After Temporary Ban, WhatsApp Service Is Restored in Brazil
Facebook owned WhatsApp is back online in Brazil after a judge’s ruling temporarily blocked the service.
Service to the messaging app was restored Thursday after another judge ruled it was “not reasonable that millions of users be affected by the inertia of the company,” according to the BBC.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed the service was back online in a Facebook post Thursday. “Your voices have been heard and the block has been lifted,” he wrote. “Thank you to our community for helping resolve this!”
The app, which is widely used in much of Latin America, including Brazil, was blocked on Thursday for “for failing to comply with a court order to provide investigators with information relating to a criminal court case,” the BBC reported. A judge ruled the service was to be blocked for 48 hours beginning at midnight.
In an earlier post on Facebook Thursday, Zuckerberg said he was “stunned” and that the news marked a “sad day for Brazil.” Though the details of the original ruling were unclear, the Facebook founder suggested it stemmed form the company’s “efforts to protect people’s data.”
The reversal came about 12 hours after the ban went into effect, but not before more than 1 million WhatsApp users flocked to rival messaging service Telegram. Telegram, which has benefitted from prior WhatsApp outages, reported more than 1.5 million new users Thursday.