Fact-check: Minister's claim of global WhatsApp disruption false, Meta confirms

Federal Minister for Information Attaullah Tarar recently claimed that the ongoing issue with WhatsApp services experienced by numerous cellular users in Pakistan was not limited to the country but was due to a global outage affecting multiple countries.

This claim is false.

Claim

On July 21, during a press conference, Tarar responded to concerns about WhatsApp service disruptions in Pakistan, attributing them to a global technological issue.

“Listen, the internet has been down in many countries,” he said. “Flight operations were also affected in America. This has nothing to do with the government. That is an overall problem with the internet as per my knowledge.”

Meanwhile, the state-run Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) described the problem as a "technical glitch."

Fact

Meta Platforms Inc, which owns WhatsApp, confirmed to Geo Fact Check that there is no global outage or slowdown of WhatsApp services.

The regulator PTA has issued a misleading statement, while the minister has made a false claim about the disruption of WhatsApp in the country.

The global technological outage, which the minister is falsely conflating with the slowdown of WhatsApp in Pakistan, took place on July 19, sparked by a faulty software update issued by the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. The fault was largely resolved within a few hours and only affected the company’s customers running Microsoft Windows.

While social media users in Pakistan began reporting difficulties in sending and receiving media files, such as videos, audio, and photos on the popular messaging application from July 17. The disruption continues for many users in the country even today.

Talking to Geo Fact Check, the spokesperson for PTA denied any issues with WhatsApp currently. She further downplayed the complaints, calling it a “technical glitch,” without specifying whether the “glitch” was local or global.

Digital rights activists have suspected that the slowdown of WhatsApp services could be due to the installation of a firewall by the government to quell dissent and impose further censorship.

Ongoing WhatsApp disruption in Pakistan likely 'technical glitch,' says PTA.

However, Meta Platforms Inc has now confirmed that the WhatsApp problem is localised to Pakistan's internet infrastructure.

Geo Fact Check wrote to Meta Platforms Inc on July 25 to ask if the disruption experienced by WhatsApp users in Pakistan was due to a global outage.

A Karachi-based company, Media Matters, which handles the public relations for Meta in Pakistan, responded with the following statement: "Please note this is due to the country’s internal internet issue. Meta has nothing to do with this."

In a separate email Media Matters added that Meta had no information about WhatsApp disruption in Pakistan.

“Everything is working fine from their [Meta’s] end/globally,” the email stated, “This seems to be a local fault.”

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