[HN Gopher] Mexico's subway drivers depend on WhatsApp to keep t...
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Mexico's subway drivers depend on WhatsApp to keep the trains
running
Author : impish9208
Score : 121 points
Date : 2023-01-12 14:18 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (restofworld.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (restofworld.org)
| ars wrote:
| > If there is ever a WhatsApp outage, Metro workers have parallel
| Facebook chats to maintain communication.
|
| That's smart to have a parallel system, but not great that both
| systems are the same company! A major Facebook outage would take
| down both systems at the same time.
| soumyadeb wrote:
| After the outage from yesterday, maybe FAA should do the same :)
| blahblah1234567 wrote:
| that sir, is pathological combustion!
|
| (sick burn ;) )
| morog wrote:
| You can guarantee that much critical infrastructure in the 3rd
| world runs on WhatsApp
| el-salvador wrote:
| Yeah, in Central America, many groups coordinate using WhatsApp
| group chat.
|
| Most companies have customer facing WhatsApp numbers too.
| daemoens wrote:
| Yup it's the same situation in East Africa. You can't do
| business without it.
| manojlds wrote:
| > Most companies have customer facing WhatsApp numbers too.
|
| That's intended use of Whatsapp. Article is about usage for
| critical infra.
| dguest wrote:
| I've traveled to a few places where it's impossible to buy a
| data plan that doesn't include free unlimited WhatsApp
| messages. I don't really know _why_ this was true, but it made
| using any other messaging app a non-starter.
|
| My assumption was that Meta was lobbying companies to bundle
| free WhatsApp data to increase their user base, but I'm not
| finding any proof. Does anyone else have an explanation?
| nisegami wrote:
| I think it's actually just something their customers like.
| paxys wrote:
| Nothing too surprising or nefarious about it. Unlimited
| WhatsApp is the equivalent to unlimited SMS in similar
| bundles in the past. Carriers offer it to attract customers.
| karrot-kake wrote:
| It is the other way around. Clients use it so much that they
| began offering those plans. I'm from Brazil and I saw the
| change from SMS to WhatsApp happen. Today, several small
| business rely on WhatsApp for orders and general
| communication. When the service went off last year, it was
| quite chaotic.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Even as far back as late 00s, facebook was paying local cell
| phone companies in my country to allow customers to access
| mobile facebook for free without any data package at all.
| est wrote:
| China runs on Wechat. Including the govn't
| open1414 wrote:
| Wechat is the government
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| CCP is the government, WeChat is merely an extension of it.
| closewith wrote:
| Not just the 3rd world (assuming you mean developing world, not
| the non-aligned movement). Ireland's national health service
| allowed the (already prevalent) use of WhatsApp during the
| pandemic (and which helped save it when internal email was
| taken down for months alongside almost all other IT services
| due to a ransomware attack). Now non-clinical comms is
| dominated by WhatsApp and the service would literally halt
| without it.
|
| Source: https://healthservice.hse.ie/staff/procedures-
| guidelines/dig...
| ComodoHacker wrote:
| In some places, it's WeChat. In others, it's Telegram.
| benced wrote:
| Seems like the issue is CDMX's government (which I'd note tends
| to be on the left of Mexican politics) is keeping fares down. I
| get why, it's an appealing policy and raising fares would
| actually hurt people (in a way that a 25 cent hike in the US
| really doesn't) but the long term cost is high.
| absrd wrote:
| The maintenance funding being gutted by 40% seems like the
| bigger contributing factor here
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| While I get their reasons, I think it's disgusting that someone
| is running critical infrastructure out of what amounts to a
| centralised (single point of failure) consumer communications app
| being run by a social media. Something like this should only ever
| be a stopgap measure until proper, dedicated, supported
| infrastructure is put in place.
| sneak wrote:
| What makes you think WhatsApp is centralized or has any single
| points of failure?
|
| What makes you think that dedicated infrastructure run by the
| train people would be less centralized or more reliable than
| that run by Facebook?
