Brazil Court Suspends Facebook's WhatsApp for 48 Hours

SÃ O PAULO—A Brazilian state judge ordered the suspension of Facebook Inc.'s WhatsApp throughout Brazil for 48 hours early Thursday, disrupting the lives of tens of millions of Brazilians who use the messaging service.

A local judge in Sã o Paulo state ordered the block after WhatsApp refused to cooperate with a criminal investigation, the court said in a statement. The court said that the decision was made amid a criminal procedure, but didn't provide more details, saying the case is under seal.

WhatsApp is hugely popular in Brazil, where roughly half of the country's 200 million people use its text and voice messaging functions regularly. It was the most downloaded app last year, in the world's fourth-largest smartphone market.

Local telecoms companies have been complaining for months that WhatsApp, particularly its free voice messaging service, is illegal.

"This is a sad day for Brazil. Until today, Brazil has been an ally in creating an open Internet," Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on his Facebook page. "I am stunned that our efforts to protect people's data would result in such an extreme decision by a single judge to punish every person in Brazil who uses WhatsApp. We hope the Brazilian courts quickly reverse course."

According to Facebook, more than 100 million Brazilians use WhatsApp.

The move appears to be a violation of a Brazilian law passed last year called Marco Civil, which protects websites from third party content and prohibits them from being blocked.

Brazil is one of the largest markets outside the U.S. for Google, Facebook and Twitter.

SindiTelebrasil, a telecom industry association, said that telecom providers were "not part of the action" that resulted in the court order.

WhatsApp competitors wasted little time in taking advantage of their rivals' outage. Messaging service Telegram said that more than 1.5 million Brazilians had downloaded its app since WhatsApp went offline.

Write to Rogerio Jelmayer at rogerio.jelmayer@wsj.com and Will Connors at william.connors@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 17, 2015 05:55 ET (10:55 GMT)

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