WhatsApp Down in Some Regions(xn--allestrungen-9ib.de)
xn--allestrungen-9ib.de
WhatsApp Down in Some Regions
https://xn--allestrungen-9ib.de/stoerung/whatsapp/
114 comments
I personally inspected the page to delete the popup from the DOM without clicking "agree".
I found their privacy page here: https://xn--allestrungen-9ib.de/privacy.html.
Interestingly, that has a link to a cookie policy that links to speedtest.net's cookie policy (https://www.speedtest.net/de/about/cookie-policy). I think downdetector is offered by Ookla, so that probably is their cookie policy?
speedtest.net's cookie policy leaves something to be desired. In the english translation it has:
> If you prefer that we do not collect information that will help us determine which advertisements we are best serving you, click this icon.
But I don't see an icon there, or anything clickable. In case it's a mistranslation here's the original german:
> Wenn Sie es vorziehen, dass wir keine Informationen erfassen, mit deren Hilfe wir ermitteln können, welche Werbung wir Ihnen am besten anzeigen, klicken Sie auf dieses Symbol.
Based on that, I have no idea how you can manage your cookie preferences to express a desire not to be tracked.
It seems to be an absolutely flagrant violation of GDPR, and I would encourage a German citizen to bring a case to the German data protection authorities.
I found their privacy page here: https://xn--allestrungen-9ib.de/privacy.html.
Interestingly, that has a link to a cookie policy that links to speedtest.net's cookie policy (https://www.speedtest.net/de/about/cookie-policy). I think downdetector is offered by Ookla, so that probably is their cookie policy?
speedtest.net's cookie policy leaves something to be desired. In the english translation it has:
> If you prefer that we do not collect information that will help us determine which advertisements we are best serving you, click this icon.
But I don't see an icon there, or anything clickable. In case it's a mistranslation here's the original german:
> Wenn Sie es vorziehen, dass wir keine Informationen erfassen, mit deren Hilfe wir ermitteln können, welche Werbung wir Ihnen am besten anzeigen, klicken Sie auf dieses Symbol.
Based on that, I have no idea how you can manage your cookie preferences to express a desire not to be tracked.
It seems to be an absolutely flagrant violation of GDPR, and I would encourage a German citizen to bring a case to the German data protection authorities.
> and other technologies
Do they need to specify these other technologies, which they are and how they are being used?
Do they need to specify these other technologies, which they are and how they are being used?
I get the same here in Germany (if I turn off uBlock Origin). It's not GDPR complaint, plain and simple.
There's a broader outage somewhere, and I've had degraded service on Google Meet today. Thought it was my speed, but speedtest.net is down too! https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/speedtest.net
I agree, the landing page of this post ( https://xn--allestrungen-9ib.de ) shows that almost all services are affected.
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Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger are all down for me.
Sounds like paradise.
It would be, but that made me fall into the HN rabbit hole. One hour later, I know more about the hacks used in Duke Nukem 3D but my tasks are still uncompleted.
Wait till you find out about YouTube
This is the paradise I live in every day. Never used it. I have however had to spent the last hour being asked when it will be back by three teenagers and a wife, none of whom appreciate it is nothing whatsoever to do with me. Grr.
Let's not get overexcited ... they will probably come back up again.
Downdetector [1] shows some problems with other websites including Twitter and Microsoft as well. Doesn't seem like a cloud provider being down though.
[1] https://downdetector.com/
[1] https://downdetector.com/
Oh wow, I don't think I've seen a real IDNA/Punycode domain in the wild before.
quite rare on HN yes. there are loads depending on the region. if you have no use for them it's a good idea to block them with dnscrypt-proxy[1] or nfq[2] to avoid getting bitten by homograph attacks.
[1] https://github.com/DNSCrypt/dnscrypt-proxy
[2] https://gitlab.com/jbauernberger/nfq/
[1] https://github.com/DNSCrypt/dnscrypt-proxy
[2] https://gitlab.com/jbauernberger/nfq/
You probably have and didn't realize it.
Slowly instagram is coming back? seems like progress is being made
edit: push notifs came through. inbox not loading however
edit 2: seems to be fully restored. all my homies are responding to messages
edit: push notifs came through. inbox not loading however
edit 2: seems to be fully restored. all my homies are responding to messages
Down in Brazil too together with instagram and facebook. More food for conspiracy theorists...
You mean all products owned by the same company, most likely hosted in the same data centers and with the same infra?
Conspiracy theorists can see whatever they want mixed in the noise.
Any day now they will find out which company is behind all three apps.
