According to the Downdetector’s reporting map, the WhatsApp flaw mainly affects Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina and parts of Europe. The suspicion is an error on the company’s servers, since the services had a sudden increase in demand during the quarantine. Facebook, the owner of WhatsApp, informed Regarnews that “earlier today, some people may have had problems viewing images in our applications due to a network error. This issue has been resolved and the applications are functioning normally”. According to Downdetector, complaints about problems with WhatsApp started from 18h. The most common reports on Twitter indicate that users face difficulties to download audios, images and stickers sent in groups or privately. The flaw affects both the version of the mobile app and WhatsApp Web for computers. Users are able to send and receive audios, but the voice message is not downloaded automatically, as usual. Instead, when tapping the download option, WhatsApp displays the message “could not download the audio”. The same happens with uploading photos on WhatsApp. Stickers also show an error when downloading, with the alert “Download failed” when receiving a contact sticker. The sticker drawer also doesn’t carry, which prevents it from being sent. On WhatsApp Web, audios, images and stickers also fail to load. In the case of the desktop version of the messenger, the application does not display an error message or load the photo by touching the download option. The sticker gallery also does not load, making it impossible to send stickers via PC. Facebook, the company that owns WhatsApp, announced on the 18th that it had doubled the capacity of the messenger services so that the service would continue to “work in a solid way”. The use of the application grew during the voluntary quarantine of the new coronavirus, as an alternative to contact friends and family by video, text and audio.
