Ask HN: What Is Afflicting WhatsApp

For almost a year now, WhatsApp has been slow to deliver messages, sometimes delivering after 15-30 minutes. Video calls have such poor quality that they are unusable now. I could think of a few reasons:

- "Optimizations" to Android from Google or Samsung throttling the quality - Overloading of Meta infra due to the recent maddening surge of business accounts - "Optimizations" from Meta for example reducing infra usage or using untested compression, e.g. ML-based schemes - Deliberate quality reduction from Meta in an effort to lead users to (future) paid plans

Speaking to friends and family the issue happens on iOS too so not a platform issue. It could be overloading but I'd be surprised Meta has not detected it themselves and I could find at least one StackOverlfow thread with someone suggesting a bug in Meta cloud API being used by business too so its not just the free consumers. It has been going long enough to backfire if a paid plan was the real alternative. WhatsApp has great penetration, especially in India and it would be foolish of them to push users away towards alternatives like Telegram.