Millions of Indian users were disrupted on Thursday as the nation’s favorite messaging app, WhatsApp, experienced an unexpected outage, rendering them unable to send or receive messages. The glitch was reported on social media as individuals struggled to see if they were the only ones affected.
As per outage monitoring website Downdetector, the issue started at around noon, with a sudden rise in complaints within minutes. Users complained that not only WhatsApp, but also Facebook and Instagram—both of which are Meta-owned—were also facing issues, suggesting a wider server issue.
Meta has not yet released an official statement detailing the reason behind the disruption. Nevertheless, the concurrent failure of three prominent platforms indicates a probable backend server or data center problem as opposed to a country-level block or network issue.
The outage prompted a flood of memes, anger, and confusion on the internet as #WhatsAppDown and #InstagramDown were trending on Twitter. Services are being restored gradually, but users are advised to keep an eye out for updates from Meta about restoring full functionality.
