WhatsApp goes down for users globally

[chagaif]

Time to talk about matrix.org and Element not Signal and definitely not Telegram...

[asim]

I'm sorry but matrix is a convoluted mess. Speaking from experience, when there's a deep focus on protocols and technical architecture before usability it becomes incredibly hard for the consumer side to get started. It's still very much a DIY thing and the promise of Element hosted offerings kind of just defies the point of the federated design for what most came into it for, self hosting.

Honestly, we just need a drop dead simple chat client/server that can be self hosted and may be eventually extended via wireguard/tailscale networks and MagicDNS.

[sofixa]

Why not Telegram, it has by far the best UX of all chat apps.

[cookiengineer]

I'd disagree. In terms of privacy and anonymity, Matrix is an unguaranteeable nightmare. Just all the IRC bridges alone are a worst case scenario on what can happen with your data.

I'd rather recommend Briar [1] which is really end to end encrypted, and works even offline via bluetooth or Wi-Fi LAN.

[1] https://briarproject.org/

[tjixxu]

The Matrix team seems to be focusing on anything but making it as performant and usable as Telegram or Slack. The project leaders have been told this multiple times but there is always a reason.

[sneak]

Matrix/Element iOS builds send all notifications (by Apple's design) through centralized developer-run servers that wake up your client app to talk to your homeserver.

There's no way for you to avoid SPOFs for notifications on Apple devices, because APNS is designed so that the only way you can wake up an app to talk to an API is via notifications sent from the developer of that app.

This means that if the APNS servers go down (unlikely), or that the vector.im notification relay servers go down, nobody using Element on iOS gets any notifications.

It also means that vector.im sees all of the notification events (who got notified when), though I don't believe they see the notification content. The notifications (I speculate) are simply app wakeup events that make the app then contact the homeserver to see what it has new.

[Vinnl]

I mean, that's great and all, but it would still be pretty annoying if large parts of your network go down, and especially if matrix.org would go down.

[protomyth]

I'm actually convinced that all the open source messaging apps are harder to install than postfix or opensmtpd thus a true pain in the butt. I get that most are trying to sell services but having an easy to install and setup program would make a real difference.

[zeitlupe]

Why not Signal?

[prmoustache]

I would have mentionned xmpp, deltachat, tox and briar before matrix.

[stiltzkin]

I do use Telegram as I do with Twitter, Reddit, HN and Discord. If you want privacy messages use Matrix or Session.

[smingo]

Do we have an opinion on Threema ?

[zaik]

Why not the IETF standard XMPP?

[barbariangrunge]

What about mattermost? And, out of curiosity, how bad is discord for privacy?

[dt3ft]

Why not Telegram or Signal?

[fyvhbhn]

Thought the same

[detaro]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33327320

[jansan]

That one should be on the front page.

[taspeotis]

I don’t think there’s a status page for WhatsApp, but Meta has this for the business side of things: https://metastatus.com/whatsapp-business-api

[jakopo87]

It does exist a twitter[0] account not updated since 2014 that has, ironically, in its bio: "We are working very hard to make this twitter account irrelevant."

[0] https://nitter.net/wa_status

[perryizgr8]

Lol why does that page return 404 with actual content?

[dustedcodes]

Even though I do have WhatsApp I wouldn't have noticed without this HN headline.

Everyone I message with is via iMessage or Signal nowadays and I only have WhatsApp because I am part of a few sports clubs which have a WhatsApp group but we don't chat enough for me to notice a downtime like today.

Makes me happy to see how I've actually managed to rid myself of WhatsApp for the most part.

[seydor]

Thankfully there is still email, which never went down globally

[sMarsIntruder]

That's why centralization is bad, especially for now-become critical services such as WA.

[sgt]

The world can go a few hours without WhatsApp. If it's that important, just pick up the phone.

[KoftaBob]

Seems like a good time to plug Session: https://getsession.org/

Open source, doesn't require a phone number, and a big strength is that it's decentralized, which makes it much less vulnerable to outages like this.

"Session utilises the decentralised Oxen Service Node Network to store and route messages. This means that unlike P2P messaging applications you can message Session users when they are offline. This network consists of community operated nodes which are stationed all over the world. Service nodes are organised into collections of small co-operative groups called swarms.

Swarms offer additional redundancy and message delivery guarantees even if some service nodes become unreachable. By using this network, Session doesn’t have a central point of failure, and Session’s creators have no capacity to collect or store personal information about people using the app"

[mnsc]

I have investigated session previously and gotten the feeling that it's backed by some kind of crypto pyramid scheme. I can't shake that feeling and the front page talk of joining "the movement" isn't helping.

[sneak]

Nothing on iOS is decentralized, all push notifications must be proxied via Apple's APNS servers from the app developer. There's no support in iOS for p2p messaging apps, even Matrix/Element proxy the notifications via centralized developer-run servers (which are then routed via centralized (but non-SPOF) Apple APNS servers).

[yaddaor]

Sounded really interesting until I found that it is just another zero-sum exploitation scheme...

> Oxen blockchain and the $OXEN privacy token

[miroljub]

I supposed it's a Matrix client, but couldn't find anything by glancing the home page.

Btw, the whole idea of "no phone numbers" makes it really hard to spread. It basically means you can't send a message to anyone in your address book that already has Session installed, unless you get his Session username by other means.

[smithcoin]

Coincidental timing for me- anecdotally I noticed a few WhatsApp commercials during the Monday Night Football game last evening. Meta was hyping up how its end to end encrypted. That’s the first time I have seen national tv adverting for WhatsApp. There also were commercials for Meta’s new headsets so maybe it was part of a larger spend.

[jve]

Wife just received account registration sms that new device has been registered. Anyone else experiencing that? Error? Worse?

[Nextgrid]

I wonder if it's a scam and scammers are just taking advantage of the general panic surrounding the outage?

[irjustin]

i haven't seen this yet but will definitely be keeping an eye out.

[skc]

Yep, actually enjoying the lack of notifications right now.

Though for my closest friends and family we still have Signal as backup.

[sgt]

Take my advice - switch off notifications. You'll still see the badge on the app itself e.g. with a red dot, at least that's how it is on iOS. So when you see that you'll know to open it. Before that, there's no reason to be bothered while you're doing something else.

[Aachen]

> actually enjoying the lack of notifications

Sounds like a nice way to test new notification settings before putting them into production. Now go and apply them ;)

[dncornholio]

Mute your groups!

[Synaesthesia]

It's back for me personally in South Africa.

[dividebyhero]

Works for me with VPN but not without

[vardump]

Works again now, at about 08:46 UTC.

[jiggywiggy]

Still not Fully

[quados]

Seems to work on desktop, doesn’t sync with mobile though

[saivamsisuru99]

right may be the server down or maintenance..all over the globe issue is raising

[sgt]

Maybe they needed to restart BEAM.