WhatsApp outage shock for Meta! India demands action

After the shocking WhatsApp outage, things have taken a turn for the worse in India.

WhatsApp ordered to submit a report on the outage. (AFP)

The shocking WhatsApp outage cut communications for hours, disrupting personal and business links. WhatsApp was down for nearly two hours on Tuesday, October 25. Now, India has launched a crackdown with the government on Wednesday ordering the messaging application to submit a report explaining the reasons behind the outage. According to a report by Hindustan Times, WhatsApp has been asked to submit its report to the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, a nodal agency under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

“Whenever there is an outage, the ministry seeks a report from the company involved, in this case Meta,” an official said. “An explanation has been sought for the same,” the report by Hindustan Times quoted. According to a report by Times of India, Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that WhatsApp has been asked to submit a report over the next 4-5 days, giving out reasons behind the blackout. It can be known that the Tuesday WhatsApp Outage is being seen as one of the longest outages of the platform.

WhatsApp services on Tuesday suffered a nearly two-hour-long global outage that left the users of the app complaining about not being able to send or receive text and video messages. After the services were restored, Meta, which owns the online messaging app, said it had fixed the outage and the service was back. "The brief outage was a result of a technical error on our part and has now been resolved," a Meta company spokesperson said, as quoted by PTI.

According to Downdetector, which tracks outage reports, WhatsApp was not working for many users across multiple regions. Downdetector informed that WhatsApp faced problems since 3:17 AM EDT (12:47 pm). Users in Asia, the United Kingdom, South Africa and Europe experienced the issue while sending and receiving texts and videos on WhatsApp.

WhatsApp Web, the web version of the application which is used on desktops and laptops, was also hit by the outage. It can be known that Meta, previously known as Facebook, bought WhatsApp in 2014.