WhatsApp is back online in Brazil

https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10102814103934951

by natthub • 10 years ago

209 166 10 years ago

facebook.com

molecule• 10 years ago

"Brazilian appellate judge rescinds WhatsApp block"

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/05/brazilian-judge-b...

gtirloni2• 10 years ago

Now Facebook appointed Matt Steinfeld (Facebook's Head of Communications) to discuss the matter. The judge must be pleased.

smaili• 10 years ago

I'm fairly certain Brazil didn't just wake up one day and decide to reactivate WhatsApp's service...

So my first reaction to this news is what did Facebook/WhatsApp/Zuckerberg do, or possibly even give up, in order to change Brazil's mind.

x00542• 10 years ago

Nothing, their judicial system functioned as it should, only a day too slow. A district judge in the middle of the country has no right to do stuff like that, and the appellate judge fixed the overstep. Now, step 2, disbar the original district judge.

outworlder2• 10 years ago

Step 2 seldom happens. Judges have an extreme amount of power.

readams• 10 years ago

There is only one specific judge that has ordered the block both times it has occurred. Both times it has been overturned when appealed to other judges in Brazil. It's not "Brazil" that made this decision. It's one extremist judge.

schoen3• 10 years ago

The December 2015 block was ordered by a judge in São Paulo (edit: São Bernardo do Campo city, in São Paulo state), while the most recent block was ordered by a judge in Sergipe.

What you might be thinking of was the February arrest of a Facebook executive, which was ordered by the same judge in Sergipe as the current WhatsApp block.

luizlopes• 10 years ago

I've heard of groups of people in the Southeast talk about how the mentality of the people in the Northeast is different, and that is how you get the extremist judge.

notliketherest2• 10 years ago

This follows a nation wide uproar. Definitely not a popular decision in a country that relies on this service, however the decision was made. My wife is Brazilian and you should see her Facebook news feed...they're blaming the same government they want to throw out of office - not a great timing on their part.

icebraining2• 10 years ago

On whose part? This wasn't a decision by the government.

antisthenes• 10 years ago

Out of curiosity, what did Brazil use before WhatsApp existed?

It seems strange to me that 1 app can capture such an overwhelming majority, because it's just a client, of which there have always been dozens if not hundreds.

gtirloni2• 10 years ago

SMS. It was a big focus for a lot of telcos until recently.

WhatsApp usage seem to have gone hand in hand with increased availability of smartphones (Android, mostly).

I don't remember any other mobile messaging app that had widespread usage before that.

astronautjones• 10 years ago

exactly. remember, the US was not the reason FB shelled out to buy 'em

revelation• 10 years ago

Orkut

(SCNR)

guhcampos3• 10 years ago

I'm not even sure. I remember giving Kik a go in the early days of smartphones, but all of a sudden everyone was using WhatsApp. My own social circle used to prefer Kik since it had features like Location sharing way before WhatsApp did.

It could be that WhatsApp was the first to get translated to Brazilian Portuguese, and since I've always used the English version I never noticed. Even if English is taught as a second language in all schools, most Brazilians can't read or write English, so this is a big deal.

notliketherest2• 10 years ago

SMS. It is VERY expensive in Brazil

EuAndreh3• 10 years ago

IMHO, the biggest selling point of WhatsApp for brazilians is that it works as offline as it is possible. All received data is stored locally.

Even if you're offline and send a message, it stores it locally and send it when connection becomes available.

Since the majority of WhatsApp users in Brazil have access only to low quality internet connection, this becomes a major issue.

mirimir2• 10 years ago

So it's not at all about privacy?

That's interesting. But it makes sense, I suppose.

It's just the vocal minority that push privacy in WhatsApp. But it is good to see Facebook supporting private communication. Apple and Facebook, who would have thought?

neves6• 10 years ago

And free messages and phone calls. Here one dollar would give you less than 10 SMS messages.

techload2• 10 years ago

"Since the majority of WhatsApp users in Brazil have access only to low quality internet connection"... Not unlike the shitty situation in the US.

ma2rten• 10 years ago

It's not surprising to me that there is only one app used by the majority of people. That is called the network effect.