| red_admiral wrote:
| There is a far, far bigger problem than WhatsApp here, starting
| with the fact that the article reports a recent collision with
| fatailities.
|
| This is not a system the size of the US so there's no need for
| "dark territory" [1] - this is a metro system! Best practice
| would be to have some kind of block-based system where only one
| train can occupy a block at a time, and signals control this (if
| you've ever played factorio, you know what I mean).
|
| It seems that what happened is they tried to implement an
| automatic "moving block" system where trains would keep each
| other safe, but when that fails, they're back to no block at all,
| and relying on WhatsApp for SAFETY-CRITICAL communication. There
| is only one way this can possibly end.
|
| Europe has been trying to design moving block as part of ETCS
| "level 3" and it turns out that's really hard to do to the usual
| safety standards. The only place I know of that does this in
| production is the Wuppertal overhead monorail (which is worth a
| visit, by the way).
|
| [1] https://www.frauscher.us/en_us/solutions/dark-territory
| xtracto wrote:
| > There is a far, far bigger problem than WhatsApp here,
| starting with the fact that the article reports a recent
| collision with fatailities.
|
| Oooh Mexico Majico. The Mexico City Metro system is falling
| into pieces. There have been several terrible accidents in very
| recent times:
|
| - Line 12 Overpass Collapse (3 May 2021
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico_City_Metro_overpass_col...
| )
|
| - Line 3 Collision (couple of days ago)
| https://www.npr.org/2023/01/07/1147728625/mexico-city-subway...
| )
|
| - Line 5 Fire (couple of days ago
| https://www.infobae.com/america/mexico/2023/01/11/metro-
| cdmx...).
|
| This is the result of years and years of corruption and lack of
| maintenance. Officers of EVERY level stealing money that is
| supposed to go for maintenance. Or "contracting" their cousins,
| friends and other co-conspirators to perform the maintenance,
| but in reality they keep the money and let the infrastructure
| to rot.
| leoedin wrote:
| There's already loads of trains using moving block signalling -
| the Thales SelTrac system has had it for at least 20 years. It
| tends to be used on single-purpose metro lines.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SelTrac
| michael1999 wrote:
| It sounds like their moving block system was working, but it
| has been slow-motion failing for a decade due to maintenance
| budget. So the emergency WhatsApp backup has been normalized as
| operations. But normalizing drivers handling their phones
| introduces new risks. So, yeah - there is only one way this
| ends.
|
| The alternative is follow Toronto and New York, and slow the
| trains down and require full exclusion. But that has its own
| problems reducing system capacity, which Mexico City can scarce
| afford.
| Abhitaneja89 wrote:
| https://mahadevonlinebook.cloud/dragon-tiger-online-casino-g...
| Yhippa wrote:
| ChatGPT tl;dr
|
| Mexico City subway riders are expressing concerns that distracted
| train operators might be putting commuters' lives at risk,
| following a collision of two trains that left one dead and dozens
| injured. However, due to the system being poorly maintained,
| drivers depend on their phones to communicate with each other and
| keep the trains running. The use of cellphones during working
| hours is not condoned by Mexico City's mass transit workers'
| union as per the organization's general guidelines but it is
| essential for the trains to run smoothly. The Mexico City subway
| is one of the cheapest in the world: 5 pesos (about 25 cents) per
| ride, but the budget only covers operative costs. It would
| require double its current budget to cover maintenance costs.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I know this will never happen in Toronto because our subway
| system has virtually no cellular service.
| etblg wrote:
| Unless you use Freedom Mobile, the one operator that uses the
| cellular service in the tunnel, in which case you'll get pretty
| good coverage close to downtown.
| donkeyofd00m wrote:
| Hey, but isn't part of the fun going on the young-university
| line and having the exciting supprise that you have to take
| buses to the next station due to maitnance?
|
| :)
| totalZero wrote:
| Despite good connectivity, some drivers can't afford to
| stay online all the time, said Jaime. According to Jimena,
| about 98% of the train operators on her line use WhatsApp
| on the job, but some will often run out of data, which they
| must pay for out-of-pocket.
