While another added: "Who's gonna post up what there having for tea?"Īnother described the moment when the outage hit: "Got a Facebook error message "Just a minute while we set up English (United Kingdom)" and then it died. However, not everyone reacted to the outage in dismay, with one person commenting: "How is anyone going to know what I'm about to eat?" Half of these had issues with the app, 51 per cent while 26 per cent had server connection problems and 24 per cent struggled with the website. It was no better on Instagram, with 25,000 people reporting an issue. READ MORE: Inside Reading's axe-throwing bar Of those, 73 per cent reported issues on the website, 16 per cent were on the app, while 11 per cent had server connection problems. We're working on it and will fix it as soon as we can." Meanwhile, the social-media giant’s instant messaging platform WhatsApp was also down for more than 35,000 users, while Messenger was down for nearly 9,800 users.WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are down in a massive global outage.Īccording to Downdetector, there were some 20,000 WhatsApp users that reported issues using the global instant messaging service from about 4pm UK time.Īround that same time, Mark Zuckerburg's Facebook also saw nearly 40,000 people report a problem using the social media platform with a message greeting users: "Sorry, something went wrong. “We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience,” Facebook tweeted about 30 minutes after the first reports of the outage.įacebook’s response was made much more difficult because employees lost access to some of their own tools in the shutdown, people tracking the matter said. In a tweet, the cross-platform messaging app said: 'Signal registrations are through the roof welcome everyone Solidarity to the folks working on the WhatsApp outage. A massive denial-of-service attack that could overwhelm one of the world’s most popular sites, on the other hand, would require either co-ordination among powerful criminal groups or a very innovative technique.įacebook acknowledged users were having trouble accessing its apps but did not provide any specifics about the nature of the problem or how many were affected by the outage. As all Facebook services suffered a brief outage around the world, WhatsApp's rival Signal jumped in to 'welcome everyone'. That could be the result of an internal mistake, though sabotage by an insider would be theoretically possible.Īn outside hack was viewed as less likely. Security experts tracking the situation said the outage likely was triggered by a configuration error that left directions to Facebook servers unavailable. “We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible,” she said. Several Facebook employees who declined to be named said that they believed that the outage was caused by an internal routing mistake to an internet domain that was compounded by the failures of internal communication tools and other resources that depend on that same domain in order to work.įacebook, which is the second largest digital advertising platform in the world, was losing about $545,000 in US ad revenue per hour during the outage, according to estimates from ad measurement firm Standard Media Index.Ī spokeswoman for Facebook Ireland confirmed that the company was experiencing a “technical issue” that has caused its services – Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram – to go down. Soon after the outage started, Facebook acknowledged users were having trouble accessing its apps but did not provide any specifics about the nature of the problem or say how many users were affected by the outage. “Facebook basically locked its keys in its car,” tweeted Jonathan Zittrain, director of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Security experts said the disruption could be the result of an internal mistake, though sabotage by an insider would be theoretically possible.