But why is it WhatsApp? It's very frictionless. WhatsApp is a drop-in replacement for SMS. You don't make an account. You just download the app, import your phonebook and start messaging people who are also on WhatsApp. It's SMS except it's free, not more not less. My parents (not from Brazil) are on WhatsApp. They don't use any other social network or messaging app (except Skype).

thirdsun• 10 years ago

Similar situation here in Germany. Everyone and their mother uses Whatsapp. Most tech people underestimate the importance of not having to create an account or manage friends/contacts. Your phone number and your existing contacts is all it takes to set you up on Whatsapp, which is a low enough barrier to welcome users that usually avoid scary things like creating an account.

microtonal2• 10 years ago

And they had extremely wide platform support in times when not everyone had a smartphone. So, like SMS and in contrast to many other apps you were not confined to just Blackberry, iOS, xor Android.

erik14th• 10 years ago

whatsapp thrived in part due to the fact that it works on a lot of devices and in a lot of cases supported devices no one else did before their competitors.

speeder• 10 years ago

I am from Brazil

I used MSN Messenger (until MS killed and managed to kill their IM dominance), and pulled shady stunts with my phone (for example calling, saying a word, and immediately cutting connection, calling again... doing this is free for some reason).

If it was REALLY needed, I would use SMS, it was easy to make mistakes there though (a couple times I ended spending 150 USD in a month in SMS, usually in extremely stressful months where communication was essential).

The need to replace SMS was obvious, and I even had a company where I worked ask me to start researching into how to do it (this was in early 2011, I think some similar stuff already existed in US?), but this project never went anywhere.

And a technical note: doing the phone shenanigans I used to, can get you literally banned from the phone line, I was banned about 3 times (you keep your phone line, and can receive calls, but can't make any except to emergency services), but the only reason I had the phone was to do that stuff anyway (this was when I was still in school, and was the only way to communicate with my then SO, since I couldn't afford spending with real calls or SMS, because of how absurdly expensive they were... mind you, they STILL are absurdly expensive).

br_smartass3• 10 years ago

Brasilians are social-network junkies... Whatsapp was 'the messaging app' around the time where just about everybody got a smartphone so it just caught on, and there are groups for everything(and there's a lot of porn) and a lot of stuff goes viral through it(I've received Lula's lawyer wiretapped call through groups, for example) and then businesses started using it too, putting their "zaps" on billboards and etc. Before Whatsapp it was Facebook, Orkut, MSN..

bikamonki2• 10 years ago

How do businesses manage to communicate with clients through their zaps when there isn't an official API nor a CRM oriented Whatsapp client. Also, aren't they breaking the SLA? Just curious...

ricpass• 10 years ago

SMS was expensive in Brazil before Whatsapp. Furthermore, it took more than half an hour to a SMS arrive in most of the time, sometime more than a day. A lot of people don't pay cellular data plan and use whatsapp on wifi.

Whatsapp arrived as a free service on android. The app was really fast even in slow smartphone. And uses your cellphone number as id, so it was really easy to know whom was using. I made a lot of people to use whatapp, because it show if you had send the message and if the other person has read. A problem I had with SMS.

And others messengers? (IMHO) * iMessage is restrict on iPhone and Android dominate market share in Brazil. * Facebook Message was only put in a different app latter in the game. And Facebook App is a bloatware, so it is practically unused on slow smartphones. * Skype app was slow and it didn't use your cellphone number, so I had to ask personally. * Gtalk didn't synchronized messages correctly and I never saw someone outside tech people using it. (Hangout fix the first problem).

A few others tried: Kik, WeChat, zapzap (Brazilian messenger). But none has the mass use. Now days, even my gramma is using Whatapp, so it will be difficult to change.

Telegram is increasing the number of people. I had a lot of friends sign up during this blockage.

neves6• 10 years ago

WhatsApp (or ZapZap as it is informally called here) used to work even in old Nokia phones (non android).

