Key points:

  • WhatsApp was down for a brief amount of time today
  • There was a noteworthy rise in the number of reports on Downdetector.com around 3:17 AM ET
  • WhatsApp’s services were restored around 5 AM ET

The popular messaging application, WhatsApp was down for nearly two hours today. There was a notable rise in the number of outage reports on Downdetector.com around 3:17 AM ET. It took nearly two hours to resolve the issue and services were restored around 5 AM ET. 

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WhatsApp was down, here’s what you need to know

Millions of users reported WhatsApp outages worldwide today. During the outage, people were unable to send or receive messages on WhatsApp. Meta, the owner of WhatsApp stated the problem was fixed but did not explain the root cause of the problem. 

According to DownDetector, there was a huge rise in the number of reports between 3:17 AM and 5 AM ET. 

This WhatsApp outage led to considerable disruption in many parts of the world. Over 2 billion people used WhatsApp to message, make payments, plan social activities, work, and more. 

Meta’s statement

Meta released a statement to offer clarification on the issue. It said that the company is aware that people could not send messages on WhatsApp today. Further, it said that the problem was fixed, and the company regrets the inconvenience the outage caused to people worldwide. 

First Facebook, now WhatsApp – issues persist with Meta apps

It is not the first issue to affect a platform owned by Meta this year. In August, Facebook users complained that messages from other people that were originally posted on celebrity accounts were flooding their news feeds.

There were thousands of reports of troubles with Facebook on Downdetector, a tool that allows users to log issues and outages with websites, with 81% of complaints relating to the Feed.

Many users who left comments on Downdetector and on Twitter complained about a problem wherein their own Feed would display comments made by random users on celebrity accounts. This year, technical issues have also affected other tech companies. Google’s search engine experienced a brief outage in August. And Twitter experienced a similar problem in July.

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