Line Goes Down and Nation Spasms

Photo: @Mokey_ann / Twitter

BANGKOK — Some thought they’d been hacked. Others thought their loved ones had cut them off. A few took the opportunity to reflect on their technological dependence.

When the most popular chatting application went down for several hours Thursday night, many Thais were more than just bereft of sending cute stickers to each other. Line went down for a wide swath of users starting at about 11pm until the early hours of Friday, leading users to take to Twitter to complain.

“#TheyCanLiveWithoutMe but without Line, I can’t live,” @Mheehook said, using another popular hashtag about heartbreak.

Some users said they couldn’t send any sort of messages while others could only send text messages without attached media. Others were unable to video call. The glitch was experienced on both the mobile and desktop versions.

Advertisement

As of late Friday morning, Line Thailand had given no explanation for the outage.

Tweeters took to using #LineDown to express their consternation at being unable to send bunny and duck stickers.

“Last night, I had to take a hard look at myself. Much of my life is tied to Line and social media, according to my irritation and worry levels,” wrote @Djtumm. “Important messages and photos are just kept here. We have to be careful. I’ve been personally hacked on Line.”

“We were about to fight because of #LineDown. ‘Did you block me?’” @Dokkatiw tweeted. “Sigh. Even if you didn’t block me, it’s like you did anyway.”

A Facebook post by iPhoneMod.net Facebook page posted 11:42pm Thursday asked people if they were having problems with Line and got over 8,700 likes as of Friday morning. “I thought my internet was down at first. Both my mobile phones using AIS and True didn’t work; it turns out Line is broken. Damn 555+” wrote commenter Paphitchaya Marnyapohn.

Advertisement

According to an unscientific poll by @Publicyalan, almost 80 percent of users experienced Line glitches.

“#TheyCanLiveWithoutMe but without Line, I can’t live,” joked @mheehook, using another hashtag about heartbreak.