UPDATE 2 [7:15 AM]: Facebook and its subsidiaries have noted through Twitter that they are coming back online. Scroll down for further details.
UPDATE 1 [12:34 AM]: Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram have posted their official statements on Twitter, informing users that they are aware of the situation and that an investigation into the matter is underway.
ORIGINAL STORY [12:09 AM]:
If you’ve been having difficulties trying to access your Facebook page, sending a message via WhatsApp, or post a picture on Instagram, you’re not the only one. At the time of writing, both the social network and its owned apps seem to be offline and unavailable.
The issue seems to have started with Facebook’s social messaging app, WhatsApp, and more specifically, the desktop version of the app. Users were reportedly unable to launch the app and were greeted with a “ffmpeg.dll not found” error, along with a suggestion to try reinstalling the desktop app once again.
Seeing how we were affected, we tried to reinstall the app and it worked, if only for a brief moment. Almost immediately after we did so, the connection to the platform went down and when we tried to relaunch it, we were greeted with the message that our system was not connected to the internet. Despite the fact that we were.
On another hand, Instagram showed this error when you tried to browse its website:
At the time of this publication, Facebook has not released an official statement or explanation as to why this is happening.
UPDATE 1 [12:34 AM]:
Facebook has acknowledged that its services are facing difficulties at the moment. However, it seemed that the company may have downplayed the severity of the downtime by saying that “some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products,” even though what is really happening is a global-scale downtime.
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.
— Meta (@Meta) October 4, 2021
Instagram and WhatsApp have published similar tweets as well:
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
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
UPDATE 2 [7:15 AM]:
After more than six hours of downtime, Facebook, Instagram and Instagram are now back to normal according to the updates that they have posted through Twitter:
To the huge community of people and businesses around the world who depend on us: we're sorry. We’ve been working hard to restore access to our apps and services and are happy to report they are coming back online now. Thank you for bearing with us.
— Meta (@Meta) October 4, 2021
Instagram is slowly but surely coming back now – thanks for dealing with us and sorry for the wait! https://t.co/O6II13DrMy
— Instagram Comms (@InstagramComms) October 4, 2021
Apologies to everyone who hasn’t been able to use WhatsApp today. We’re starting to slowly and carefully get WhatsApp working again.
Thank you so much for your patience. We will continue to keep you updated when we have more information to share.
— WhatsApp (@WhatsApp) October 4, 2021
In addition to these updates, the Chief Technology Officer of Facebook, Mike Schroepfer has mentioned that the global-scale downtime was caused by networking issues although he didn’t provide in-depth details regarding them. On a related side note, Mike who is a 13-year veteran at Facebook will be stepping down from his CTO post later this year although he will continue to be with the company on a part-time basis as a Senior Fellow.
*Sincere* apologies to everyone impacted by outages of Facebook powered services right now. We are experiencing networking issues and teams are working as fast as possible to debug and restore as fast as possible
— Mike Schroepfer (@schrep) October 4, 2021
Despite these brief statements, neither Facebook nor its subsidiaries have provided detailed explanations behind the massive downtime that they have experienced for the past few hours. (UPDATE – 11:55 AM: The company said that the downtime was due to router configurations.)
