

Some have spotted that the were "major DNS failures at Facebook" prior to it going down.ĭNS-short for Domain Name System-is the service which translates human-readable hostnames (like ) to numeric IP addresses. Any problems can often lead people to start using competitors instead, and noted that it can take “months” to win back trust and get people back on Facebook’s platforms – if they come back at all. In a leaked transcript published in 2019, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg note that such outages are a “big deal”. The company is often cryptic about the causes of any issues, and does not tend to explain them even after they are fixed.

WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, also said a similar thing in a post on Twitter. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience." It said: "We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. There still appear to be issues with Messenger and WhatsApp though.įacebook's communications executive Andy Stone issued a statement just after 5pm.

Tens of thousands of WhatsApp users reported issues using the global instant messaging service too.Īccording to DownDetector, the issues started at around 16.44 BST (11.44 ET), and are affecting users globally.įacebook’s outages happen relatively rarely but tend to be vast in their impact, not least because they affect three of the world’s biggest apps.įacebook began working on desktop and mobiles at around 11pm. Users attempting to access Facebook were being shown a message saying the site "can’t be reached", while sister site Instagram is currently displayed a "5xx Server Error". Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger suddenly all crashed on Monday evening - causing a social media blackhole.
