Coronavirus pandemic | WhatsApp limits status to 15 seconds in India to prevent an internet slowdown

India's favourite messaging app WhatsApp has witnessed a spike in usage recently, thanks to the coronavirus lockdown enforced in the country. However, the spike in usage is causing unnecessary hogging of internet bandwidth at a time when internet usage is soaring. In order to reduce the consumption of internet bandwidth, WhatsApp is limiting the duration of videos that can be uploaded as WhatsApp Status. Now, WhatsApp users can only upload 15-second videos as opposed to 30-second videos earlier.

Videos uploaded as WhatsApp status are stored on the server for 24 hours and the decision to reduce the duration of the videos was likely made to free some of the internet bandwidth. The update was confirmed by folks over at WABetaInfo through a Twitter post.

ANNOUNCEMENT: You can no longer send videos to WhatsApp Status if they are longer than 16 seconds: only videos having a duration of 15 seconds will be allowed. This is happening in India and it's probably an initiative to reduce the traffic on the server infrastructures.

— WABetaInfo (@WABetaInfo) March 28, 2020

In a more recent tweet, WABetaInfo noted that the new change is only a temporary decision and full functionality will be restored in the future, presumably after the lockdown. WhatsApp's decision to reduce the duration of video status shouldn’t come as a surprise as several platforms are taking steps to reduce the consumption of internet bandwidth.

As hundreds of millions of people around the world are forced to stay at home, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube and other video streaming platforms have cut streaming resolutions to prevent the internet from crashing.