- WhatsApp users in various countries – including South Africa – reported trouble with the service on Sunday afternoon.
- Photos and videos would not send for a large group of people, while a smaller number said they could not send text messages either.
- WhatsApp has not said anything about the issues here.
- Here’s what we know so far.
- For more stories go to www.BusinessInsider.co.za.
WhatsApp users in various countries – including South Africa – reported a partial outage in the service on Sunday afternoon.
Users found it impossible to upload photos and videos, or voice notes, while a smaller number said they could not send text messages either.
The Facebook-owned company did not immediately respond to the outage, which rapidly trended on Twitter under the tag #whatsappdown.
Reports of the problem have come in from the United Kingdom and Europe, India, the Middle East, and elsewhere.
After what appeared to be an initial total outage on media files for at least one hour, some users started to report the intermittent ability to send photos.
The WhatsApp glitch appeared entirely unconnected with broader problems South Africans have recently had connecting to the global internet due to breaks in undersea fibre optic cables, with bad weather holding back repairs.
Previous outages on WhatsApp, in mid-2019, appeared to be associated with US cybersecurity firm Cloudflare.
That outage – which also affected media files – lasted some 9 hours, and also affected Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram.
The company also had sever trouble in March 2019, which caused its apps to be unavailable or troublesome for more than eight hours.
WhatsApp has been downloaded more than 5 billion times for Android devices.
* This is a developing story. **BusinessInsider