Facebook is down, along with Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Oculus VR
Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp went offline for users across the globe, the social media giant said on Monday, as it worked on restoring its services.
Just as Facebook’s Antigone Davis was live on CNBC defending the company over a whistleblower’s accusations and its handling of research data suggesting Instagram is harmful to teens, the company’s entire network of services suddenly went offline.
On Twitter, Facebook communications exec Andy Stone says, “We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”
A peek at Down Detector (or your Twitter feed) reveals the problems are widespread. While it’s unclear exactly why the platforms are unreachable for so many people, their DNS records show the problem is apparently DNS. Cloudflare senior vice president Dane Knecht notes that Facebook’s border gateway protocol routes help networks pick the best path to deliver internet traffic — have been “withdrawn from the internet.”
We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing Facebook app. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.
— Facebook App (@facebookapp) October 4, 2021
Instagram.com is flashing a 5xx Server Error message, while the Facebook site merely tells us that something went wrong. The problem also appears to be affecting its virtual reality arm, Oculus. Users can load games they already have installed and the browser works, but social features or installing new games does not. The outage is thorough enough that it’s affecting Workplace from Facebook customers and, according to Jane Manchun Wong, Facebook’s internal sites.
here’s no word yet from Facebook about what may be causing the problem or when those sites, including Messenger and WhatsApp, will be operational again
