Can’t reload page, so what!
HYDERABAD: The global WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram outage earlier this week gave millions of people a rude peek into what their lives would be without social media. Although it was just for a few hours, the three major platforms kept popping up an error message which refused to go away even if users tried refreshing the apps. Even uninstalling and reinstalling the apps did not help.
While chaos and confusion unfolded on the Internet in the form of a meme fest, ‘Twitter had the last laugh’, according to netizens. Nevertheless, some Tollywood celebrities had mixed feelings about the outage. Even though they realised the vacuum it had created, they were relieved that the platforms were defunct for a few hours.
For instance, actor Rahul Ramakrishna, who shot to fame with Arjun Reddy, wound up his day early. “I had my dinner and slept. I am glad it (the global outage) happened. At least there was a break from all that fake news,” he says.
On the other hand, the incident got Lavanya Tripathi thinking about a world without social media. She says there would be pros and cons to it. “I felt relieved that these three apps were down for a bit. This way, the spread of rumours and false information would slow down. But those few hours of no WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook did make me wonder how our lives would be without these digital platforms. Communication would probably be difficult, but there would also be many pros to the situation,” says the actor, who uploaded a meme on Twitter and called it a day.
Kamal Kamaraju was at the gym when the three apps went kaput. He tried refreshing them, but could not, and was under the impression that his Internet connection was down. “I tried refreshing the apps a couple of times, but that did not work. It was much later that I realised that there was a bigger problem. None of the messages were going through. Anyway, I had a really long day and just wanted to crash. I realised that, by default, I end up opening these apps. But there are tonnes of other things to do in life apart from refreshing my feed. I just got to post my story a bit late that night, that’s it,” says Kamal.