
Browserling goes viral with cheap phone users trying to use WhatsApp - amasad
http://www.catonmat.net/blog/incredible-events-at-browserling/
======
virgilp
I feel like what he did at the end was the right thing to do (talk to Indian
people, figure out a way to monetize it), but the initial antics are childish
and distasteful. Those are real people man, not toys... don't play with them.

~~~
theon144
>Then I got curious. Would these users tweet anything that I asked them? [...]
And it worked!

>That was super hilarious. I was literally rolling on the floor laughing.
TAIWAN NUMBER ONE! COMPETITORS NUMBER NINE!

Hahaha, people in dire financial situations who have to use my service are
doing what I tell them to! Ain't that just hilarious?

Distasteful, really.

------
martinald
I don't quite understand how this works. WhatsApp web just lets you access
your messages on a different device, it doesn't let you register an individual
account or anything. Surely that means this people already have a phone that
has WhatsApp? Why not just use that instead of this complex workaround to get
it on the other phone?

~~~
tgtweak
WhatsApp native and WhatsApp web doesn't work on those phones.

~~~
StavrosK
WhatsApp has a J2ME version, no? Do those phones not run Java apps?

~~~
ricardobeat
FirefoxOS

------
captainmuon
Funny that those cheap phones dont run WhatsApp natively. Remember when
WhatsApp was new, one narrative was that it was so successful because it had a
client for absolutely every system, including Symbian and Java Mobile.

~~~
fyfy18
Apparently they run a fork of FirefoxOS under the hood:

[https://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/reliance-jio-
feature-p...](https://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/reliance-jio-feature-
phone-kaios-apps-games-battery-1727285)

~~~
naugtur
There used to be a barely-working whatsapp client on FFOS while it was still
alive. OpenWapp was the name. And you could register/authenticate via SMS.
Stopped working at some point though because whatsapp api changes.

------
em3rgent0rdr
The author's attitude towards his users reminds me of the young Zuckerberg who
called his users "Dumb f __ks " for giving him their emails, pictures,
addresses, SNS because they "trust me".

He might also be successful if he plays his cards right.

~~~
christophilus
He wasn't calling his users dumb. He was calling the attackers dumb (for not
randomizing their useragent), and then he realized it wasn't an attack.

And while the way he herded the users to spam others was distasteful, I think
his pivot in the end was a positive thing.

------
thaumaturgy
I'm completely happy to see this happen to ~pkrumins. He's always seemed like
a genuinely nice, brilliant fellow, who's stuck with his project in spite of
the usual startup advice. (He submitted a YC application years ago that iirc
didn't go very far.)

Hope this turns into some real success for him.

~~~
abricot
> He's always seemed like a genuinely nice, brilliant fellow

Really?

From TFA:

> "Then I got curious. Would these users tweet anything that I asked them? So
> I decided to troll my competitors a little bit, and asked users to tweet a
> popular meme Taiwan number one to them. And it worked! Suddenly Twitter was
> full with my troll tweets"

He's also a bit of a prick.

~~~
kindfellow92
How is he a prick? What harm has he caused to anyone?

~~~
StavrosK
You mean besides lying to them and making them do things for some reward and
then not giving the reward and laughing about it?

~~~
fastball
Pretty sure he gave them the reward? Can you not use browserling from India
now?

~~~
StavrosK
He says he didn't at the time, in the post.

~~~
christophilus
I read it differently. It sounded to me like he was trying to keep momentum up
while he figured out a way to serve people. Maybe I misread it?

------
adrianmonk
The maintainer of this software is a bit nutty, but actually this is pretty
timely and captures two important truths that a lot of people might not
appreciate:

1\. International payments are hard because every country has its own system,
and the people there have their own payment methods. In the US, you take it
for granted that anyone with money to spend has a credit card that can make
payments in US Dollars. It isn't valid to assume that for users outside the
US. People may not have credit cards at all, or if they do they can't
necessarily (economically) pay in US Dollars as the currency.

2\. There are a LOT of potential users in international markets. Focusing on
the First World (US, Europe, Japan, etc.) might be a great way to keep your
project simple or speed up your launch, but you're leaving literally billions
of potential users on the table if you don't even try to consider India,
China, etc.

