alt Hacker News"The world no longer needs Facebook and its leaders. It does not need its technology."
Meta owns WhatsApp, which is core infrastructure in many countries now where it has basically replaced the PSTN. If WhatsApp went down without a long transition process first, it would take myriad small businesses down with it. I would love to see harsh punishments and jailed executives, but the world still needs the company for the time being.
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We really don't. If that finally does happen, people are quick to adapt to change it will use one of the many alternatives, maybe even one that's interoperable or open so we're not in the same mess five years later
Wasn’t WhatsApp famously created by a team of 20 people?
It’s not meta’s contribution to the world. It can be cleanly extracted from the company. Or a replacement created if need be.
A myriad of small businesses also use Facebook as their public facing website.
> If WhatsApp went down without a long transition process first
The transition mechanism is that your contacts are in your phone address book, and you can call or text them or find them on other platforms indexed by phone number. Although, not for username contacts.
Would it be disruptive? Yes. Would it be world ending? No.