The Telcos cartel created a lot of "innovations" in Brazil. It is so expensive to call between different telcos, that people have multiple phones with multiple chips each.

rev087• 10 years ago

I'm Brazilian, my phone got bombarded with "<user> just joined Telegram" notifications today.

voltagex_• 10 years ago

Hopefully it's the user that you expect: https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/72646884513381171...

educar3• 10 years ago

I hope the govt sees the reliance on this service and does something positive about it (for example, build their own or tie up with some company). Such massive dependence on a company with no contracts is going to end up in a mess later.

visarga3• 10 years ago

On the other hand, using a government issued instant messenger seems even more dangerous. I think Brazilians have more to fear from their own government than foreign governments.

educar3• 10 years ago

Well, fear of government and police seems to be some hip thing amongst some HN commenters. This doesn't make sense and shakes the whole foundation of democracy.

Do we really have democratic nations that would rather rely on some corporation than the government? Is brazil such a nation. That is semi-alarming to me.

ptaipale4• 10 years ago

I do not understand this approach. A market solution works and is popular, so the government should step in and try to develop something better with "contracts"?

educar3• 10 years ago

It's just a form of standardization by the government in terms of the technical protocol. Just like EU has some with OOXML and ODF. This ensures that other players can come in and build alternative clients. Without regulations, it's going to be a nation relying on a company. I don't think that is good.

guhcampos3• 10 years ago

This is hardly the first or the last time this kind of things happens in Brazil.

Long story short, this is exactly the same standoff that happened recently in the US between the FBI and Apple: the authorities want information from a suspect phone, and assume they can get it from a company, in this case WhatsApp. A warrant is issued, and the company refuses to comply.

The big difference is: WhatsApp has been a major headache for telecom companies in Brazil, especially since the arrival of voice calls. With Wifi everywhere, people have been avoiding expensive traditional calls and just using WhatsApp to call for free.

For that reason, the telcos in Brazil are more than happy to comply with court when it comes to WhatsApp blocks, so they do it right away, no questions asked.

deleted_soon3• 10 years ago

The thing is, WhatsApp is not just refusing to comply - they can't comply, since they don't retain message data. In addition, now that all messages are encrypted end to end, it will be impossible for them to comply in the future.

motoboi2• 10 years ago

Well, if they just had responded to the judge order explain that or explaining anything, maybe the judge would consider it.

We came to this point because whatsapp do not exist as a company in Brazil and simply ignored the court order.

Know they probably considered such orders may happen again and decided to respond to the order.

melvinmt• 10 years ago

Sounds similar to the position that Skype was in a decade ago. Telcos in Europe hated Skype and tried everything to block it or making it slow (deep packet inspection) but when the iPhone came out they couldn't stop the mobile web revolution.

lucastx4• 10 years ago

We dodged this bullet but here in Brazil but RIGHT NOW there is a much more dangerous risk: with the Parliamentary Commission on Cybercrimes (CPI dos Crimes Cibernéticos / CPICIBER) report a "combo" of bills will get "fast track" on Congress and, to list some things, expand data retention, allow access to IP addresses without warrant and allow judges to block "illegal" content, including copyright violations much like DMCA does (they use the "notice-and-staydown" terminology).

More details here:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/battery-dangerous-cybe...

https://www.accessnow.org/access-now-delivers-petition-brazi...

https://theintercept.com/2016/04/26/brazilian-cybercrime-bil...

The final voting will happen TOMORROW, 9 a.m. Brasilia time (GMT-3), 5am in California I guess. If you can help raise awareness and use EFF's Action Center to message the parliamentaries through Twitter and Facebook around that time, it would help a lot.

https://act.eff.org/action/fight-back-against-brazil-s-draco...

In portuguese, this is the best starting point on the debate (disclaimer: I work on antivigilancia.org):

https://antivigilancia.org/pt/cpiciber/

marcosdumay2• 10 years ago

Your page isn't clear, what exactly happens tomorrow? Is it the final voting on the CPI? Or is there some law project under vote right now?

lucastx4• 10 years ago

I'll work on a quick article today to explain this and adapt the page to reflect that. Thanks for the tips. Answering you quickly (I'm preparing dinner :-)):

- Tomorrow, the CPI decides their final report (after three drafts and a couple separate patches) on all the inquiries the commission made the last months. This report includes "recommendations" to some existing draft bills and proposes a number of other bills.

