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A comment on WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide Today by a Single Judge. Parent comment

Re:WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide T... by cplease on Monday May 02, 2016 @10:06PM (#11617308)
> First, WhatsApp is a US company and has no presence in Brazil.

I certainly disagree with this ruling, but "no presence in Brazil" is wrong and contradicted by Facebook itself:

https://www.facebook.com/careers/locations/saopaulo/

> São Paulo, Brazil 23 open positions

> One of the most talented and diverse cities in the world, Sao Paulo is a hub for our operations throughout Latin America. Our teams make an impact by providing support to our communities, small and medium businesses and brands in the region.

And of course their Latin America VP is located in this office:

http://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-hires-new-latin-americ...

So I don't know where the bizarre idea that Facebook has "no presence" in Brazil comes from.

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Re:WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide T... by ultrasandwich on Monday May 02, 2016 @11:14PM (#11617606)
WhatsApp and Facebook are in fact still separate companies. Just making this distinction.
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Re:WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide T... by cplease on Wednesday May 04, 2016 @12:32AM (#11626212)
"Separate" as in WhatsApp Inc. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Facebook Inc. That matters a lot.
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Re:WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide T... by ultrasandwich on Thursday May 05, 2016 @12:04AM (#11633952)
I suppose, but would you refer to General Electric and Telemundo in the same interchangeable way? Same difference. If I were applying to a job in GE's aviation research division, I wouldn't mail my application to Telemundo.
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Re:WhatsApp, Used by 100M Brazilians, Shut Down Nationwide T... by cplease on Thursday May 05, 2016 @11:51PM (#11641571)
That's actually wrong at multiple levels; Telemundo is a division of NBCUniversal, a wholly owned subsidiary of Comcast since 2013.

It would be an apt comparison, if you imagine that Comcast had a Latin American headquarters in Brazil, where Telemundo's Portuguese telenovelas have millions of viewers; it would be weak tea for NBCUniversal to then argue that Brazil had no jurisdiction over it and the programming it distributes there because the shows are produced in Florida and NBCUniversal has no employees there.

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