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They are in the same dc? Worst design evaaah
Instagram is down for me (located in the midwest). Reports "5xx server error"
Curious if anyone knows why they would use xx instead of the number?
The HTTP response says 503, so the text is just generic for any 5xx error.
How do you know the HTTP response was 503? (sorry for the silly questions, I'm not a software engineer)
I looked at the headers returned from the server using developer tools. 503 is "Service Unavailable" and you often see it when a proxy can't reach the backend server.
Whatsapp is reporting same error here(India)
https://web.whatsapp.com/status.json
But not FB blue, interestingly enough for me.
Phew, it's not just me. Beyond me why more of these big tech companies can't build more redundancies for their services.
These companies build for redundancy. Not in the sense of "we need 10 servers, let's have 10 more for redundancy" (that gets expensive when you have millions of hosts) but by scaling out across multiple regions/DCs/clusters/etc such that there is enough slack in the system to absorb failure of 1 or 2 resource units (DCs, fiber, whatever).
Also, widespread outages like this are seldom the result of insufficient capacity. They are almost always a perfect storm of several failures within systems that are individually build to handle adverse conditions. An example might be a bug within a task scheduling system that inadvertently scales down some critical service which in turn leads to something else failing to reach consensus or read configuration or who knows what. The point is that each of these components is designed and built to handle failure but something the holes in the cheese line up and the whole thing fails.
In this case since IG, WA and FB were affected it's reasonable to guess the failure was in some shared component like load balancing or task placement, though (as hinted at above) the origin of the fault is not necessarily in that component directly.
Also, widespread outages like this are seldom the result of insufficient capacity. They are almost always a perfect storm of several failures within systems that are individually build to handle adverse conditions. An example might be a bug within a task scheduling system that inadvertently scales down some critical service which in turn leads to something else failing to reach consensus or read configuration or who knows what. The point is that each of these components is designed and built to handle failure but something the holes in the cheese line up and the whole thing fails.
In this case since IG, WA and FB were affected it's reasonable to guess the failure was in some shared component like load balancing or task placement, though (as hinted at above) the origin of the fault is not necessarily in that component directly.
IIRC there was a situation where google built a circular dependency in their own cloud services and they had massive issues bootstrapping the systems again after they went haywire
The scale of facebook is beyond what you probably imagine it to be.
It's not just about adding redundancies. Redundancies don't protect you against bugs, and they're itself very complex, so they introduce more opportunity for errors. Even with best redundancy, you'll have incidents from time to time.
It doesn't help either that Facebook made three separate services that should have nothing to do with each other, talk to each other and all route their traffic through the same infrastructure.
What they did was purposefully remove redundancy they had, in order to be able to track people more (in order to profit more) and possibly scale easier. Doing nothing would have been easier but yet they still did it.
What they did was purposefully remove redundancy they had, in order to be able to track people more (in order to profit more) and possibly scale easier. Doing nothing would have been easier but yet they still did it.
If you think that maintaining 3 completely separate stacks for 3 different services within the same company is making all of them more reliable, I don't think you ever worked on a big scale services.
No, I'm hinting at that have one company running these three services in the first place is wrong. Should be three independent companies as they are really three different services, but lord knows governments does nothing to prevent monopolies these days.
Facebook took $85 billion in revenue last year and has thousands of developers on the payroll. They could absolutely maintain 3 separate services.
Bear in mind WhatsApp used to maintain a userbase of 200 million with 50 total employees (not even just developers).
Bear in mind WhatsApp used to maintain a userbase of 200 million with 50 total employees (not even just developers).
> They can absolutely maintain 3 different services
Lol, I'd believe you when they did purchased the service but the countless amount of times it went down since then obviously proves that they cannot even maintain the services when they are folded together on the same infrastructure.
It was a long time ago Facebook employed the best of the best. Seems like it's mostly average developers and infrastructure people there now just trying to hold up the house of cards they built.
Lol, I'd believe you when they did purchased the service but the countless amount of times it went down since then obviously proves that they cannot even maintain the services when they are folded together on the same infrastructure.
It was a long time ago Facebook employed the best of the best. Seems like it's mostly average developers and infrastructure people there now just trying to hold up the house of cards they built.
Hah, to be clear that is what I meant - the idea that Facebook doesn't have the resources is ludicrous, the problem runs deeper.
And they are back up (at least for me, India). I hope it was not a push on Friday evening or worse "after EoD".
Probably a push on Friday morning on the US West Coast...
Down for me in the UK for the past 30 mins.
Same. Quick, SMS everyone a Signal link!
