City Cast
October 13, 2021

WhatsApp is Essential for Many, Including in Chicago

Facebook’s outage on Oct. 4 was one of the longest in company history. But it wasn’t just memes and Insta stories that users lost for nearly six hours. People around the world rely on the messaging service WhatsApp to talk with family and even to do business. We hear from an international student at the University of Illinois and a woman living in Ecuador who has family in the Chicago area about how the outage affected them. And TechCrunch reporter Amanda Silberling explains what happened, how WhatsApp became so integral to international communication, and what we can learn from the outage.


Guests: Amanda Silberling — Reporter, TechCrunch

Brooke Stevenson and Tarkan Bolat — WhatsApp users


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