- Parliamentaries presented "destaques" that will be voted separately and may supress the "IP blocking for illegal content" and "notification-based removal of illegal content" bills.

- The final report as of now is the first link with a small patch on the Projeto de Lei 1.6 made by the second link.

http://www.camara.gov.br/proposicoesWeb/prop_mostrarintegra?...

http://www2.camara.leg.br/atividade-legislativa/comissoes/co...

EDIT TO APPEND:

TL;DR: The two bills that we may realistically remove through the help of friendly parliamentaries tomorrow are the ones about illegal website blocking (ISP blacklisting) and content removal through notification; both open the door for criminalizing remixes and using copyright infringement for censorship.

lucastx4• 10 years ago

Here's my article summarizing the status and what can happen today (no time to translate unfortunately):

https://antivigilancia.org/pt/2016/05/cpiciber-o-que-pode-sa...

lucastx4• 10 years ago

It's happening live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LNhAWbdrZA

source99• 10 years ago

And now Facebook is down for me entirely.

smegel2• 10 years ago

What does the USA do about WhatsApp? Do they really tolerate end to end encryption they cant subpoena the company for...or does the NSA have a big fat pipe into the WhatsApp data-center?

Aelinsaar2• 10 years ago

I think that one way or another, WhatsApp isn't foiling the NSA if the NSA doesn't feel like being foiled. Then again, they may realize what most of us do, which is that WhatsApp is not exactly a terrorist hotbed.

walrus012• 10 years ago

NSA will simply pwn the endpoint devices of whoever they're really interested in.

lazaroclapp• 10 years ago

It is not foiling targeted attacks, of course. But it might be making a dent on cheap/effortless mass surveillance, which is the main point.

caf2• 10 years ago

If the end-to-end encryption is working as designed then "a big fat pipe into the WhatsApp data-center" would be of no help.

For high enough value targets the NSA is probably happy to compromise the endpoints.

smegel2• 10 years ago

True, I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote that.

I guess the recent case with the FBI and the iPhone shows what will happen if they want messages badly enough.

saganus• 10 years ago

Can't it be e2e encryption with WhatsApp keeping a copy of the private keys? or does e2e enc implicitly means the private keys are never exchanged?

walrus012• 10 years ago

gggggggooooooaaaaaaallllllllllllllllllllllll

chatmasta• 10 years ago

the idea that everyone in Brazil can be denied the freedom to communicate the way they want is very scary in a democracy

If companies like Facebook were not funneling everybody onto centralized platforms, it would be harder for an ISP to deny that freedom.

The centralization of communication platforms is a bigger problem than any ISP censorship. That they have a target to shutdown at all is the real issue.

davesque• 10 years ago

Agreed. Zuckerberg's little victory speech in this post reminds me of the kind of talk he used in defending his free basics plan. I get a little tired of people with heavy business interests weighing in on "democracy" and "freedom."

lucb1e3• 10 years ago

the idea that everyone in Brazil can be denied the freedom to communicate the way they want is very scary in a democracy

Says the person (in name of the company, I assume) whose company blocks things they don't "like", such as messages containing telegram.org or telegram.me[1].

Now Facebook is not a democracy and they can block and censor pretty much any message they like, but now they go on to tell Brazil how it should run its judicial system. That's like giving people free beer and then asking them to take up pitchforks and come along to put some pressure on a third party you don't like very much.

[1] https://i.snag.gy/9KBPGR.jpg

nxzero2• 10 years ago

Maybe this is obvious, or that I'm wrong, but the issue in Brazil is that most Brazilians are left-wing conservatives AND within in recent past put the current government in power. Long term this is the issue, not these "cyber attacks" - which are to me very problematic, but only a symptom of the issue.

lucb1e3• 10 years ago

I'm not sure which "cyber attacks" you are talking about. It's about a judge ordering Whatsapp to be taken offline for 72 hours for not complying with a court order, or am I missing something?

dublinben2• 10 years ago

What does "left-wing conservatives" mean?

guiporto• 10 years ago

Facebook is not a democracy and they can block and censor pretty much any message they like, but now they go on to tell Brazil how it should run its judicial system

Yeah, Facebook is a company - not a country. You can't compare apples to oranges.

