A significant disruption impacting the messaging service, WhatsApp, is ongoing. Users were greeted with a “connecting” notice when problems with the service first surfaced at about 7 AM GMT. An error message with the message “Make sure your computer has an active internet connection” may appear if you try to use WhatsApp online. More than 60,000 reports of service problems have been sent to Downdetector, and it appears that the outage is impacting people everywhere.

Since the service fell offline last year as part of a significant outage that also affected Instagram, Messenger, Oculus, and Facebook, this is the first significant disruption to affect WhatsApp. It took over six hours for that outage to be fixed and for WhatsApp to resume operation. According to Meta, then known as Facebook, that significant disruption was caused by a router configuration change. Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram are all operating normally now; WhatsApp is the only app that isn’t.

Even though WhatsApp outages are still relatively infrequent, they have a significant impact on global communications because more than two billion people use the app each month. I can imagine most businesses that rely solely on WhatsApp losing their minds right now. Tell us what you think about this outage and have you installed any alternatives?