Yeah, lets replace this centralized service that goes down sometimes with another centralized service that hasn't started going down sometimes yet!
OR, get people on Matrix or similar so we can actually stop jumping ship when our centralized dear service stops acting in our best interest.
OR, get people on Matrix or similar so we can actually stop jumping ship when our centralized dear service stops acting in our best interest.
> OR, get people on Matrix or similar so we can actually stop jumping ship when our centralized dear service stops acting in our best interest.
Decentralisation is the right answer. Unfortunately we always cannot convert or move others every-time we say the word 'Matrix' or 'Element/Matrix', which leaves the user confused with the client and the protocol. It is close to the GNU/Linux naming all over again and that did not catch on.
If you want others to make the switch to (Chat client that uses Matrix) without confusing them, then at least avoid telling them to: 'Use Matrix' which is like saying 'Use MTProto' or 'Use libsignal'. The client's name is always mentioned but this is why compared to Signal or Telegram the name 'Element' sounds totally off, even without mentioning the protocol.
For example: Almost everyone has heard of 'Bitcoin' and it's decentralised. That works. No need to mention 'Blockchain' or any of that jargon. So let's have a user-friendlier decentralised client that does not need to mention the protocol's name.
Decentralisation is the right answer. Unfortunately we always cannot convert or move others every-time we say the word 'Matrix' or 'Element/Matrix', which leaves the user confused with the client and the protocol. It is close to the GNU/Linux naming all over again and that did not catch on.
If you want others to make the switch to (Chat client that uses Matrix) without confusing them, then at least avoid telling them to: 'Use Matrix' which is like saying 'Use MTProto' or 'Use libsignal'. The client's name is always mentioned but this is why compared to Signal or Telegram the name 'Element' sounds totally off, even without mentioning the protocol.
For example: Almost everyone has heard of 'Bitcoin' and it's decentralised. That works. No need to mention 'Blockchain' or any of that jargon. So let's have a user-friendlier decentralised client that does not need to mention the protocol's name.
Yes, I adjust my language depending the audience and since this is "Hacker News" after all and I mostly don't care about what client people use, as long as it's using Matrix, I find it's best to recommend the protocol itself.
Then it's up to us nerds to find the best client for our non-hacker friends and family.
Then it's up to us nerds to find the best client for our non-hacker friends and family.
Both of you are right
Quick let's replace this centralized service that goes down sometimes with a group of centralized services that go down sometimes.
Matrix being federated does absolutely nothing to solve this problem since there's no failover if a user's homeserver goes down. It just limits the potential blast radius but if matrix.org went down Matrix might as well be down for most people.
Matrix being federated does absolutely nothing to solve this problem since there's no failover if a user's homeserver goes down. It just limits the potential blast radius but if matrix.org went down Matrix might as well be down for most people.
It does indeed solve a part of the problem.
> There is no single point of control or failure in a Matrix conversation which spans multiple servers: the act of communication with someone elsewhere in Matrix shares ownership of the conversation equally with them. Even if your server goes offline, the conversation can continue uninterrupted elsewhere until it returns.
https://matrix.org/
So right now, if you're trying to message someone via either whatsapp, facebook or instagram they will all fail, most likely because of the same issue as they are run by the same company. If you were on Matrix, you would for sure be able to find a way of reaching this person even if servers go down, that's the entire point of federation in the first place.
> There is no single point of control or failure in a Matrix conversation which spans multiple servers: the act of communication with someone elsewhere in Matrix shares ownership of the conversation equally with them. Even if your server goes offline, the conversation can continue uninterrupted elsewhere until it returns.
https://matrix.org/
So right now, if you're trying to message someone via either whatsapp, facebook or instagram they will all fail, most likely because of the same issue as they are run by the same company. If you were on Matrix, you would for sure be able to find a way of reaching this person even if servers go down, that's the entire point of federation in the first place.
Lets be honest, most users right now use the main matrix server. Anyways there is atleast an option to use own servers.
I've been looking for data around how many people actually use the various matrix servers, but seems you have it already. Could you please link here so I can see it too?
it's simply not true - according to Matthew it is around a third
> It just limits the potential blast radius
True, but it makes a difference between a single Homeserver not working any more and the entire global service. This likely won't ever happen.
> matrix.org went down Matrix might as well be down for most people.
not really (afaik less than a third of public(!) users use matrix.org)
Also consider ongoing developments of distributing accounts on multiple servers (which may also reside on your device) for P2P Matrix. This gives additional redundancy.
True, but it makes a difference between a single Homeserver not working any more and the entire global service. This likely won't ever happen.
