Facebook and Instagram are running again following an EIGHT HOUR outage affecting users worldwide

Facebook and Instagram are running again following an EIGHT HOUR outage affecting users worldwide

  • Issues on Facebook-owned sites appeared to have been fixed Wednesday night
  • Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram all crashed shortly after noon (ET)
  • Some users reported ‘total blackout’ and others were unable to refresh 
  • Despite speculation about a huge DDoS attack, Facebook said it wasn’t hacked 

Facebook and Instagram appear to be running again eight hours after users around the world began reporting outages.  

Thousands of users found themselves unable to connect to social media between noon and 8pm Eastern as a slew of Facebook-owned sites experienced issues, in some cases resulting in a ‘total blackout’.

Facebook, Instagram and Messenger crashed primarily in major urban areas across the United States and Europe, along with parts of South America.

WhatsApp – also owned by Facebook – was affected by spotty service issues as well, though it did not appear to have been hit as hard as the other apps. 

When confirming the platform-wide issue Wednesday afternoon, Facebook shut down speculation that the site may have been targeted by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.  

A slew of Facebook -owned social media sites are running again following hours-long outages worldwide on Wednesday. Outage hotspots for Facebook are shown in the map above

‘We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps,’ the firm Tweeted about two hours into the outage.

‘We’re working to resolve the issue as soon as possible.’

‘We’re focused on working to resolve the issue as soon as possible, but can confirm that the issue is not related to a DDoS attack,’ Facebook later added.

Social media users flocked to Twitter to complain about the outage after finding that not only is Facebook down, but Instagram is too.

More than a third of Facebook users affected by the outage reported that they were experiencing a ‘total blackout.’

Others said they could not refresh the News Feed or log into their accounts.  Similar problems cropped up on Instagram and Messenger at roughly the same time.

While there has been speculation that the site may have been targeted by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, the firm said this is not the case

While there has been speculation that the site may have been targeted by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, the firm said this is not the case

Instagram users have reported being unable to refresh the feed, log in, or access the desktop site. 

On Messenger, many users were not able to connect to the server at all and reported that they were not receiving messages.

Many were quick to point out that they are frequently turning to Twitter to check if other websites are down, noting that the platform somehow is always ‘standing strong’ despite service issues elsewhere.

Others took the opportunity to joke about Facebook’s recent privacy scandals.

‘Pages won’t load. I’m sure they’re busy loading new algorithms to sell your data & spy on you better and more efficiently,’ one users tweeted. 



Read more at DailyMail.co.uk