Linktree goes dark in India — and the company isn’t sure why

Linktree, the widely-used link-in-bio platform favored by numerous creators and businesses, has faced an unexpected blackout in India for several days, leaving both users and the company perplexed. Reports from users began surfacing on social media platform X, highlighting their inability to access the service. TechCrunch initially observed that Linktree's site displayed a message indicating it may have been blocked by the Indian government. However, this was soon replaced by a standard SSL protocol error message. Users have also reported that the Linktree app is similarly unavailable in the country. Founded in 2016, Linktree achieved unicorn status in 2022 and has grown to over 50 million users by 2024. India ranks as the fifth-largest market for Linktree, contributing approximately 3.5% of its global traffic, which equated to around 7.3 million visits in July, according to data from Similarweb. Linktree's co-founder and CEO, Alex Zaccaria, stated that the company is actively investigating the situation but did not confirm whether they had received any communication from Indian authorities regarding the blockage. A subsequent post on X acknowledged the service disruption in India, with Linktree assuring users that they were looking into the matter. According to The Hindu, the outage does not seem to be restricted to any specific internet service provider and appears to impact all major networks across the country. In contrast, the United States remains Linktree's largest market, with 48.5 million visits, followed by Indonesia (32.3 million), Brazil (30.8 million), and the United Kingdom (9.4 million), as reported by Similarweb. Efforts to reach India's IT and telecom ministries over the weekend for clarification have gone unanswered.