Facebook can do whatever it want and people are free to chose to use it service or not. Brazilians had no choice on this case.

clvx• 10 years ago

Brazilians can use other apps if they want them too. I don't see your point of freedom to communicate being blocked. You're complaining as tcp/ip would've been blocked and it's not. The point here is Whatsapp is not cooperating with authorities, and surely that's not remotely plausible in a state government. I'm not saying they have to weak encryption or putting backdoors, but a reasonable way to help any government with investigations which hurt society in general.

lucb1e3• 10 years ago

I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

Facebook is a company - not a country. You can't compare apples to oranges.

That is what I meant, Facebook is not a country and thus they can censor anything. Now, however, they are meddling with a country's government. I am not a big fan of an almighty government in general, but here I am going to take their side and argue Facebook has it too easy with the free beer and rallying people in their favor.

danmaz74• 10 years ago

Facebook can do whatever it want

As long as what they want to do is legal.

rmc4• 10 years ago

Facebook can do whatever it want and people are free to chose to use it service or not. Brazilians had no choice on this case.

Fair enough. In which case Zuck should stop all the talk about "[denying] the freedom to communicate the way they want is very scary in a democracy", and just talk about share holder value and market share.

CaptainZapp2• 10 years ago

Sure they can.

If they don't mind to yell: WE ARE TOTAL AND UTTER HYPOCRITES! to the entire world.

make3• 10 years ago

That's fucking dodgy/unacceptable. I know they did this for another site that gave money to people for spamming their connections with links to their website, which I guess is borderline acceptable. In the case of telegram though, there is no redeeming circumstance of any kind, they're just censoring for a business advantage [without it being directly visible to the user, which is even worse], and that's just really unacceptable for me

SEMW• 10 years ago

censoring

Classifying a recipient receiving a message containing exactly what the sender sent as 'censorship' just because they don't auto-link it is taking the word to new heights of rhetorical meaninglessness. Dodgy and scummy, sure. Mildly inconvenient for the recipient, definitely. Censorship, no.

hoorayimhelping• 10 years ago

There is a huge difference between "the government of Brazil denying everyone the freedom to communicate the way they want" and "facebook not auto-linking to a competitor's site in a chat program." You're comparing a government making communication through a specific (and popular) channel illegal, and a company not providing a link to a website as they send your message to your recipient.

I know Hacker News enjoys getting riled up at Facebook, but come on. You're not comparing apples to apples, you're not even comparing food to food, it's like saying this rock isn't like this sandwich.

neves6• 10 years ago

I think it is a fair comparison. Facebook isn't for free expression, they are for their business. The Brazilian Gov can be questioned in the Justice System, but doing so against "Freedom". Facebook dubious position about the right to be informed and the desire to control the information we access is a greater menace to freedom of expression than any ignorant Brazilian lower judge.

awqrre• 10 years ago

Facebook does much more then that... they also hide information by using their "smart" sorting algo of stories/posts, for example.

reitanqild• 10 years ago

Different different but same.

Countries generally can ban certain forms of communication. To contrieve a couple of examples you can have freedom of speak and still not be allowed to shout outdoors at night in the middle of residential neighborhoods. Or send smoke signals there.

And Facebook don't have to prioritise ads from competitors (I think).

That said, banning certain, non-harmful links in user-to-user communication or a whole class of non-disturbing communication comes off as extremely bad form to be.

So, IMO pointing out Facebooks hypocrisy is well justified and doesn't mean we agree with Brazil.

zyx3212• 10 years ago

For an apple to apple comparison, how about last year when Facebook promised to help Germany censor any criticism of their immigration policy under the guise of 'stopping Hate Speech'?

Facebook aren't taking a stance against censorship here. They are taking the same stance they always did: Pro-Facebook.

rmc4• 10 years ago

Facebook/WhatsApp is trying to have it both ways. Either it's a for profit private company (and it can do things like that), or it's an important communication medium for a democracy (and access should be open).

