WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook suffered a global outage that affected the social media platforms.
All three apps are owned by Facebook and therefore use the same infrastructure and all stopped working properly around 6 p.m. CEST (5 p.m. BST and 12 p.m. ET) Monday the 4th of October 2021.
WhatsApp was the first to fail first on the web version, then on the phone app, before Facebook and Instagram followed suit, leaving users unable to see their messages or feeds on all three. social networks.
The blackout also did not focus on one region, with reports of problems in the US, UK, and Europe, as well as Latin America. But there are alternatives to WhatsApp that you can use.
As is customary during such outages, users thought that the Internet itself was down or that there was a problem with the devices. However, other social networks such as Twitter, TikTok, and Telegram were functioning normally.
The last time the three networks owned by Facebook were shut down was on March 19, 2021, and on that occasion, it took a few hours for the sites to get back to normal.
Internal Facebook systems used by employees also failed. The company did not specify what could be causing the outage, and while it may be normal for websites and applications to experience outages, a global outage is rare.
Doug Madory, director of internet analytics for Kentik Inc., said it appears the routes advertised by Facebook online that tell the whole internet how to access its properties are not available.
Mador said it appears the DNS paths that Facebook is making available to the networking world have been taken down. The domain name system is an integral part of how traffic is routed on the Internet. You will notice that there are not the usual checkmarks to say the message has been sent, but instead the clock symbol to indicate that the message is awaiting delivery.
Why did WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram crash?
WhatsApp updated users on Twitter but only acknowledged that there was a problem, without revealing why the service was stopped.
"We are aware that some people are having issues with WhatsApp right now," WhatsApp tweeted. “We are working to get things back to normal and will post an update here as soon as possible.
Like WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram couldn't update feeds on their apps. sent a message via Twitter.
"We are aware that some people have difficulty accessing our applications and products," Facebook tweeted. "We are working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience."
