Messaging service WhatsApp is back up after an outage of about two hours, its longest ever. It stopped working just after noon in India and other countries. Restoration began by 2.15 pm, though users reported that it was not stable upon return. The glitches went away gradually.
Prominent online tool Down Detector started noticing unusually high “problem reports” at 12.07 pm, and had listed more than 25,000 such reports by 1 pm. Nearly 70 per cent of the reports were about messages not going through, while others were about server disconnection and the app crashing altogether. These reports came down to about 1,000 by 3 pm.
Besides those in India, WhatsApp’s biggest market by user base, social media users from Italy and Turkey also posted about not being able to send messages. It was down for users across the UK, the BBC reported, too.
Over 2 billion users rely on WhatsApp for communication and payments.
The company said it was working on bringing it back up. “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,” said a spokesperson of Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram besides WhatsApp.
A meme fest with the hashtag #WhatsAppDown began on Twitter and other platforms. Many users said they first thought their internet service was the problem.
So I was blaming my WiFi but actually I got to check on Twitter that the WhatsApp is down. @WhatsApp#whatsappdownpic.twitter.com/43tuT6cyol
— Mohsin Shafique (@Mohsinkhan7__) October 25, 2022
Another meme had a shot of Farhan Akhtar, from the movie Milkha Singh, “running to check on Twitter if WhatsApp is down”.
Everyone running to #Twitter to check on #Whatsapp#whatsappdownpic.twitter.com/MEm6MpegWQ
— Aarti Patil (@aartipatil92) October 25, 2022
It’s the first such global outage since last year. On October 5, 2021, all three Meta outlets were down for up to six hours.
