Facebook Down: Instagram, Whatsapp Here’s What to know
Through this post, you are going to know new information about Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp. About six hours after Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram were shut down, the service began to come back online, though coverage was still spotty.Facebook (FB), Instagram and WhatsApp have all been shut down on Monday 04/10/2021 afternoon, according to public statements from all three Facebook services.
“We know that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products,” Facebook said on Twitter. “We’re working to get things back to normal as soon as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience caused.”
Outage tracking site Down Detector recorded thousands of reports for each service. Facebook’s own site won’t load at all for about an hour on Monday; Instagram and WhatsApp were accessible, but could not load new content or send messages.
The reason for the outage was not immediately clear. However, several security experts pointed to a Domain Name System (DNS) problem as a possible culprit. At around 1 a.m. ET, Cisco’s Internet analysis division ThousandEyes said on Twitter that its tests indicate the outage is due to a DNS failure. DNS converts website names into IP addresses that can be read by the computer. It is often called the “phonebook of the Internet”.
More than four hours after the outage began, Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer tweeted: “We are experiencing networking issues and teams are working as quickly as possible to debug and restore as quickly as possible. “
Facebook tweeted just after 6:30 p.m. ET that its apps and services were back up and running.
“To the vast community of people and businesses around the world that depend on us: We are sorry,” it said. “We are working hard to restore access to our apps and services and are happy to report that they are now back online. Thank you for working with us.”
“I don’t know that I’ve seen an outage like this before from any major Internet firm,” said Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis at network monitoring firm Kentuck.
Madori said companies sometimes lose Internet connectivity when they update their network configurations. That’s what happened in June with US cloud computing firm Fastly, which experienced a global Internet outage for about 50 minutes.
But the fact that a company of Facebook’s size and resources has been offline for more than three hours suggests that there is no quick fix to the problem.
Roland Dobbins, principal engineer at digital security firm NetScout, said Facebook will likely work to gradually restore the service, and that the routed information “could take some time to be received and disseminated around the world.”
The outage came in the morning after a segment of “60 Minutes” aired, in which Facebook whistleblower Frances Hogen claimed that the company is aware of how its platform is used to spread hate, violence and misinformation, And Facebook has tried to hide that evidence. Facebook has pushed back those claims.
The interview followed weeks of reporting and criticism about Facebook, after Haugen released thousands of pages of internal documents to regulators and the Wall Street Journal. Haughan will testify before a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday.
Facebook shares fell more than 5% in afternoon trading on Monday, setting it on pace to its worst trading day in nearly a year.
Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp News
Facebook and its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms have suffered a worldwide outage. The company says it is aware that some people are having trouble accessing the Facebook app and that it is working on restoring access. The company did not say what might be causing the outage, which began around 11:45 ET. Facebook is going through a major crisis after the whistleblower who was the source of The Wall Street Journal’s series of stories exposing the company’s awareness of internal research into the negative effects of its products went public on CBS’s “60 Minutes” program Sunday.
The massive global outage that plunged Facebook, its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms and many people who rely heavily on these services — including Facebook’s own workforce — into chaos Monday is gradually dissipating.
Facebook said late Monday that it’s been working to restore access to its services and is “happy to report they are coming back online now.” The company apologized and thanked its users for bearing with it. But fixing it wasn’t as simple as flipping a proverbial switch. For some users, WhatsApp was working for a time, then not. For others, Instagram was working but not Facebook, and so on.
Facebook did not say what might have caused the outage, which began around 11:40 a.m. ET and was still not fixed more than six hours later.
Facebook was already in the throes of a separate major crisis after whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, provided The Wall Street Journal with internal documents that exposed the company’s awareness of harms caused by its products and decisions. Haugen went public on CBS’s “60 Minutes” program Sunday and is scheduled to testify before a Senate subcommittee Tuesday.
Haugen had also anonymously filed complaints with federal law enforcement alleging Facebook’s own research shows how it magnifies hate and misinformation and leads to increased polarization. It also showed that the company was aware that Instagram can harm teenage girls’ mental health.