As a measure to reduce the network load as a majority of people across the world is staying indoors in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, streaming platforms have been temporarily reducing video quality. The latest app to rise to the situation is Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp. WhatsApp has now reduced the video status duration from 30 seconds to 15 seconds in India.

As pointed out by WABetaInfo on Twitter over the weekend, you will be restricted to 15 seconds whenever you try uploading video status in the platform. “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.”

The 15-second status limit has been imposed through a server-side change and hence, it doesn’t matter if you avoid updating your app. You will be seeing a toast message that reads “Videos sent to My Status will be trimmed to the first 15 seconds.” in the status upload screen, as you can see in the image below.

However, WABetaInfo mentions this is a temporary change and will be reversed after the situation settles. “NOTE: it is a temporary decision. The full functionality will be restored in future”. With that said, you can always upload multiple follow-up statuses as a workaround, though we don’t recommend doing it at this moment.

Notably, this is one of WhatsApp’s efforts to help reduce the impact of the pandemic. The company previously teamed up with WHO, UNICEF, and UNDP to create a dedicated WhatsApp Coronavirus Information Hub to fight misinformation and launched coronavirus chatbot to give credible information regarding the pandemic.