recognised that messaging has a network effect even stronger than its own product.

Brazilians don't just talk to brazilians, and no-one has the slightest interest in downloading a new app and then waiting to see which of their contacts follow them there.

Outside China (where Wechat dominate the world's largest internal market) Whatsapp is the only game in town and only a ham-handed attempt to monetise it can kill it off.

Any government with the remotest accountability to its population will see the same backlash if they try to stop it. Giving two days notice or promoting alternatives won't work because a) a notice that Whatsapp is going to go down for two days will just irritate people, not make them jump ship to a new app without their ecosystem in place and, most importantly, b) it's laughable to imagine that any government wants to protect the sensibilities of its population. Any alternative they recommend will be an inferior product from a vested interest they're looking to protect.

The funny thing is that the crude attempt to monetise which would be the greatest threat to Whatsapp's lock-in is precisely what Facebook probably need to do if they ever want any sensible return on their investment.

Whatsapp, Facebook and Google

They are the public subsidiaries of the NSA.

Collecting and storing all your personal search history, contact details, relationships, photos, location, messages...

We are not waiting for the Big Brother Surveillance society, people are actually asking for it by using these services.

Remember - if something is free, you are the product being sold

"The case involves drug trafficking and the prosecution said the person in question made extensive use of WhatsApp while committing his crimes."

They possibly also made extensive use of roads, cash, air, toilets, and food. So ban them as well.