Well, here’s one way to start a Monday off on the wrong foot: Facebook, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram are all down. Yes, completely down. Heading over to Downdetector for an “is it just me?” check shows that reports of outages are off the charts — though the unreturned messages from your friends were probably a good indicator.
The issue seems to be hitting the websites, apps, and related services of everything in the Facebook network. For some, apps and websites won’t load at all. Others still get an interface, but have messages fail to send and photos fail to load. Polling the Digital Trends staff and looking at an aggregation of reports around the web, the outage is spanning across countries and global regions.
Just in case you were wondering how unexpected this outage is, a tweet sent out by the official WhatsApp Twitter account hits the “we were not prepared for this” vibe well.
We’re aware that some people are experiencing issues with WhatsApp at the moment. We’re working to get things back to normal and will send an update here as soon as possible.
Thanks for your patience!
— WhatsApp (@WhatsApp) October 4, 2021
Instagram followed up with its own.
Instagram and friends are having a little bit of a hard time right now, and you may be having issues using them. Bear with us, we’re on it! #instagramdown
— Instagram Comms (@InstagramComms) October 4, 2021
And not to be left out, some official accounts of competitors are getting in on the fun. (Though given Google’s notable history of failed messaging platforms, it should probably observe the idiom about glass houses.)
What do we do now? Gmail?
— Google UK (@GoogleUK) October 4, 2021
What’s causing the problem?
Twitter users have spotted the Facebook domain for sale, which seems to confirm the claim that the problems are DNS-related.
Just because the domains are unavailable doesn’t mean Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp are gone for good. The servers that provide the actual website when you type in something like “Facebook.com” aren’t working, so essentially, no one can find the website. How long the outage will last, and whether Facebook will ever reveal the cause, is still unclear.
This is a developing story.