WhatsApp Faces Outage In India, Users Unable To Download Videos

Some WhatsApp users in India are facing an outage and are unable to download videos on the app. The disruption began last night, as per Downdetector, and continued on Monday as well.

Many users took to microblogging platform Twitter to complain about the issues being faced with the messaging app. The problem appears to have largely affected Android beta users.

The Meta-owned messaging service is reportedly developing a new feature that will allow its 2.24 Bn users to record and share short video messages of up to 60 seconds within their chats. Similar to the existing voice message feature, the new feature will allow users to record and send videos of up to 60 seconds by just pressing the camera button.

As per Downdetector, 43% of WhatsApp users encountered problems while using the app. While the majority of the issues, about 41%, are believed to stem from server connection problems, 16% reported difficulties in sending messages as well.

This is not the first time when WhatsApp has suffered an outage. In October last year, the Meta-owned messaging app witnessed a two-hour service disruption. Besides India, users from Europe and other parts of the world were also affected by it.

In a statement, Meta had said that a ‘technical error’ caused the disruption and said that the issue had been resolved. Later, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) directed the messaging platform to file a report on the matter, asking the platform to share reasons for the disruption.

Of late, the Indian government has cracked down on big tech platforms, and the Meta-owned messaging platform has also come under scrutiny. The Competition Commission of India (CCI) got approval from the Supreme Court last year to conduct an investigation into WhatsApp’s privacy policy update of March 2021. WhatsApp had moved the SC after the Delhi High Court ruled in favour of a CCI probe.

In early 2021, the CCI started a probe into WhatsApp over its policy updates alleging preferential treatment to business accounts by leveraging conversations on the app for targeted advertising.

According to a Statista report, there are over 487 Mn WhatsApp users in India alone, making it the biggest market for the company.

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