WhatsApp shutdown in Brazil hits 100M users

Brazilians awoke to a day without WhatsApp Thursday after a judge ordered the popular messaging app blocked throughout the country for 48 hours.

WhatsApp was ordered on a number of occasions over the summer to halt its service, reportedly due to a combination of lobbying from the telecoms industry and criminal activity rife within the messaging app.

Brazilians had taken to social media in their thousands to complain about the ban, which is hugely popular in the country as a free way of communicating via text message and voice calls.

Facebook bought the messaging app previous year for almost $22 billion. The court claimed that WhatsApp had refused to cooperate in a criminal case. The ban went into effect at midnight on 16 December and lasted for around 12 hours until an appeals court overturned the previous decision. Facebook’s Messenger service is still available in Brazil. “Brazilians have always been among the most passionate in sharing their voice online”, Zuckerberg said in a statement, urging a reversal.

A court order that temporarily banned WhatsApp in Brazil has been cut short after a judge found the ruling unreasonable.

Brazil has the most expensive phone rates on the planet – three times more expensive than the United States and five times that in Spain.

“This is a sad day for Brazil“, Zuckerberg wrote.

“Until today, Brazil has been an ally in creating an open Internet”, Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg posted after the interruption of WhatsApp’s services. According to BBC, Judge Xavier de Souza said that it was “not reasonable that millions of users be affected by the inertia of the company”.

“We’re disappointed that a judge would punish more than 100 million people across Brazil because we were unable to turn over information we didn’t have”, a WhatsApp spokesperson said. The EconoTimes content received through this service is the intellectual property of EconoTimes or its third party suppliers.