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January 4, 20261 min read8 views

Ever wondered how WhatsApp handles Status, Delete for Everyone, or View Once? 🤔

Before Meta acquired WhatsApp, its core was built on Erlang/OTP — a language designed for massive concurrency and fault tolerance. Perfect for a global messaging platform. Fun facts: ✔ WhatsApp doesn’

WhatsApp
TechStack
SystemDesign
Erlang
BackendEngineering
DistributedSystems
Scalability
Meta
SoftwareArchitecture
Encryption

Ever wondered how WhatsApp handles Status, Delete for Everyone, or View Once? 🤔

Before Meta acquired WhatsApp, its core was built on Erlang/OTP — a language designed for massive concurrency and fault tolerance. Perfect for a global messaging platform.

Fun facts:

✔ WhatsApp doesn’t store your chat messages.

Messages go straight to the recipient’s device through end-to-end encryption.

That’s why backups live on your phone or cloud — not on WhatsApp servers.

✔ “Delete for Everyone” isn’t deleting stored content.

It simply sends a delete instruction tied to the message ID — so the app knows to remove that message on all devices. 🧹

âś” Status (24 hours)

Encrypted status updates are stored temporarily on WhatsApp’s servers so your contacts can view them.

After 24 hours, the server auto-deletes them — no manual cleanup needed. ⏳

âś” View Once

Media is uploaded encrypted, delivered, viewed one time, and then instantly deleted from both the server and the viewer’s device. 👀❌

WhatsApp is a masterclass in choosing the right technology for scale.

đź’¬ Have you ever worked with Erlang/OTP or built highly concurrent systems?

🤯 Which WhatsApp feature do you think is the hardest to implement?

Chat on WhatsApp