SÃO PAULO—A Brazilian judge lifted a temporary ban on Facebook Inc.’s
WhatsApp throughout Brazil on Thursday, a day after a different judge
ordered the messaging service be blocked for 48 hours.
The block, which began at midnight Thursday, had disrupted the lives of tens of millions of Brazilians who use the free messaging service and caused many to look for alternatives.
A judge in São Paulo state lifted the block, saying that “it does not seem reasonable that millions of users are affected” because WhatsApp had not cooperated with a criminal investigation. The judge recommended fining the company instead.
A separate judge had previously ordered WhatsApp be temporarily blocked for refusing to cooperate in a criminal case, of which it didn’t provide details.
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. Many poorer Brazilians depend exclusively
on WhatsApp for their day-to-day communications. It was the most
downloaded app last year, in the world’s fourth-largest smartphone
market. According to Facebook, more than 100 million Brazilians use
WhatsApp.
“I went crazy when they canceled WhatsApp, because I wasn’t able to contact my girlfriends or my family,” said Wellington de Souza, 25 years old, who works in a Japanese restaurant in São Paulo. “Only now when I was without WhatsApp I realized that I’m addicted. It’s impossible to live without [it].”
While it was still blocked, Facebook executives criticized the move.
“This is a sad day for Brazil. Until today, Brazil has been an ally in creating an open Internet,” Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on his Facebook page. “I am stunned that our efforts to protect people’s data would result in such an extreme decision by a single judge to punish every person in Brazil who uses WhatsApp. We hope the Brazilian courts quickly reverse course.”
Local telecoms companies have been complaining for months that WhatsApp, particularly its free voice messaging service, is illegal. But the speed with which the block took place, and the lack of pushback from telecoms companies, came as a surprise to many here. Similar efforts to block WhatsApp and other services in the past have been rejected by higher courts before they could be enforced.
“This is really shocking, and illegal,” said Ronaldo Lemos, the director of the Institute for Technology and Society of Rio de Janeiro. “What puzzles me is that one single court can exercise that kind of power, and that the telecommunications companies didn’t fight against it. It shows how fragile the Brazilian Internet is.”
SindiTelebrasil, a telecom industry association, said that telecom providers were “not part of the action” that resulted in the court order. A SindiTelebrasil spokeswoman said telecom companies hadn’t been informed of the reversal of the ban, but when they were service would likely be restored within a few hours.
Brazil is one of the largest markets outside the U.S. for Google, Facebook and Twitter.
WhatsApp competitors wasted little time in taking advantage of their rivals’ outage. Messaging service Telegram said early Thursday that more than 1.5 million Brazilians had downloaded its app since WhatsApp went offline.
Many Brazilians resorted to humor after the outage, spawning memes about how they would cope. The hashtag “In these 48 hours I will” was trending on Twitter.
The block, which began at midnight Thursday, had disrupted the lives of tens of millions of Brazilians who use the free messaging service and caused many to look for alternatives.
A judge in São Paulo state lifted the block, saying that “it does not seem reasonable that millions of users are affected” because WhatsApp had not cooperated with a criminal investigation. The judge recommended fining the company instead.
A separate judge had previously ordered WhatsApp be temporarily blocked for refusing to cooperate in a criminal case, of which it didn’t provide details.
“I went crazy when they canceled WhatsApp, because I wasn’t able to contact my girlfriends or my family,” said Wellington de Souza, 25 years old, who works in a Japanese restaurant in São Paulo. “Only now when I was without WhatsApp I realized that I’m addicted. It’s impossible to live without [it].”
While it was still blocked, Facebook executives criticized the move.
“This is a sad day for Brazil. Until today, Brazil has been an ally in creating an open Internet,” Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on his Facebook page. “I am stunned that our efforts to protect people’s data would result in such an extreme decision by a single judge to punish every person in Brazil who uses WhatsApp. We hope the Brazilian courts quickly reverse course.”
Local telecoms companies have been complaining for months that WhatsApp, particularly its free voice messaging service, is illegal. But the speed with which the block took place, and the lack of pushback from telecoms companies, came as a surprise to many here. Similar efforts to block WhatsApp and other services in the past have been rejected by higher courts before they could be enforced.
“This is really shocking, and illegal,” said Ronaldo Lemos, the director of the Institute for Technology and Society of Rio de Janeiro. “What puzzles me is that one single court can exercise that kind of power, and that the telecommunications companies didn’t fight against it. It shows how fragile the Brazilian Internet is.”
SindiTelebrasil, a telecom industry association, said that telecom providers were “not part of the action” that resulted in the court order. A SindiTelebrasil spokeswoman said telecom companies hadn’t been informed of the reversal of the ban, but when they were service would likely be restored within a few hours.
Brazil is one of the largest markets outside the U.S. for Google, Facebook and Twitter.
WhatsApp competitors wasted little time in taking advantage of their rivals’ outage. Messaging service Telegram said early Thursday that more than 1.5 million Brazilians had downloaded its app since WhatsApp went offline.
Many Brazilians resorted to humor after the outage, spawning memes about how they would cope. The hashtag “In these 48 hours I will” was trending on Twitter.
