WhatsApp, Instagram stop working in major cities across Pakistan

Social media users on Thursday night said they were unable to use WhatsApp and Instagram on their smartphones due to a supposed technical glitch.

WhatsApp and Instagram users in major cities including Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi said they were unable to download media or even send messages.

Some said they had to resort to Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to properly use WhatsApp and Instagram.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has yet to respond to user complaints.

Users faced similar issues last month when they were unable to perform media sharing on the Meta-owned service. Internet issues in Pakistan have been persistent since the government announced it was implementing a firewall to monitor content users share online.

The firewall facilitates the monitoring of popular social media sites such as X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook, as well as search engines like YouTube. Users in Pakistan continue to experience limited access to X with many using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to properly navigate the microblogging platform.

The federal government has allocated over Rs30 billion to the Ministry of Information Technology to install the mega social medial filtering system.