When it comes to blocking telegram, Facebook/WhatsApp wants to be the provate for profit company. When some judge blocks WhatsApp, suddenly they're an important service for a democracy.

yAnonymous• 10 years ago

Facebook is openly supporting government censorship, too. The only reason WhatsApp didn't comply is that they couldn't, because they really don't have the data, as others pointed out. Facebook/WhatApp aren't the good guys here.

x00542• 10 years ago

Am I missing something? Just tried it on my phone and it works fine in on my end, is this something that just doesn't get converted to a link on the other side? Not converting something to a link is a far cry from outright censorship, still pretty shady in a mostly meaningless way, though.

dingo_bat• 10 years ago

It doesn't convert to link and it doesn't allow you to copy the message.

twoarray• 10 years ago

Mark Zuckerberg "urged" Brazilians to tell Congress to "ban bans of online services" in the name of democracy.

Am I an irrational nationalist for believing he shouldn't get into the politics of any country (especially outside of the US)?

Last time someone tried to help us (Brazilians), we got a military dictatorship.

chrischen• 10 years ago

Oh but this isn't even the first time.

See this: http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/5/9099897/facebook-india-inte...

Facebook put up a banner for Indian users to try to influence the passing of a law to allow Facebook to break net neutrality in India.

Acts like these aren't limited to communications companies though. American multinationals have a tendency to exploit poor underdeveloped countries, like Papua New Guinea, and countless African countries.

It's part of the reason why China takes a highly protectionist stance especially with regards to foreign internet companies.

gotchange• 10 years ago

I think that this is your congress not the US Congress but I get your point and I'd be offended and irritated if someone special interests driven like Zuckerberg stuck his nose in our politics and internal affairs like this.

Also, I wouldn't rule out that Zuckerberg could resort to astro-turfing tactics and fund those "internet freedom" groups in Brazil to do his bidding. Unfortunately, Zuckerberg turned his tech empire into a big political machine and started to influence or subvert (However you choose to view his actions) politics in foreign countries and should be treated as such not just some harmless business.

marcosdumay2• 10 years ago

Well, last time it was US's CIA. Facebook isn't comparable neither on resources, nor on competence.

They'd better not relate themselves with our Congress, but it's for their own good, not our :)

mirimir2• 10 years ago

But wait, if WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted, that failure to URL convert must be a local operation. And if it's a local operation, maybe there's a workaround. But maybe apps are locked down too tightly. In any case, going from telegram.org as text to https://telegram.org/ is not exactly rocket science, no?

the_ancient• 10 years ago

Last i checked Facebook does not have the authority to arrest, kill, put people in cages.. these are all things a governments do to citizen their violate their laws.

So no facebook censoring telegram is aboslutely nothing like a government doing anything.

It is extremely ignorant to ever compare a companies action to a government actions. A person can stop using (or never start like me) facebook, a person can not quit their government, or refuse their government ...

dmd• 10 years ago

Linking to telegram works just fine.

http://imgur.com/FOnR6ls

hacksonx• 10 years ago

Just tried it with a couple of guys at the office, seems it is only blocked on Android. It works on WhatsApp web, Windows phone and on the iPhone.

jim-greer• 10 years ago

I can't reproduce the censorship of telegram.org.

http://imgur.com/qUjmS2n

hudell• 10 years ago

"Brazilians have been leaders in connecting the world and creating an open internet for many years. I hope you make your voice heard now and demand change"

I think he didn't word this right.

camillomiller2• 10 years ago

Once again the bigger problem we really have to face is the corporatization of the defense of civil rights

tomash• 10 years ago

Facebook once banned me for 24h just for sending my friend a link (via messenger) to animgif containing female boobs. (together with ban FB expired all API access tokens of my apps) Zuckerberg positioning himself as champion of democracy and unrestricted communication is ridiculous.

JackC• 10 years ago

Public service announcement: if you install Orbot, you can route traffic for any Android app through Tor.

https://www.torproject.org/docs/android.html.en

WhatsApp is back online in Brazil

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