Rebirth 2010: I taught Mr. Lei how to make a mobile phone

Chapter 946 The First-Ever Internet Strike

A taxi.

"Driver, let's stop here."

"Okay, that'll be 23 yuan in total."

The passenger expertly pulled out his phone. "Just scan this code, right?"

"Yes, that one."

drop--

"What?! WeChat is under maintenance?!" The passenger stared at the "Service temporarily unavailable" message on the screen, looking completely bewildered.

The driver paused for a moment, then pointed to the back of the QR code sign: "How could WeChat not work? Turn it over, the back has Alipay..."

The passenger frowned and complained, "The Alipay page is ridiculously complicated, who still uses that anymore..."

"Well... cash is fine too," the driver said helplessly.

The passenger looked troubled: "Who carries cash these days..."

The two looked at each other for a moment, then the passenger took out his phone, opened Gaode Maps, and started looking something up.
"Sir, could you please drive another 300 meters? There's an ATM there..."

"Alright, sit tight!"

A group of people walked out of the entrance of an internet cafe in twos and threes.

"Damn, the base is only 50 drops of health away from exploding!"

"Does the other side have to be so punctual? Would it kill them to be a few seconds late?"

"Haha, good job breaking it! Serves you right for showing off. You even fought well!"

"Let's eat!"

"I just discovered an incredibly powerful lineup for the new season of Glory Showdown: the Rack Maniac build! I'll share it with you in a bit."

"Damn it, what does my playing Three Kingdoms Kill have to do with the other side? Why can't I play it anymore?"

"Maybe the server is hosted on a cloud platform like Biyan Cloud~~~"

A cacophony of complaints, jokes, and shouts echoed through the area.

"Yan Jin, what's wrong with your former employer? Why is WeChat not working anymore?"

"WeChat is undergoing maintenance in accordance with national requirements. It's only for an hour; you can just bear with it. Why are you calling about this?"

"Oh, dinner's ready at home. After you pick up the kid, buy a watermelon. If you see any peaches, buy two pounds..." The woman paused, then revised her instructions: "Remember, when you get home, you need to have a kid, a watermelon, and two pounds of peaches in your hands."

"okay."

More than half an hour later, the door opened.

"Why is it taking so long? The food is getting cold."

"The training course went overtime, and with the added expense of buying fruit, this is already the fastest we can manage to execute the theory."

"Didn't you think about adjusting your priorities? Go downstairs and buy the fruit first, then come back just in time for your child to finish school. That would save at least half the time."

"Didn't you say that after picking up the child..." Yan Jin scratched his head, feeling that his understanding of the instructions was fine.

The woman gave a helpless, wry smile. "Yan Jin, oh Yan Jin, you really didn't choose the wrong name."

WeChat is unusable for communication, payment is unavailable, all games are offline, orders from JD.com and Xiaomi are unavailable, SF Express has suspended package pickups, DJI's official website is undergoing temporary maintenance, and Pang Donglai has closed its stores for half a day.

Although services such as Douyin, Gaode Maps, and Ele.me have not completely ceased, since they primarily rely on Beyond Cloud servers, the temporary switch to backup servers serves as a disaster recovery drill. However, the overall load capacity is significantly lower than usual, necessitating the implementation of traffic throttling measures.

Countless businesses and merchants across all industries that use Beyond Cloud services have already put up "system maintenance, please understand" signs in advance.

Even government websites like 12306, which rely on the cloud service, were affected to varying degrees when switching to the backup cloud.

As the services of the Beyond Network "collectively went offline," people belatedly realized that, without realizing it, these software and services had long been deeply integrated into their daily work and life, just like water, electricity, and gas, becoming an indispensable infrastructure.

The last time a similar situation occurred was during certain special periods when public entertainment activities were suspended.

Even though the other side gave several days' advance notice and announced a compensation plan, it still caused great inconvenience to people's daily lives and quickly sparked heated discussions across the internet:
"This is so inconvenient! I was planning to transfer money to a friend via WeChat at noon to help them out of an emergency, but I found that I couldn't make the payment. When I called, I found out that the phone was out of service for maintenance. Couldn't they have chosen a more convenient time? This is such a hassle!"

