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Updated October 7th, 2021 at 20:36 IST

Fact Check: WhatsApp to be prohibited in India from 11:30 pm to 6 am?

Countering the misinformation, PIB issued a fact check update dismissing the fake message that WhatsApp will be shut during late hours. Read for more.

Reported by: Srishti Jha
Factcheck
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A viral message has been doing rounds on the internet stating the Government of India has issued an order to WhatsApp, the instant messaging application developed by Facebook, to suspend services for users every night between 23:30 hours and 06:00 hours. The deceptive viral message further stated that a user's account would be deactivated, had they not forwarded the same message. In addition, the widely circulated fake news added that a monthly charge would be applicable to WhatsApp users to activate one's account. 

Countering the misinformation, a fact check update was issued by Press India Bureau (PIB) which dismissed the fake message, "As per order of Central Government #WhatsApp will be closed from 11:30 pm to 6 am, the account will be closed for not forwarding the viral message and a monthly charge will be given to activate it."

Taking to Twitter,  PIB shared, "#PIBFactCheck: This claim is false. The Central Government has not given any such order."

The fake news is widely circulated a couple of days after social media giants, namely, WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook suffered a major unprecedented technical glitch on Monday, October 4.

WhatsApp, Instagram & Facebook suffer global outage

After nearly six-hour of lasting outages across all of Facebook’s platforms, Instagram, Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp, and restoration of services, CEO Mark Zuckerberg issued his first response saying that he was “sorry for the disruption.” The CEO of the social media giant in a Facebook post said, “I know how much you rely on our services to stay connected with the people you care about,” adding that the services were now back up running. A mass global outage was experienced by the billions of users as the error message popped up and the on Instagram, Whatsapp, Messenger, and Oculus VR services. The apps, although, were finally back online after being down for more than several hours in one of the longest disruptions experienced by the firm. 

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Published October 7th, 2021 at 20:36 IST

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