~~~
dominotw
Back in the day as poor kid in India, my hardest stumbling block trying to
apply to international universities was finding a credit card to pay for
TOEFL. I had to move heaven and earth to find someone who had a credit card.

------
temp-dude-87844
It's ironic that scores of users on phones, which are already capable of
communicating, are milking a free service on the other side of the world to
connect to a proprietary messaging service that subsumes the same population,
to communicate there instead.

~~~
em3rgent0rdr
How is that ironic?

(Seems the battle over the correct usage of "ironic" has been lost long ago.)

------
santialbo
I'm amazed hn users are bashing Peter for wanting to monetize the trafic. This
is not a cheap service to run. He has to raise entire virtual machines and
he's getting ddosed by thousands if not millions of people.

The fact they are indian is totally irelevant here.

Maybe making them tweet stupid stuff was a mistake but hey, we all do
mistakes, that doesn't make us assholes. You don't know the relationship he
has with his competitors, maybe they are in good terms. Why are people judging
him this easily?

~~~
StavrosK
We're not (I'm not) bashing him for wanting to monetize. We're bashing him for
lying to his users and laughing about it. "Haha, I made those stupid idiots
tweet about Browserling and then blocked them anyway! Isn't that funny!
Interesting that they'll tweet what I tell them. Dance for me, puppets,
dance!"

~~~
GoToRO
It seems to me he blocked them because he had no solution to offer. He tried
to get rid of the traffic any way he could because he had no solution to
offer.

~~~
StavrosK
Then he shouldn't have told them they could Tweet to get service and then said
"hahaaaaa, suckers, there's no service for you anyway!".

~~~
GoToRO
I see that as a way to learn how humans work (social engineering. :)

------
fs111
I don't understand how you can use web.whatsapp.com w/o having a phone
connected as well. The web version pipes everything over to the phone, at
least for me. You cannot use it, if your phone is not connected. What am I
missing?

~~~
applecrazy
A lot of users in the Indian market own two cellphones. One is a smartphone
with (usually) a prepaid data plan, and a “dumber” feature phone with a
cheaper data plan. This allows people to effectively use WhatsApp from both
phones, making it convenient to leave one at home and still be able to access
your messages.

~~~
fs111
I see. Sounds weird that having 2 phones is cheaper than just one. Esp. since
the smart phone is powerful enough to run WhatsApp. Why would one want a
second phone and pay for a second data plan? I don't understand how that works
out.

~~~
vijaybritto
It's weird but some carriers offer basic phones with free data everyday. They
don't give that in smartphones.

------
arve0
Here is an update on Africa/Cameroon:
[http://www.catonmat.net/blog/browserling-
cameroon/](http://www.catonmat.net/blog/browserling-cameroon/)

------
rabboRubble
What a fun story! So happy for the dev. I hope he can pull together the influx
of people / usage into a good paying platform. That would be the best ending
:-)

------
sireat
I am amazed at the backlash on Peter for a rather considerate response to a
crippling attack.

He could have skipped the Twitter jokes but otherwise he did more than most
businesses would do by providing a solution to these unexpected customers.

These users were (ab)using the free tier of Browserling beyond its intended
use.

PS I highly recommend reading back issues of catonmat to see how much value to
web and programming community Peter has provided over the years.

------
buro9
I would love if WhatsApp made a commodity phone.

An Android, that wasn't even Google Android, and may even look like candy bar.

All it would do would be:

1\. Phone

2\. Contacts

3\. WhatsApp

4\. Brave Browser (or Firefox Focus)

Perhaps it would have a camera, but only sufficient for WhatsApp.

Perhaps GPS/Maps would be built in, but only accessible for WhatsApp "share my
location".

The browser would open links and allow browsing, but would not integrate too
deeply and would focus on security and battery life where updates may not be
applied and signal is sometimes terrible.

Just the simplest phone, dirt cheap, durable, capable of communication in an
age of WhatsApp.

