Brazil Temporarily Blocked Whatsapp, Find Out Why

This morning, the popular messaging service was suspended for 48hours after the company failed to comply with a court order to provide investigators with private information relating to a criminal court case.

A Sao Paulo judge made the ruling because it said the Facebook-owned application had repeatedly failed to co-operate with a criminal investigation.

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”.

WhatsApp has over 900 million users across the globe with over 93 million Brazilians using the service.

Rival app Telegram tweeted that its messaging app was downloaded more than 1.5 million times in Brazil over the last 24 hours.

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

In a statement about the lower court’s order to block the service, Sao Paulo’s state court system said only that California-based WhatsApp had ignored two prior judicial orders this year. “Brazilians have always been among the most passionate in sharing their voice online”, he wrote.

WhatsApp was reportedly ordered multiple times over the summer to halt its service, and after failing to do so, judge Sandra Regina Nostre Marques ordered the service to be blocked from Brazil’s end.

“This is a sad day for Brazil”. The clock started Thursday at midnight, which means Brazilians won’t be able to access WhatsApp until Saturday morning. SindiTelebrasil said it and its members are not party to the case.

Brazil is one of the largest markets outside the USA for Google, Facebook and Twitter. The companies have been working on a report that highlights the economic and legal reasons why WhatsApp shouldn’t be operating in the country.

“We’re frustrated that a judge would rebuff more than 100 million individuals crosswise over Brazil on the grounds that we were not able turn over data we didn’t have”, a WhatsApp representative said.