> matrix.org went down Matrix might as well be down for most people.
not really (afaik less than a third of public(!) users use matrix.org)
Also consider ongoing developments of distributing accounts on multiple servers (which may also reside on your device) for P2P Matrix. This gives additional redundancy.
Ha, I hear you. Also a fan of Matrix, but it's so not mainstream usable yet. Tried to get non tech friends on there yet?
What you mean "friends"?
Pretty much. My main preference for Signal is that it's a charitable organisation. That and a few other bits. Phone number IDs are on the way out hopefully. The dream would be some kind of federated layer, but the charitable org thing is a good start for me.
define mainstream usable
Decentralized services like Matrix - anyone?
No, let's continue relying on a single centralized service for the whole world.
No, let's continue relying on a single centralized service for the whole world.
This isn't the panacea you think it is. For example, on iOS all server notifications for an app must be proxied via Apple and have to come from the app developer's push certificate.
This means that even with Element (the matrix client) all of your notifications when your phone is locked are going from your server to the centralized dev push system run by the Element devs, then to another centralized system run by Apple.
Either could have an outage, although I think APNS (the apple side) has close to 100% uptime since launch, which is quite a feat.
This means that even with Element (the matrix client) all of your notifications when your phone is locked are going from your server to the centralized dev push system run by the Element devs, then to another centralized system run by Apple.
Either could have an outage, although I think APNS (the apple side) has close to 100% uptime since launch, which is quite a feat.
This comes from from someone who enjoys the convenience of centralized services, but that honestly sounds to me like an argument for decentralization of mobile notifications too, not a refutation of the idea of decentralized messaging.
"We" can't decentralize notifications on iOS, only Apple can. It's not in their interest to do so (battery life, platform brand control via censorship), so it's probably a moot point.
It's better to choose a fight you can win.
It's better to choose a fight you can win.
This comes from someone typing this on an iPhone, but that sounds like an argument to drop this goddamn walled garden/prison. I’m literally sick of it.
You also can't use an iPhone without it constantly sending usage information to a half dozen different teams/departments at Apple, even if you've opted out of analytics, so there's that, too. I think I've bought my last iPhone, as well, after having had all of them.
Additionally to the other user, I would like to add that
1) Notifications being down is a smaller problem than the service not working at all.
2) there are indeed alternative push systems that allow plugging different push systems (see Unified Push - though not yet supported by Element)
1) Notifications being down is a smaller problem than the service not working at all.
2) there are indeed alternative push systems that allow plugging different push systems (see Unified Push - though not yet supported by Element)
Then we need to decentralize notifications (or better, to do away with them).
We actually decentralized them decades ago, it's called email
We actually decentralized them decades ago, it's called email
Instagram also seems down, so likely something generic affecting faceebook's infrastructure
Even Telegram is suffering from a slightly degraded service, likely from the load of everyone jumping to it at once as a backup IM.
And no. The same people won't flock to Signal after all of this, even though it is much more friendlier than Element.
On the other hand, at least Element is decentralised thanks to Matrix, but unfortunately suffers from a naming dilemma and is unfriendlier than the rest of the chat alternatives.
We need an alternative that is a mixture of both: Open source, Decentralised (Likely uses Matrix underneath) and is extremely user friendly and competes on security and features.
On the other hand, at least Element is decentralised thanks to Matrix, but unfortunately suffers from a naming dilemma and is unfriendlier than the rest of the chat alternatives.
We need an alternative that is a mixture of both: Open source, Decentralised (Likely uses Matrix underneath) and is extremely user friendly and competes on security and features.
No, you need an alternative which is used by some substantial portion of people.
Can confirm. Instagram is also down here.
this is exactly why we need 1000000 different messaging apps lol
that, or just one app that uses multiple pathways and protocols to get the message across
What, in some regions??? Better to say in almost all regions
FB up but very slow, Instagram and Whatsapp down
Germany
Germany
Massive global outage https://t.co/boWJaMxDG0?amp=1
It's already up in Argentina.
How will people be happy today?
Completely down in Ireland too.
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Down in Spain too.
Same for instagram
Down in Dubai too
Down in London.
Instagram too!
its down in germany too
good
hans1729(4)
Just five eyes.
What, in some region? Better to say in almost all regions :)
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> When you proceed to access our site, the companies listed in the Cookie Consent Tool will use cookies and other technologies. This is further explained in our Cookie Notice.
None of those are links, and the only button is "Agree and access site". How do I find the Cookie Consent Tool and the Cookie Notice, without having to click "Agree"?