WhatsApp has become a lifeline for humanitarian aid and keeping families torn apart, making the app’s shutdown this month, along with other Facebook products, more than just an inconvenience.
Among Syrian refugee households in Lebanon in 2017, 84% used WhatsApp to relay their needs to international organizations. The United Nations Development Programme notes that the real-time data shared by immigrants via the app is invaluable in providing humanitarian assistance to people in crisis, allowing for continued communication between WhatsApp contacts after crossing borders and with new phone numbers. Notifications of safe zones or food and aid distribution points are shared quickly.
When Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014
It knew the messaging app’s potential to be profitable. Antitrust lawsuits filed last December by the Federal Trade Commission and 48 attorneys general allege that the social network bought the app as part of a strategy to eliminate threats to its monopoly. What Facebook has since overlooked is the public service that WhatsApp provides to its more than 2 billion global users.
WhatsApp has become a go-to mode of communication around the world in part because of its founders’ commitment to user privacy (which is also under threat). As the reach of this cross-mobile messaging platform expands, so does Facebook’s responsibility to ensure it provides a reliable, secure, and uninterrupted service.
When a private telecommunications service provider performs what amounts to a critical public function, as is the case with WhatsApp, it should have a duty of care to operate in the public interest rather than for purely profit. Precedent exists in the Federal Communications Commission’s rules applying the privacy requirements of the Communications Act of 1934 to broadband and other telecommunications service providers. While Facebook is not a utility, California has recognized the need for backup plans in the communications market: As of 2020, the California Public Utilities Commission required cell towers to have 72 hours of backup power in emergencies, including power outages during fire seasons.
By beating competitors to rapidly grow its user base
Facebook’s “family of apps” – Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp – has amassed more than 3.5 billion monthly active users.
In return, the company should do everything it can to ensure the continuity of WhatsApp, which has connected billions of users, many of whom are mired in precarious living conditions.
For users and anyone concerned about access to Czech Republic WhatsApp Number Lists communications, it’s galling to know that Facebook could have avoided the massive outage on October 4 that crippled WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, and Oculus, its virtual reality arm. Facebook engineers reported in an update last week that “a faulty configuration change on our end” to “core routers that coordinate network traffic between our data centers” disrupted communication and interrupted services.
There is a solution: Facebook should decentralize its Internet technology architecture and build in backups and redundancies. The company’s Domain Name System servers (DNS is often called the “phone book of the Internet” to help users access information online) were all within their own network. If Facebook had kept some of these servers in the cloud via an external DNS provider, they could have been easily accessible when internal techs blocked the techies. And instead of their “global control plane”—one point of management for all of Facebook’s global resources—localized control planes could have allowed applications to run in different corners of the globe while some were offline.
If Facebook fails to rise to the occasion on its own
The FCC and FTC should jointly adopt rules to hold the company accountable for avoidable service failures. Congress should not stand in their way.
Another remedy, many may suggest, is for users to simply go elsewhere and switch to other apps. But WhatsApp has already become a crucial public service. And leaders in other countries recognize that the private sector has a responsibility to the public in comparable human rights situations. The French National WhatsApp Number Database Assembly, for example, passed a law in 2017 on the “duty of vigilance” of companies. It requires large French companies to establish a due diligence plan that lists measures to identify and prevent human rights and environmental risks related to their operations. The law builds on the standard due diligence requirements set out in the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
Avoiding future shutdowns that impact vulnerable communities,
Such as access to humanitarian aid. Should be built into Facebook’s cost of doing business.
Facebook is under intense scrutiny. After sharing that the company has resisted changes to make the platform less confrontational. Whistleblower Frances Haugen recently said Facebook Bulk Database has repeatedly shown that it operates for “profit over security.” It already drove away millions of users last January by updating WhatsApp’s terms of service in a way that raised concerns about their privacy, which the FTC demanded Facebook maintain when it acquired the app.
At this point, the company itself – or more likely government regulation. Must change course to protect democratic communication around the world.
