WhatsApp is the most popular app in Brazil, used by about 100 million people. The Brazilian telecoms hate the service because it entices people away from more expensive text messaging services, and they have been lobbying for months to convince the government that it's unregulated and illegal. A judge finally agreed.
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All this is part of a massive power struggle going on right now between traditional companies and new Internet companies, and we're all in the blast radius.
It's one aspect of a tech policy problem that has been plaguing us for at least 25 years: technologists and policymakers don't understand each other, and they inflict damage on society because of that. But it's worse today. The speed of technological progress makes it worse. And the types of technology -- especially the current Internet of mobile devices everywhere, cloud computing, always-on connections and the Internet of Things -- make it worse.