|
| Seems like WhatsApp isn't the problem here, but rather the
| solution. They need better comms infrastructure and more funding
| for maintenance.
| londons_explore wrote:
| If Whatsapp is replacing radio equipment in the trains and does
| a satisfactory job, then it should 100% become the official way
| to do it.
|
| The 'proper' solution of new radios on the train and all the
| associated ground infrastructure installation cost could be
| really expensive (think millions of dollars). Yet just giving
| each driver a data plan would only cost thousands of dollars.
|
| The whatsapp solution is so much cheaper because the
| infrastructure (4G towers) is already installed for passengers
| of the train, the network is already run for citizens of the
| country, and the software work is already done by Whatsapp for
| their other 1.1 Billion users.
|
| Whatsapp isn't a 'cheap' solution. It's the very expensive
| solution where the cost has already been paid for by a billion
| other people, so, as long as it meets the needs of the subway,
| it _is_ the cheap solution.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| > If Whatsapp is replacing radio equipment in the trains and
| does a satisfactory job, then it should 100% become the
| official way to do it.
|
| WhatsApp is consumer-grade software. Using it to manage a
| transport system is like using a $50 home-oriented manual
| espresso machine in a busy cafe instead of a proper
| commercial unit with automatic grinding, multiple nozzles,
| and a support agreement in place.
| whywhywhydude wrote:
| When it comes to software, consumer grade software used and
| tested by a billion people is always going to be more
| reliable than some niche commercial grade software created
| by a contractor.
| gernb wrote:
| That assessment doesn't fit the reputation of the software
| that runs in most government departments including public
| transportation departments
| nebula8804 wrote:
| It might be 'consumer-grade' but man is it well designed. I
| consider it one of my aspirations to write software as
| robust as Whatsapp. Sometimes I sit in my cube looking at
| my utter mess of an Angular app that I develop for a few
| thousand concurrent users and think, man how the hell am I
| ever going to get anywhere as close to as how good
| something like Whatsapp is.
|
| The reason its so good is how it handles edge cases. it
| brilliantly handles edge cases like when connection is
| extremely spotty. In 2015 when I was backpacking around
| Europe I learned this the hard way when iMessage repeatedly
| hit issues where it would get stuck transmitting mid
| message and would require drastic things like rebooting the
| iPhone (because that damn status bar gets stuck and then
| you have no recourse) whereas no matter how slow/spotty the
| connection (like 64kb/s or slower), Whatsapp would
| patiently work and reliably get the transmission through
| eventually.
|
| In hindsight, I am thankful Zuckerberg had the sense to
| acquire them. He has so far done a lot less to destroy it
| than I expected. Can you imagine if they got acquired by
| some garbage dump of a company like Oracle, or Salesforce,
| or (shudders) Google? Just think of all the ways they would
| have ruined it.
| londons_explore wrote:
| People might say "it clearly doesn't meet the needs of the
| railway. it isn't reliable enough".
|
| Those people might be right. But I'd like to point to the old
| solution, the radios in the trains, which are in the middle
| of a decade long outage right now. It's more reliable than
| that.
|
| And this stuff isn't safety critical - in-cab radios are
| mostly used for logistics. Everything from scheduling shifts
| to getting trains to wait a few extra minutes to even out
| gaps in the service. Without it, the service wouldn't run so
| smoothly. But it could still run.
| counttheforks wrote:
| I would prefer to not give facebook even more power.
| red_admiral wrote:
| It sounds to me like WhatsApp is being used for safety-
| critical stuff:
|
| > Previously, each train could automatically identify its
| proximity to another one. "It is designed to stop so trains
| don't collide," said Perez Varela. Now, human operators,
| who had initially been hired as a fail-safe to manually
| halt a train if the automatic pilot failed, need to
| intervene more often. Trains usually run at 70 kilometers
| per hour, but when the autopilot signals that it is not
| working, operators must take immediate action to manually
| reduce the speed to 35 kilometers per hour to avoid
| derailment. > > Since the trains are increasingly manually
| driven, real-time communication among operators is
| essential. "We are all provided with a radio but it doesn't
| work properly," Jaime, an operator who has worked at the
| Metro for 17 years, told Rest of World on condition of
| anonymity. "That's why we started using our cellphones."
