On Tuesday morning, the widely-used communications application WhatsApp went dark for two hours leading to an ongoing hiccup in the Israeli populace’s communications.
WhatsApp is the most widely-used messaging application in Israel and is used to communicate via text even more frequently than SMS. As such, it is the host to discourse related to many core aspects of the average Israeli’s life, from pre-school pick-up to work correspondence.
Not only do everyday citizens rely on the app for their day-to-day communication, but several of the country’s core organizations use it to coordinate their activity, including the IDF and the Israeli government.
What happened to WhatsApp?
According to Downdetector, a website that monitors service outages for messaging and social media platforms, reports of WhatsApp outages skyrocketed since 10 a.m. Tuesday, going from zero reports to well over five thousand.
The reason for the outage is unclear. However, Meta, the company that owns WhatsApp, said in a statement that they are aware of the issue and are working to resolve it.
Other Meta-owned platforms, Facebook and Instagram, do not appear to be impacted and function normally.
This is a developing story.