Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram faced a major global outage on Monday evening with thousands of users around the world being locked out of these digital platforms.
Facebook owns photosharing platform Instagram and messaging platform WhatsApp.
The outage is estimated to have started around 9pm IST (4:30 pm GMT). Users complained of not being able to use any of the three services.
What happened
“We are aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We are working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologise for any inconvenience,” a Facebook spokesperson said.
The company did not specify the reason for the global outage.
The problem also appears to be affecting Facebook’s virtual reality arm, Oculus. As per The Verge, users could load games they already had installed and the browser worked, but social features or installing new games did not.
The error message on the webpage of Facebook Inc suggested a problem with Domain Name System (DNS).
Downdetector – which only tracks outages by collating status reports from a series of sources, showed there were more than 50,000 incidents of people reporting issues with Facebook and Instagram.
WhatsApp was also down for over 35,000 users, while Messenger was down for nearly 9,800 users.
Facebook has experienced similar widespread outages with its suite of apps this year in March and July.
Can platforms have global outages?
It is normal for websites and apps to suffer outages, though one on a global scale is rare. Security experts tracking the situation said the outage could have been triggered by a configuration error, which could be the result of an internal mistake, though sabotage by an insider would be theoretically possible.
An outside hack is less likely. A massive denial-of-service attack that could overwhelm one of the world’s most popular sites, on the other hand, would require either coordination among powerful criminal groups or a very innovative technique.
Something more to it?
The outage comes a day after a whistleblower went on US television to reveal her identity after she leaked a trove of documents to authorities alleging the company knew its products were fueling hate and harming children’s mental health.
Frances Haugen, a 37-year-old data scientist from Iowa, has worked for companies including Google and Pinterest — but said in an interview with CBS news show “60 Minutes” that Facebook was “substantially worse” than anything she had seen before.
The world’s largest social media platform has been embroiled in a firestorm brought about by Haugen, with US lawmakers and The Wall Street Journal raising sharp criticism of the network.
Senators put the social media giant’s Antigone Davis through the wringer last week over damning reports that Facebook’s own research warned of potential harm.
Shares of Facebook, which has nearly 2 billion daily active users, fell 5.5% in afternoon trading on Monday, inching towards its worst day in nearly a year.
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Source: The economic times