You are not the only one. Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger have been out of action for many users around the world for much of Wednesday in what appears to be the most serious outage in the company’s history.
The first signs of a problem appeared at around 12 p.m. E.T. when users started reporting they were unable to login to Facebook or see the newsfeed or timeline. Others reported that they could enter the site but not post anything.
At around the same time, Instagram users also started to report the same behavior, as did users in WhatsApp, who were unable to send and receive messages.
With no way to communicate with its community via its own online services, Facebook, which has 2.3 billion monthly users, took to Twitter to let everyone know that it was aware of the situation affecting its family of apps, and promised it was working to sort it out “as soon as possible.”
We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps. We’re working to resolve the issue as soon as possible.
— Facebook (@facebook) March 13, 2019
According to Down Detector, a website that tracks accessibility issues for sites across the web, 34 percent of users are having trouble logging in to Facebook, 33 percent have issues with the Newsfeed, and 31 percent are experiencing a total blackout of the service. Facebook’s own status dashboard — at 9.30 p.m. E.T. on Wednesday — is describing the situation as a “partial outage” that started “9 hours ago.”
Shortly after its initial announcement on Twitter, Facebook clarified that the problem had not been caused by a Distributed Denial of Service attack, though it didn’t rule out the possibility that another kind of cyber attack could have caused the disruption. It also couldn’t say how long it might take to fix.
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.
— Meta (@Meta) March 13, 2019
Outages for social media platforms aren’t so unusual, but the length of time it is taking to sort this one out sets it apart from many others that have gone before.
And as Facebook engineers scramble to fix the issue, some members of its global community have done exactly what you’d expect — taken to Twitter to vent their frustrations, or simply make light of the situation. Here are a few humorous efforts from celebrities:
Facebook is down !
Instagram is down !
Welcome to my twitter ! pic.twitter.com/Yjk4o9BVOH— Tommy Wiseau (@TommyWiseau) March 13, 2019
https://twitter.com/mindykaling/status/1105971325527457792
https://twitter.com/LinzDeFranco/status/1105985409895489536
Time to fire this back up. #FacebookDown pic.twitter.com/Q3x9BQEin8
— Lawrence Champness (@champy) March 13, 2019
Facebook AND Instagram are down…
MySpace, it's your chance to make a comeback!#FacebookDown pic.twitter.com/ILccg1PtC8
— Troy Osinoff 🕺 (@yo) March 13, 2019
https://twitter.com/mandi_hinrichs/status/1105969710707998720