|
| That reads to me like they need communication to ensure
| they don't run into the rear of the train ahead.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Until whatsapp dies. Subway systems run for decades. Can
| anyone really trust that any particular app will still be
| around in twenty years? Or two? For critical infrastructure
| you need something stable, something like a part of the RF
| spectrum dedicated to critical infrastructure. This is why
| cops/pilots/ships still have dedicated radios even though
| some combination of cell/satellite phones would certainly be
| much cheaper in the short term.
| ilyt wrote:
| > Until whatsapp dies. Subway systems run for decades. Can
| anyone really trust that any particular app will still be
| around in twenty years? Or two? For critical infrastructure
| you need something stable, something like a part of the RF
| spectrum dedicated to critical infrastructure. This is why
| cops/pilots/ships still have dedicated radios even though
| some combination of cell/satellite phones would certainly
| be much cheaper in the short term.
|
| The radios of those are outside. The radios of subway are
| underground. It's not great for radios, requires
| infrastructure, and phones solve it in same way, by having
| infrastructure close to cover for reduced range.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Well, they're using dedicated radios now and they're broken
| so that's clearly not a solution. So when WhatsApp breaks,
| you just say "Okay, we're using DopeyMsg, the new messaging
| tool everyone is using" or whatever.
| closewith wrote:
| Huge amounts of the world de facto run on WhatsApp,
| including essential services like healthcare, emergency
| services, finance, etc. WhatsApp going down or shutting
| down is already an enormous threat.
| totalZero wrote:
| That may be true, but from an engineering perspective
| it's unwise to build a two-story house on a sand
| foundation just because the rest of the neighborhood has
| done so.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Sure, but you can say that about most solutions,
| especially organic bottom-up solutions, like the
| internet, while neglecting the upsides of it being
| bottom-up and organic like this system's ability to come
| up with its own fixes just-in-time instead of waiting for
| top-down decree.
|
| FWIW, telco companies in Mexico don't charge for WhatsApp
| data transfer. As for prices, a 30 day Telcel 4.5GB plan
| is 200 pesos ($10) per month. So long as you don't use up
| the data doing things outside of WhatsApp, like surfing
| the web, which will expire the plan, then you get free
| WhatsApp (and Instagram and most social media) transfer
| for the month.
|
| So it's not the worst organic solution and it's not even
| obvious how to centralize a better solution. For example,
| how many subway drivers are there and how much govt
| bureaucracy would be needed to do something like give
| everyone a $10 stipend for WhatsApp? Even giving each
| driver an extra $10 pesos per month wouldn't change
| anything.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _Until whatsapp dies. Subway systems run for decades._
|
| Then you upgrade? There's nothing that precludes that the
| bespoke system won't die and by the looks of it the current
| system has already died leading to the use of Whatsapp.
| anaganisk wrote:
| Switch to telegram when whtsapp dies or one of the
| gazillion alternatives.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| > Until whatsapp dies.
|
| it wouldn't be that expensive to make your own app that
| sends and receives messages over 4g.
| nkrisc wrote:
| You're ignoring the hidden costs of relying on a free, third-
| party, web-based service for your critical communication
| network.
| donkeyofd00m wrote:
| Perhaps I'm being pedantic, but it seems moreso that proper
| comms infrastructure design and preventative maitnance plans is
| the problem
|
| Whatsapp is a readily available and an accessible solution...
| one that is better than current comms infrastructure. A local
| maximum
|
| I used to know a marketing specialist in Mexico who lived there
| her whole life. Apparently 90% of advertising for cheap
| consumer goods is done on TV and radio. <10% on websites or
| streaming services, since many choose not to use them or can't
| afford subscriptions
|
| Not to say that there aren't beautiful, well developed global
| cities with wonderful people and opportunities there.
