Facebook, WhatsApp & Instagram ALL down in major worldwide outage

Facebook and its subsidiaries Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are down, according to tracker DownDetector, frustrating social media users worldwide. Facebook says it is working to solve the issue.

Users began reporting problems accessing servers to the major social media sites on Monday morning and afternoon, according to DownDetector, which logs user issues with popular websites.

Frantic Facebookers flocked to Twitter to verify that they weren’t the only ones whose universe had been turned upside down.

The Facebook app wouldn’t load at all for many mobile users, while some desktop users got a “Sorry, something went wrong” message. Instagram users saw a 5xx Server Error message, according to The Verge.

The company has not given any indications as to when its services will be operational again. 

WhatsApp eventually tweeted an acknowledgment of the issue, promising it was “working to get things back to normal” and would “send an update here as soon as possible.” Soon after, the parent company issued a statement along similar lines, apologizing for any “inconvenience.”

Instagram, meanwhile, told users through a tweet that it was "having a little bit of a hard time right now" and assured people they were working on it.

As the popular sites remained down, many wondered how much Twitter cashed in whenever Facebook and its offshoots went down.

Encrypted messenger app (and WhatsApp competitor) Telegram also jumped into the fray, having some fun at Facebook’s expense, tweeting that they were "still holding" on despite the mass outages.

Facebook employees, however, weren't having much fun at all, reduced to communicating via the Stone-Age methods of texting and Outlook email while trying in vain to access office space their malfunctioning servers had locked them out of.

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