"I was on a date with my girlfriend at noon, but WeChat crashed. It's so inconvenient to have to go back to those old-fashioned ways of communicating—phone calls and text messages."

"Although it's a bit inconvenient that WeChat Pay isn't working, I suddenly understood when I saw the announcement saying it was 'in response to national data security requirements.' After all, there have been too many news reports about data breaches. It's always better for companies to spend time strengthening their security than to try to fix things after something goes wrong."

"They started sending out notifications three days in advance and repeatedly reminded us of the time. Everything was clearly written in advance, showing that they were trying to minimize the impact. The compensation measures were also very sincere; at least their attitude was right."

"What's the point of giving advance notice? My small shop relies entirely on WeChat Pay for transactions. If I can't accept payments for an hour, all business will stop! I won't be able to make change in cash, and I won't be able to use my bank card. Who will compensate me for the lost revenue?"

"If you can't even stand an hour and can't plan your time in advance, that's all the ambition you have."

"Try to look on the bright side. Shutting down at noon is actually quite reasonable, as it falls right around lunchtime. It's much better than choosing peak office hours on weekdays, right?"

"Before the shutdown of Beyond Cloud Computing, our company received an email from Beyond in advance, which even suggested backup plans. What more could we ask for?"

"The other side is garbage. They just shut it down whenever they want. Who are they trying to scare with this one-size-fits-all approach? If we can't live without WeChat, we still have Alipay. Who can't we live without?"

"If that's the case, what about a few years ago when a major company had its fiber optic cable severed, causing a partial service outage for up to 8 hours? In the end, they just sent an apology letter and didn't even offer any compensation. Isn't that even more shameless? I won't say which company it was."

Not only is the public debating the issue, but various media outlets, already poised to launch their own analyses, have also published their commentaries immediately.

Southern Weekly: "An Alibaba technical expert stated that requiring a global, simultaneous shutdown for a tech giant with a market capitalization of trillions is a failure of architecture. Modern distributed systems should pursue canary releases and fault isolation; this 'one-size-fits-all' approach is extremely unprofessional. This isn't a natural disaster, but a man-made one."

The Beijing News: "In an era where 'never offline' has become the default standard, the fact that the other side is proactively shutting down for maintenance is actually a kind of 'go-against-the-trend' sobering thought."

A company's willingness to sacrifice short-term traffic for long-term security demonstrates its responsibility to users; this "slowing down" requires a broader perspective than "running fast."

The Qiantang Evening News reported: "A one-hour shutdown on the other side is equivalent to a near-total shutdown of China's digital society. This goes far beyond corporate behavior; it is a public event with significant social impact."

It clearly demonstrates what "too big to fail" means and also serves as a warning of the need for stronger public oversight of such companies.

China Internet Weekly: "The essence of downtime maintenance is the necessary cost of technological iteration."

The fact that the company dared to make changes to its three core businesses—WeChat, games, and cloud computing—reveals the scalability of its system architecture. Companies that dare to shut down their systems often have the confidence to complete complex technical transitions in a short time, which demonstrates greater technological confidence than empty promises of "never going down."

The Paper: "The announcement from the other side claimed to be for 'security reinforcement' and 'responding to national rectification,' but why was it so rushed? Security maintenance and updates should be a continuous and silent process, not a sensational 'cyber strike' that shakes China."

This inevitably raises suspicions that there are non-technical factors driving it, or that it's a strong statement to regulators.

36Kr: "Our rough estimate is that the apparent losses from this one-hour downtime exceeded 5 million yuan, and the potential losses are as high as several billion yuan."

Fortunately, the other side is not listed, otherwise the impact on its market value would be even greater.

Furthermore, based on the assessment just now, in order to eliminate the negative impact of the shutdown and appease public sentiment, the additional compensation from the other side this time is approximately tens of billions.

This shows that even when faced with such force majeure maintenance, advance notice was issued and the other side remained the same, with everything done with the user in mind, trying to minimize the impact.

To be honest, I don't think Chen Mo did it on purpose.

I did it on purpose!

In the Nanshan No. 1 Courtyard, the man sat upright in his study, holding the mobile phone that could control half of China's internet.

Like the ultimate mastermind behind the scenes
(End of this chapter)