A global outage has hit Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram are all suffering outages in various parts of the world and do not appear to be operating on either the web or their respective smartphone applications. A number of users have claimed that the instant messaging platform and social networking apps do not operate on Android, iOS, or web platforms.
Downdetector, a tracking website, saw a dramatic increase in users reporting issues with all three applications.
The most common difficulties on all three platforms are with refreshing and loading the website. Some people’s Instagram feeds are showing the phrase “Couldn’t refresh feed.”
According to Andy Stone, the company’s spokesperson: “We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”
Whatsapp also recognized the problems, writing, “We’re aware that some people are experiencing issues with WhatsApp at the moment. We’re working to get things back to normal and will send an update here as soon as possible.
Instagram’s official communications handle also shared a similar statement. “Instagram and friends are having a little bit of a hard time right now, and you may be having issues using them. Bear with us, we’re on it! #instagramdown,” it said.
App outages are normal, but it is unusual for so many interconnected applications at the world’s largest social media firm to be down at the same time.
It is the company’s biggest outage since 2008, when a glitch knocked Facebook offline for almost a day, affecting around 80 million users. The platform now has 3 billion users.
A similar disruption occurred in 2019 for around one hour. Facebook attributed the downtime to a change in the server setup.
Major websites may also experience outages if content delivery networks, or CDNs, fail. That occurred in June, when one such CDN, Fastly, went down owing to technical difficulties.
