Ask HN: What Is Afflicting WhatsApp

[farhanhubble]

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.

[8organicbits]

What country are you in? Some places block parts of WhatsApp; I've seen calls blocked when messages work when travelling, for example. Your ISP could be throttling video calls. Anecdotally, messages deliver quickly for me.

[farhanhubble → 8organicbits]

People I communicate with are in APAC and western Europe.

[8organicbits → farhanhubble]

If we're talking China, it's banned. But people use VPNs so they may only get messages when their VPN is on.

For sending messages, does it take a long time to get the first check mark, or the second? The first is shown when your message is delivered to WhatsApp, the second when the recipients device receives it (assuming they don't disable it for privacy).

[farhanhubble → 8organicbits]

No, not China or any other country that restricts WhatsApp. Both checkmarks appear quite promplty but the receivers actually see the message much later. I have experienced this more in group chats (5-10), where two people sitting under the same roof using different mobile OSes receive messages minutes apart, sometimes even 15-20 minutes.

[whyoh → farhanhubble]

>Both checkmarks appear quite promplty but the receivers actually see the message much later.

That sounds like a very serious bug that should be reported. Can you reproduce it regularly?

But if you're just talking about notifications appearing later, that's quite common in smartphones (due to power saving).

[8organicbits → whyoh]

Agreed, that doesn't match the docs

> In a group chat, the second check mark appears when everyone has received your message. Two blue check marks appear when everyone has read your message.

https://faq.whatsapp.com/665923838265756/

[tacostakohashi]

WhatsApp has clearly entered the enshittification stage of the product cycle. Most obviously, it regularly creates spam/advertising chats, and now it has some AI chatbot nonsense.

It's a pity, because it used to be very close to an ideal messenger, from a usability perspective.

More generally, these days I find that there just really isn't any good single messenger or social media that most sane people are happy to use these days.

WhatsApp is getting spammy and is owned by Meta.

Facebook is full of spam too, and it's difficult to just use the messenger without also having a screen full of other spam next to it. Also the cool kids don't use / aren't on facebook now.

Telegram is still pretty good to use, but doesn't have the adoption that WhatsApp / FB once did.

Skype, MSN, Yahoo chat, MSN, ICQ, etc. all dead now.

It seems like it's just not possible to have a stable messenger that doesn't get slurped up into some bigger thing, then destroyed. Oh well.