New Delhi: A little past noon Tuesday, several WhatsApp users from India and several parts of the world reported issues with sending or receiving messages on the platform. The platform started running later in the day after several hours of the outage.
Meta Platforms, the parent company of WhatsApp, had issued a brief statement on the outage, saying that the company was trying to restore services.
“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 Meta Platforms said.
Several WhatsApp users had reported that texts seemed to be stuck at the loading wheel, and that WhatsApp web was not able to detect QR codes, among other issues.
According to Downdetector, a platform which tracks outages, the problem seemed to exist worldwide, with users in the US, parts of Europe, Canada and some parts of Asia like Malaysia, Japan and the Philippines, reporting issues with WhatsApp.
Downdetector also noted that close to 69 per cent people were facing the outage and more than 30,000 users from several parts of India reported that they were unable to use WhatsApp. Around 25 per cent WhatsApp users also said they were having server issues.
Downdetector usually reports incidents “when the number of problem reports is significantly higher than the typical volume for that time of day”, according to its website.
Other social media platforms owned by Meta such as Instagram and Facebook, however, appeared to be functioning normally.
Soon after users reported about the WhatsApp outage, the hashtag #whatsappdown began trending on Twitter, with more than 1.09 lakh tweets.
Also read: WhatsApp down for users in India, UK, South Africa and several other parts of the world