It would also be a near perfect travel/emergency phone for people in the West,
and would likely have a huge market amongst outdoor types.

~~~
majani
Since Whatsapp joined Facebook, they are now only interested in ideas that
have potential billion dollar upsides. The phone you are suggesting is more
likely to be built by an entrepreneur who's eyeing a small but steady
business.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Didn't know they'd "joined" FB -- wonder if they're going to federate
messaging between their services.

------
georgiecasey
i can't imagine he'll make money on cheap Indian users when he needs a server
with terabytes of RAM to serve them but you never know.

i might get blowback for this but I had an Instagram paid service where Indian
users were blowing up the free trials and never paying so I just blocked all
Indian IPs. more trouble than they're worth

~~~
fooker
This is why advertising works as a good source of revenue.

~~~
candiodari
And what happens when advertisers realize that they, too, are obviously not
going to sell anything to these users ? I mean, isn't this exploiting the
market ? (perhaps for a "good" cause but that's a matter of opinion)

~~~
fooker
These people buy a lot of stuff online, usually through 'cash on delivery'.

------
Sami_Lehtinen
This is one of the areas where Telegram is way better than WhatsApp. Actually
their web client is totally awesome.

~~~
dingo_bat
Except every single person in India and their grandmother is on WhatsApp.

~~~
nindalf
Except the ones using the Jio phone, evidently. They seem to have trouble
using whatsapp.

~~~
dingo_bat
Not if they can help it, apparently :/

------
dkaigorodov
Well, that's an awesome story. Love the fact you found a way to commercialize
your product and find a way to sustain and serve low-money customers.

------
dingo_bat
Just as a note: These cheap Jio phones are not old. They are also not your
usual $20 phones. They only work on Reliance Jio. This is unusual because it
means they must support LTE and must have a fully IPv6 network stack.

------
z3t4
I find it annoying that it's virtually impossible to get such a phone in "the
west". I've been looking forever for a phone that enables usb tethering and is
not a touch screen. Touch screens sucks when it's cold outside and you are
waring gloves, so I need buttons, big buttons.

~~~
Pharaoh2
5 mins on amazon will find you what you are looking for. There are a whole
bunch of feature phone and basic carrier/prepaid phones out there. Some of
them will also do usb tethering but its a bit difficult to actually set up
since it needs obscure drivers. You can also go for the higher end blackberry
which still keeps physical keys and runs full blown android.

Even sold by Amazon: Blackberry:
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DGYW83E](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DGYW83E)
TracPhone:
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M3VI4Q6](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M3VI4Q6)
TracPhone:
[https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B01L2DE1G2](https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B01L2DE1G2)

------
sigi45
Strange security implications he opens himself up to.

He offers an VPN Service / more or less without the proper knowledge.

I think he could be sued for distributing child porn and other things VPN
companies take a lot of ressources to make sure they are protected by that
stuff.

------
jondubois
It sounds like it's going to be difficult to monetize.

It's better to build apps for iOS because those users have the most money and
spend the most on apps. Android is further behind but still reasonable... If
you're targeting users of some cheap $20 phone, then obviously there won't be
much money in it. Plus the cost of running a virtual environment for each of
these users would be too high I suspect.

This could be used as a tool for mass social manipulation though. Browserling
could transform Instagram feeds into whatever it wants... Could potentially be
used to spread fake news and spark protests.

~~~
adrianmonk
Sure, individually those users don't have a lot of money, but have you
considered the population of India? It's pretty large.

Also, basically all those users were at some point able to cough up $20 for a
phone. Messaging is pretty important (and WhatsApp is near or at the top of
the list), so maybe a lot of those users could manage to cough up another $1
for something.

------
mmirate
Why the personal attacks on this CEO? I don't see anything in this article
that merits them.

------
Abishek_Muthian
When Jio Phone was announced, I was excited as there was a possibility that
FireFox OS (KaiOS) had a chance of gaining significant user base in India.
With millions of units sold, it actually has.

But as this article points out, the dependency on WhatsApp in India is too
high to ignore; the last I heard was that the effort to bring WhatsApp to Jio
Phone failed and the Jio Phone 2 would run on Android.

------
tzahola
Looks like it’s okay to treat poor people as slaves and make fun of them, as
long as they don’t live in the first world.

Shame on you, “startup enterpreneurs”.

------
xref
great story, hope Peter does something like an indiehackers.com interview to
learn more details about browserling

------
secfirstmd
I wish there was a cheap phone that had huge battery life and ran Calls, SMS,
WhatsApp and Signal and that was it. Both are now such an important part of
how people communicate to me that it's impossible to ditch a smartphone.

How come no one was built a mobile app that locks down all apps other than
those you select (e.g WhatsApp/Signal) for X amount of time until you put a
code in or (even better) a partner/friend sends you a code. Would be great for
enforce non device time.

