“We’re disappointed that a judge would punish more than 100 million people across Brazil since we were unable to turn over information we didn’t have”, a WhatsApp spokesperson said.
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Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who had described this as a “sad day for Brazil”, celebrated the decision. Many quickly migrated to WhatsApp’s competitors. 93% of Brazilians have installed WhatsApp on their mobile devices.
Brazilian phone companies have sought and failed to get the government to limit use of free voice-over-Internet (VOIP) services offered through WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook Inc.
The move has seen users flock to rival messaging service Telegram, which has racked up over 1.5 million downloads in the past few hours.
Some have questioned if the reasons for blocking are tied with the investigations of criminal activity within the messaging service or if it’s a plot by the telecoms. “This is insane. It’s ruining my “secret Santa’ party!”‘ said Caroline Largueza, as she furiously tapped away on her smartphone in a Rio de Janeiro mall”. “Without WhatsApp it’s extremely hard to communicate with anybody, ” she complained.
The court case in Brazil centered around drug traffickers who used WhatsApp to message about specific crimes, according to Reuters. “Today I fell ill and I am working from home”.
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The phone companies claim that their businesses have been damaged by the growth of WhatsApp. It’s great to speed up decisions, we use it a lot. Citing Brazil’s constitutional principles, Judge Xavier de Souza said that it does not seem reasonable that millions of users are being affected due to the failure of the company (WhatsApp) to provide information to the court. The company had failed to respond to two notifications in July and August and prosecutors requested the ban in retaliation.
