Update 4:30 p.m: Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp have now been
down for five hours. In the latest update,
Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer
says that Facebook is experiencing networking issues and teams are working
as fast as possible to debug and restore. There is, however, no timeline
on when to expect the services to come back on line.
Its not just you:
Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp
are all currently down for users around the world. Were seeing error
messages on all three services across iOS applications as well as on the
web. Users
are being greeted with error messages such as: Sorry, something went
wrong, 5xx Server Error, and more.
Yep, Facebook and Instagram are down
The outage is affecting every Facebook-owned platform, according to data on
Downdetector
and Twitter. This includes Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Facebook
Messenger. The outages appear to have started around 11:40 am ET/8:40 am PT
and
all of those services remain inaccessible.
The outages quickly started trending on Twitter as users flocked to the
competing social network to check to see if other users were affected by the
down
time. Humorously, the hashtag #DeleteFacebook is also trending on Twitter
as the company
battles continued pushback against
the effects its platforms have on younger users.
As the
New York Times
reports:
block quote
Facebook has already been dealing with plenty of scrutiny. The company has
been under fire from a whistle-blower, Frances Haugen, a former Facebook
product
manager who amassed thousands of pages of internal research and has since
distributed them to the news media, lawmakers and regulators. The documents
revealed
that Facebook knew of many harms that its services were causing.
block quote end
While some Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp outages only affect certain
geographic regions, the services are down worldwide today. This includes the
United
States, the UK, Brazil, Kuwait, and more.
The outage is also affecting platforms and services that use Facebook login.
Niantic,
creator of Pokémon GO, says that it is looking into reports of errors
associated with Facebook login, and will update here once we have more
information.
Other services that also use Facebook login are believed to be affected, as
well as Oculus.
Potential explanation
Cybercrime reporter Brian Krebs
attributes it to a major DNS problem.
Krebs explains that the DNS records that tell systems how to find Facebook
and Instagram got withdrawn this morning from the global routing cables.
At
this point, however, its unclear how this happened.
Krebs writes in
a blog post:
block quote
Facebook and its sister properties Instagram and WhatsApp are suffering from
ongoing, global outages. We dont yet know why this happened, but the how
is clear: Earlier this morning, something inside Facebook caused the company
to revoke key digital records that tell computers and other Internet-enabled
devices how to find these destinations online.
In simpler terms, sometime this morning Facebook took away the map telling
the worlds computers how to find its various online properties. As a
result,
when one types
Facebook.com
into a web browser, the browser has no idea where to find
Facebook.com,
and so returns an error page.
block quote end
WhatsApp statement
In a statement, WhatsApp acknowledges that its service is down:
block quote
Were aware that some people are experiencing issues with WhatsApp at the
moment. Were working to get things back to normal and will send an update
here
as soon as possible.
block quote end
Facebook statement
Facebooks Andy Stone:
block quote
Were aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and
products. Were working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible,
and
we apologize for any inconvenience.
block quote end
Facebook internal also affected
Facebooks internal Workplace site and associated services for employees are
also suffering from an outage today,
according to Jane Manchun Wong.
The company has distributed a memo to employees about the issues. Employees
are
referring
to this as a snow day,
including
Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri.
9to5mac.
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