~~~
detaro
> _How come no one was built a mobile app that locks down all apps other than
> those you select (e.g WhatsApp /Signal) for X amount of time until you put a
> code in or (even better) a partner/friend sends you a code. Would be great
> for enforce non device time._

Isn't that exactly what the kid-friendly modes of the various mobile OSes do?

------
grantlmiller
this reminds me of what Snaptu was doing years ago to bring access to
developing countries... worked out ok for them:
[https://techcrunch.com/2011/03/20/facebook-reportedly-
acquir...](https://techcrunch.com/2011/03/20/facebook-reportedly-acquires-
snaptu-for-an-estimated-60-70-million/) Also, this is a great way to bring
better comms to millions of people who are likely underserved today.

------
mankash666
This seems like a perfect use case for advertising. Need to watch/see ads
every 15 minutes for continued use. As long as the ad revenue exceeds
operations cost.

~~~
em3rgent0rdr
But as pointed out elsewhere in this thread, the people who purchase $20 are
not likely the type of people who advertisers are interested in, since they
don't have much disposable money.

Now if he finds another way to profit off of these users beyond advertising or
just spamming twitter, then could be successful.

------
leephillips
After reading this I was surprised to see that @browserling only has about
7,500 followers on Twitter. Why aren't there hundreds of thousands?

------
swang
i don't know if peter or substack reads this but whatever happened to
testling? it seems to be down.

~~~
naugtur
Testling's been down for years. It got discontinued. Nothing this convenient
came from the competing services.

------
therealmarv
WhatsApp should invest in clients for feature phones on this markets. If not
WhatsApp (with their really really big resources) which other company can make
sure that everybody can communicate to eachother no matter if you have a
smartphone or feature phone.

~~~
Tom4hawk
[http://blog.textit.in/your-path-to-a-$16b-exit-build-
a-j2me-...](http://blog.textit.in/your-path-to-a-$16b-exit-build-a-j2me-app)

------
ComodoHacker
What really amazes me in this story is what a powerful force an army of
desperate and somewhat ignorant users can be. If they were told to post some
memes and fake news or write some troll comments, they would do it without a
bat of an eye.

------
akhilcacharya
The author's immaturity aside, the buried lede here is the Jio - crazy, I
hadn't heard of it. $20 for a phone with LTE, FirefoxOS fork, WiFi and 5 day
battery life. I'd buy one for 3x that price!

------
GoToRO
Do they use a real smartphone to pass the qrcode screen in web whatsapp?

------
totierne2
How do I get a dumb phone (simple browser, Java) to access Google hangouts
get/send messages? Prepared to make it a (java/rest?) side project. (Son has
feature phone).

~~~
totierne2
I am thinking Google Chrome headerless on a pc, and Java2ME rest calls or
simple feature phone web browser front end on the phone.

------
vit05
> "It turns out users in India can't easily make online USD purchases with
> credit or debit cards as it requires a special bank permission."

And people still think Cryptocurrency will not unbank the world. I am not
talking only about Bitcoin, but there is a necessity for a new way to exchange
value, store value and buy things without the limits that the place where you
live decided to impose.

------
al_chemist
I'm amazed how positive reaction this article gets on HN. This guy is an
asshole!

It starts with author calling his users "fools" for not randomizing useragent
(while he himself is a fool for not using useragent correct way - to know what
hardware/software accesses his service). Then he goes super happy "hah, great,
let them crash competitor websites". Then he realize "This is the biggest
opportunity ever!". He tries to sell his service for small amount of $1 per
day for using free WhatsApp. "I had no idea how much money Indian users spent
on online services." Quick google search reveals that daily wage labour gets
2-3 $/day.

What he does next? He sends his users to promote his website at social media.
Follow and tweet about my service and I will allow you to use my service - he
promises, except it is not a payment method - it's a lie. But free
advertisment is not enough for this guy. It's "his biggest opportunity ever"!
He sends his army to "troll my competitors". "That was super hilarious. I was
literally rolling on the floor laughing."

"users would tweet, follow, like, and do anything I tell them to get access to
Browserling" except he didn't let them access Browserling. They are just
numbers for him, a viral mob that will do whatever their god tell them to do.
And as a god, he doesn't care about his promises. Well, he could, but it's too
much work and there are more interesting things to do for him.

