Facebook-owned WhatsApp suffered an outage in several global regions and users weren't able to send or receive any text or multimedia contents on the messenger application.
As per the downdetector website, WhatsApp was down in Europe, South American nations such as Brazil, Venezuela, Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, North America particularly west and east coasts of the US and also Mexico. In East, select parts of India and Malaysia were also affected.
As per reports, more than a billion WhatsApp users affected and several people took social media sites such as Twitter to complain about the connectivity issues in WhatsApp. However, the messenger app has been restored soon.
"Yesterday, WhatsApp users experienced issues with accessing the app and sending messages. The issue was resolved within a few minutes," WhatsApp spokesperson said. However, there was no word on what caused the messenger app crash.
In a related development, WhatsApp earlier in the week announced to limit the message forwarding to just five in a chat. Previously, the company had initiated this measure to curb circulation of misinformation in India, which by the way had caused countrywide panic about child lifters. Several people fell prey to fake news and become vigilante leading to the lynching of innocent migrant workers and travellers in rural regions and even in some urban areas.
After the forward messaging limit imposition, the number lynching cases across the country registered marked decrease.
Having learnt lessons in India, WhatsApp announced to limit the forward messages to only five chats at once in all global regions. Also, all forwarded message will come with tag-'Forwarded' in the top left corner. Over time, the company plans to remove the quick forward button next to media messages.
