Meta-backed WhatsApp users report media-sharing issues globally

NEW DELHI — Meta-backed WhatsApp users reported issues with the messaging platform on Monday with the disruption appearing to affect the sharing of photos, videos, stickers, GIFs and other media files across several countries.

According to outage-tracking platform Downdetector, users began registering reports early Monday morning.

Among the reported issues, 41 per cent were related to messaging, 40 per cent to the app itself and 13 cent to notifications, the tracking platform showed.

While text messaging continued to work for some users, multimedia content was reportedly taking longer to send or remained stuck during the upload process.

As per many users, they were able to send and receive text messages but faced difficulties uploading photos and videos in chats.

In some cases, images appeared in conversations but remained stuck while uploading, while others reported seeing loading icons or prompts asking them to retry the action.

Stickers and GIFs were also reportedly affected, leading many users to believe the disruption was linked specifically to WhatsApp's multimedia services.

For some, larger media files failed to upload or experienced significant delays.

The problem was reported in multiple countries, including India, the United Kingdom, France, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Spain and Colombia which indicated that the disruption was not limited to a single region.

The geographic spread of complaints indicated that the issue could be broader than a localised network or device problem. However, the exact scale of the disruption and the number of users affected were not immediately clear.

Meanwhile, users attempted common troubleshooting measures, including restarting their smartphones, switching between Wi-Fi and mobile data connections and reinstalling the application. Several users said these steps did not resolve the problem, particularly when attempting to send photos and videos.