WhatsApp is blocked in Brazil for the next two days

A judge in Sao Bernardo do Campo – an industrial suburb of Sao Paulo – issued the order for the suspension of WhatsApp’s services.

WhatsApp, the Facebook-owned messaging service, has been ordered by a Brazilian judge to shut down for two days. But the suspension was lifted after an order from a Brazilian judge on Thursday, says Reuters.

The CEO of WhatsApp, Jan Koum, called the court decision “short-sighted”.

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of the social networking giant Facebook, the company, which possesses WhatsApp, has described the prohibition of the most popular messaging app in Brazil a “sad day”. Many of them have even tried to persuade the government to limit access to such services in Brazil. WhatsApp was sent word yet again on August 7 when the court set a charge for disobedience.

WhatsApp is hugely popular in Brazil, where roughly half of the country’s 200 million people use its free text and voice messaging functions regularly.

A court had ordered the service be frozen for failing to comply using a court order to supply information regarding a criminal court case to investigators.

Brazil’s population of 200 million people plunged into a 48-hour WhatsApp blackout starting Thursday.

In a nutshell, government officials feel out of the loop and believe tech companies like Facebook should do a better job handing over user information and proactively hunt down troublemakers.

The name of the petitioner seeking the injunction before a criminal court in Sao Paulo state was kept secret by the judge, as is allowed under Brazilian law. The outage apparently caused outrage in Brazil, which has an estimated one hundred million users, although there are some reports that the service was also disrupted in Chile and Argentina too. The app, which operates on just about every mobile platform, was acquired by Facebook past year for $19 billion.

In response, Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook, “WhatsApp is now back online in Brazil!”