It’s a particularly baffling move when you consider that Brazil is the Social Media Capital of the Universe: Brazilians are the #2 or #3 audience on every major global social platform, and on a per-user basis, Brazilians spend almost double the time on social media as Americans.īut a temporary WhatsApp shutdown is not even close to the craziest thing happening with the Brazilian internet right now. It’s a particularly useful service for Brazil’s youth and poor, many who cannot afford to pay the most expensive plans on the planet.īrazilian telco’s have been lobbying for months to convince the government that WhatsApp’s voice service is unregulated and illegal (not entirely unlike the taxi industry’s posture on Uber), and have publicly blamed the “WhatsApp effect” for driving millions of Brazilians to abandon their cell phone lines.Ī WhatsApp shut-down would be akin to taking half the country off the electricity grid because of an industry squabble over the impending threat of solar power. WhatsApp is the single most used app in Brazil, with about 93 million users, or 93% of the country’s internet population. A judge in Sao Paulo has ordered WhatsApp to shut down for 48 hours, starting at 9pm Eastern tonight.
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