WhatsApp down: Top 5 outages that disrupted the world
1 min read . Updated: 25 Oct 2022, 03:07 PM IST
Premium- About 69% reported that messages were not going through, while others reported server disconnection and the app crashing altogether.
WhatsApp had its longest outage ever on Tuesday affecting over 2 billion users who rely on WhatsApp for communication and payments.
Down Detector first noticed this first around 12.07 pm with many across the globe reporting them. And many such reports started coming from India, its biggest market by user base, around one. Downdetector tracks outages by collating status reports from a number of sources including user-submitted errors on its platform.
About 69% reported that messages were not going through, while others reported server disconnection and the app crashing altogether. The outage may have affected a larger number of users.
The app's latest outage comes during the festive season in India - its biggest market by user count- when people use the platform even more than usual to send season's greetings.
Social media users from Italy and Turkey also posted about not being able to send messages. The messaging service is down for users across the UK, the BBC reported. #whatsappdown was trending on Twitter, with more than 70000 tweets and hundreds of memes flooding the internet.
"We're aware that some people are currently having trouble sending messages and we're working to restore WhatsApp for everyone as quickly as possible," a spokesperson for WhatsApp parent company Meta Platforms said on Tuesday.
Some previous outages that rocked the world:
- 9 and 5 October 2021: Social media platforms including Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp faced an outage together twice in one week. Many users were seen flocking to competitors including Signal
- March 2021: WhatsApp and Instagram suffered a major outage. However, it was back in around 45 mins. "A technical issue caused people to have trouble accessing some Facebook services. We resolved this issue for everyone, and we apologize for any inconvenience," a Facebook spokesperson said.
- June 2020: WhatsApp was down for millions of users in India and elsewhere who reported issues with privacy settings as well as last seen online status not working.
- April 2020: In the first week of April, Facebook and Instagram went down for the PC and desktop users in the UK. On April 2, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp went down for millions of users in North and South America and Europe.