| Guadalajara and Mexico City are great and growing. I see the
| country in a state very similar to late 1800s indusdrial
| America; high inequality, poor low-skill workers rights and pay
| with backlash occuring, large government backed infrastructure
| projects, fairly patriarchal buisness elite (and corruption
| within the "boys club"), fairly absent middle class relative to
| other countries. Moreso two classes. "Well off, global citizen"
| or "making ends meet, live in my town for my whole life or move
| where the work goes"
|
| Relying on a phone app seems like an unstable solution, as when
| the next budget cut comes, it could include scrapping the
| company phones in the case they were provided. Or downgrading
| data plans that are so slow that latency is too high. Wouldn't
| be a problem until the next accident
|
| Or, if workers are underpaid (low-skill, non corporate in
| Mexico), selling provided company phones on the 2nd hand market
| for cash could be fairly common... lying and saying they still
| have them
|
| Unless if Mexico further lowers it's gini coefficient...
| something I'm very optimistic with (but over decades) OR
| provides rudimentary smart phones (or even dated tech like
| pagers) for work, to me this whatsapp method seems as an easy
| means for middle managers just to save on their spending
| budgets. Unless there is middle management buy-in to further
| develop its usage in a stable way, it seems like a piecemeal
| (yet effective and creative) solution by the workers due to
| infrastructure neglect
| pier25 wrote:
| Obviously. But in a corrupt country like Mexico, there's never
| enough funding for anything. And now the current federal govt
| is burning gobs of cash on mega projects which only makes
| things worse.
| squarefoot wrote:
| > Seems like WhatsApp isn't the problem here, but rather the
| solution.
|
| It's a quick patch that potentially creates many more problems
| however, since the product isn't rated for that work and cannot
| guarantee any uptime. Also the touchscreen can be quite
| distracting and therefore dangerous. If the problem is that the
| communication infrastructure doesn't work reliably, but
| cellphone coverage does, the answer, aside restructuring the
| existing infrastructure, should be small 4G capable SBC boards
| with audio and text features, one per train, not a cellphone
| with WhatsApp.
| saint_fiasco wrote:
| > If there is ever a WhatsApp outage, Metro workers have parallel
| Facebook chats to maintain communication.
|
| I hope the different chat services run by Meta don't share any
| critical infrastructure.
| fragmede wrote:
| October 4th, 2021 proved that they at least used to. If the
| SREs did their jobs, that may no longer be true.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Facebook_outage
| el-salvador wrote:
| Not sure about now, but a BGP error affected all Meta services
| one or two years ago.
| bigiain wrote:
| Yeah. Maybe they should choose a different more reliable
| company like Twitter?
|
| https://localtoday.news/wa/twitter-bans-the-metrobusinfo-acc...
| gowld wrote:
| It is against Twitter policy to publish the movements of
| transportation vehicles.
| Shared404 wrote:
| Twitter and Facebook aren't the only two options, and I don't
| think GP was suggesting Twitter was the right one.
| aerojoe23 wrote:
| It sounds like malicious (but not really) compliance would
| quickly get this solved.
|
| This would go something like an open letter to management and the
| public.
|
| "Dear metro users and management,
|
| On X date we will compile with the rules. We'll all stop using
| our phones. If our radios aren't working we're required to run
| the trains even slower to maintain safety. (Hopefully that's
| actually a rule.)
|
| We understand this will effectively shutdown the metro, but it
| needs funding to operate safely. We cannot in good conscious
| continue endangering the lives of our passengers and ourselves."
|
| The public will demand funding.
| gowld wrote:
| This is Mexico, the public can't demand funding.
| drowsspa wrote:
| The first world truly is a different planet.
| parabyl wrote:
| A similar practice is common in South Africa in order to find out
| when the train is arriving (if at all). You'd have to ask the
| person at the ticket office to check the Whatsapp group for you
| (or if you're friendly enough with them, to add you to the group)
| where the ticket officers at other stations along the line update
| when the train has passed them.
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