WhatsApp back online after global outage hits users

[The_King]

SINGAPORE: Popular messaging app WhatsApp has restored its services after users across the world reported issues earlier on Tuesday (Oct 25).

"We know people had trouble sending messages on WhatsApp today.

"We've fixed the issue and apologise for any inconvenience," a spokesperson for WhatsApp parent company Meta Platforms said.

The company did not disclose the reason for the outage.

Users in Asia, the United Kingdom, South Africa and Europe were affected.

The website Downdetector saw a surge in reports just before 3pm Singapore time, with many users commenting that they were unable to send and receive messages.

At around 3.50pm, Downdetector showed that more than 68,000 users had reported problems with the app in the UK. Problems were also reported by 19,000 people in Singapore and 15,000 people in South Africa, it said.

As of 5pm, WhatApp appeared to be functioning normally, with reports tapering off on Downdetector, which tracks outages by collating status reports from sources such as user-submitted errors on its platform. 

WhatsApp has become a critical means of communication for households and businesses. When the app had an hours-long outage last October, it hit trading of assets from cryptocurrencies to oil, before traders switched to alternative platforms such as Telegram.

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.

#whatsappdown was trending on Twitter, with more than 142,000 tweets and hundreds of memes flooding the Internet.

"Everyone who noticed #whatsapp is down have come to twitter to confirm it," said one Twitter user.

(Image: Downdetector)

WhatsApp outage reports by location. (Image: Downdetector)

Source: CNA/Reuters/kg

[XianGe]

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