Why Was WhatsApp Down
Why was WhatsApp down on 4 October? That’s a question that a lot of people are asking at the minute after a new version of the messaging service was introduced with a new user base. It seemed as if this new service had been created to deal with the problems that Facebook and its competitors were having in terms of growing their user base and appealing to a more global audience. With more people flocking to these sites, competition is becoming more fierce and it makes sense for Facebook to keep up with the trend and introduce some exciting new features so that they can stay ahead
The problem with these services is that they are run by Facebook, and they work to address the needs of the company and not necessarily the needs of the individual user. For instance, one of the complaints that many have about Facebook is that it censors content that it doesn’t want to appear in its feeds. While it might be true that a lot of stuff is filtered out, Facebook also employs various techniques such as “guessing” and “moderation” to ensure that it is able to present a more diverse range of content to its users, regardless of whether or not it meets the standards laid down by the company.
The same is true of its mobile service. Whenever there’s an important announcement or any major social media-related event, you’ll be able to see it on your phone through the news feed. On the day of 4 October, this changed, when the service decided that it was going to block all social media posts on the four main social platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and LinkedIn. This led to why was WhatsApp down on 4 October, because the post-holiday weekend was when people were using Facebook on their phones the most.
At the time of writing this article, there’s still no official reason as to why Facebook decided to block users from accessing certain services, but the speculation is that it might have something to do with the way in which the company is dealing with the recent complaints surrounding its new feature that lets people block the posts of specific individuals or groups from receiving their news feeds on their phone. Many people have accused Facebook of taking advantage of the post-holiday weekend in order to promote its newest feature. For example, if a large number of Ireland’s Facebook users blocked everyone from viewing the Ireland soccer team’s Facebook page, there would probably be a lot of people complaining about the decision. In addition to this, many people have accused the company of censoring material that they think doesn’t conform to their own moral standards.
Whatever the case is, it’s interesting to note how a company like Facebook can exert such control over what people view or communicate. One could argue that this kind of power gives businesses like Facebook an incredible amount of control over the people who use their social media services. It makes perfect sense for a company like Facebook to find ways in which it can control how information is communicated and spread, and it also makes perfect sense for them to be able to police the content that their users post online. The problem is that the majority of the world’s population uses Facebook, and therefore the site is often used by everyone in a given day. Therefore, when Facebook decided to implement a system that would allow some people to have unfettered access to the information posted by the millions of people who use the site on a daily basis, the company inadvertently set off a chain reaction of reactions that would give rise to much Internet criticism, not to mention legal issues.
Back in July, just before the start of the current school summer holidays, an article was published on the website Business Insider titled, “Why was WhatsApp down on 4 October?” In that article, writer Travis Sago asked why it was that some students wanted to take advantage of a new feature on the messaging service that allowed them to create private groups within the platform. He also explained that some teenagers were using the new feature to try and manipulate or control who their friends were talking to on the platform. In the same article, Sago went on to describe the way in which this new feature could be abused by those wishing to gain access to the personal information of members of the public. As a result of this concern, the company has since introduced an additional safety feature to remedy the situation.
When the feature was first launched, many users expected that it would be used only by a small percentage of Facebook’s current active users. As a result, a large proportion of the active users saw little reason to use the feature, as it did not make much sense for them. However, recent reports suggest that this figure has actually risen above 70%. One reason as to why was WhatsApp down on 4 October may be related to a change made by the company in how it handled data on its users. Before this change, Facebook counted how many friends someone had added since they joined the social network, and how many new people there were being added to the network on a daily basis. After the change was introduced, the company no longer included this data when calculating how many people were actively using the service each day.
This means that if someone had hundreds of emails on their phone on 4 October, but only a few dozen during the post-holiday weekend, they would only see an increase in activity on their account. If they later checked their email account however and saw that there were considerably more emails than before, they would see their account becoming less active. The change in functionality means that this person now has a greater chance of being impacted by their activity on the site. Why was WhatsApp down on 4 October? Because of the way in which the company prioritized the information it released about how many daily active users there were on the network, and how many new people were joining every day.