His final solution - more lies and unethical behaviors. "Increase your chances
in lottery by promoting my service" \- chance does not change Depending on
your luck, the same amount of money will give you day, week or month of a
service.

This guy is an asshole, his behaviour is unethical and wrong. I can't believe
it gets positive feedback here.

~~~
l4yao
"It starts with author calling his users "fools" for not randomizing
useragent"

He thought he was getting DDOS'd at first, and his attackers were using one
useragent. In which case, they would have been fools.

"Then he realize "This is the biggest opportunity ever!"."

It __is__ a great opportunity! For the HN audience, a large influx of users is
considered a great opportunity.

"They are just numbers for him, a viral mob that will do whatever their god
tell them to do."

There seems to be a lot of negativity around this. I thought it was hilarious.
Would there still be outrage if the users were American instead of Indian?

"His final solution - more lies and unethical behaviors"

I would hardly call it lies or unethical. 1\. he isn't obligated to do
anything 2\. he ultimately delivered a usable product with a paid option to
the service. Sounds like any other freemium app or in-app-purchase

~~~
intended
Let’s try another more illustrative question - what would the reaction be if
he were an Indian in India doing that to Indians or doing it to Americans.

There would definitely be outrage.

As other people have said, he comes across as lacking humanity. Especially as
the people using Jio phones would be the kind of people who are not rich or
well off.

In fairness to the person, he could just be clueless and doesn’t really think
of the people trying to use his service as people.

Hmm. That makes him sound worse.

I know a friend who thinks like that, And Is not a bad person....

I don’t know - this guy comes across as if he doesn’t realize that he is
manipulating people less informed and weaker than him like someone
orchestrating ants into following sugar.

~~~
soziawa
> As other people have said, he comes across as lacking humanity. Especially
> as the people using Jio phones would be the kind of people who are not rich
> or well off.

But that doesn't make his server costs go away. And they must own at least
another phone otherwise they wouldn't be able to use WhatsApp Web. So they are
probably not as poor as you think.

~~~
StavrosK
If they own another phone why do they want to access WhatsApp on their cheapo
ones so fervently?

~~~
oeuviz
That is what puzzles me most in the article. Unless one phone that can handle
Whatsapp is used by several people I do not get what they are trying to
achieve here. AFAIK Whatsapp Web needs to have a phone online and is not
provided as a standalone web service.

~~~
StavrosK
Yeah, that's pretty perplexing to me as well.

------
maxencecornet
Amazing read

~~~
ionwake
I agree.

I can only think the negative components are ironically from the readers who
lack the empathy to understand what OP was going through - both his limited
understanding of what was happening and the implications.

Most importantly, I appreciated the honest writeup - something quite rare
these days.

------
skrebbel
It interests me that the author treats his Indian users more like some sort of
"human botnet" than like real people. I feel like it fits nicely with YC's
favourite interview question, "When have you most successfully hacked a non-
computer system to your advantage?", which in my mind neatly translates to
"what's the most psychopathic thing you've ever done?". If that question is
the success predictor YC says it is, Browserling probably has a great future.

~~~
jgtrosh
I was surprised to see that at no point in the article does the author express
any appreciation at the opportunity his service seems to have given its new
users. There is no step between hating the situation because of its cost to
accepting it because of its potential revenue. I get that the author is acting
as an economically reasonable agent but the lack of humanity is jarring.

~~~
kindfellow92
You’re the one showing a lack of humanity by judging him based on a single
blog post.

------
jxramos
So entertaining on many levels

------
eps
This gets blocked on WhatsApp end in 3, 2, 1...

~~~
bromuro
I never understand this 3, 2, 1 comments I see often on reddit ... and on HN
... what do they mean? Is something from the US television?

~~~
deepakkarki
It's more like a countdown to tell how quickly something is going to happen.
In this case whatsapp blocking browserling.

~~~
bromuro
And is the countdown supposed to make the comment funnier or what? I was
supposing a joke from a tv show or something else I don’t get.

~~~
tqkxzugoaupvwqr
The countdown simply means “quickly”, “in no time” or “very soon”. You can
read the comment as “This gets blocked on WhatsApp’s end very soon.”

