WhatsApp service resumes after 2 hours; it isn't longest outage: Details here
Online tool Down Detector started noticing unusually high "problem reports" at 12:07 pm, and had listed thousands of such reports by 1 pm in India, WhatsApp's biggest market by user base. Most reports were about messages not going through, at 69 per cent, while others reported server disconnection and the app crashing altogether.
Messaging service app WhatsApp on Tuesday was back online, though with some glitches, after an outage of about two hours. In India, the social messaging app stopped working just after noon. Restoration began by 2:15 pm, though users reported that it was glitching and not working on its desktop app.
Online tool Down Detector started noticing unusually high "problem reports" at 12:07 pm, and had listed thousands of such reports by 1 pm in India, WhatsApp's biggest market by user base. Most reports were about messages not going through, at 69 per cent, while others reported server disconnection and the app crashing altogether.
Social media users from Italy and Turkey also posted about not being able to send messages.
However, this was not the longest outage. The last longest WhatsApp outage happened on October 5, 2021.
Several social media users across the globe were in for a shock when WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram went kaput on October 5, 2021 eveing. Several users had thonged to Twitter to reconfirm whether the issue was with their network or did the Facebook-owned apps really go down.
Also read: WhatsApp services restored after nearly 2 hours, IT ministry seeks report from Meta
It took over six hours for Facebook to resolve the issue that the company claimed arose due to a faulty configuration change. According to reports, WhatsApp outage had allegedly affected over 3.5 billion users across the globe.
The interesting bit about the Facebook outage was just how severe it was and how it not only made services like WhatsApp inaccessible but also made facebook.com and its servers disappear from the internet.
Also read: WhatsApp outage: Meta trying to fix 'as soon as possible'; crash sparks meme fest on Twitter
This was one of the longest outages Facebook and its services like WhatsApp faced. Soon after the reports of Facebook going down spread on the Internet like wildfire, the conspiracy theorists claimed that the outage happened due to a massive hack.
However, the chances of any possible hacks were ruled out by Facebook in its blog hours later. The blog noted that the cause of the global outage was a glitch in routers. Facebook has blamed the faulty configuration change behind the outage.