#FacebookDown: Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram are all down for users worldwide
What's the story
Facebook and major social media platforms owned by it—WhatsApp and Instagram—have suffered a major global outage on Monday night. All three services seem to have gone down for users in many parts of the world as people are being greeted by error messages on mobile and web platforms. The outage has hit Facebook's Messenger, its VR arm Oculus, and reportedly internal employee tools, too.
Details
Most users encountered the issue at around 9:00 pm
According to user reports on the outage tracker website, Down Detector, most users seem to have started facing trouble accessing the aforementioned Facebook-owned platforms just around 9:00 pm IST. Meanwhile, the social media giant took to Twitter to acknowledge the issue. Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram apps are still down at the time of publishing.
Facebook tweets
We're working to get things back to normal: Facebook
While Facebook is yet to reveal what exactly caused this outage, in a statement posted on Twitter, it assured users they are working on rectifying the issue at the earliest. "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," Facebook tweeted.
Possible reason?
Experts suggest it could be a DNS error
While the actual reason is not known yet, several online experts suggested it could involve an error with the Domain Name System (DNS) for the Facebook platforms. Cloudflare Senior Vice-President Dane Knecht also tweeted, "Facebook DNS and other services are down. It appears their BGP [Border Gateway Protocol] routes have been withdrawn from the internet."
Impact
Facebook stock fell 6% following the outage
It is interesting to note that, most Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram outages reportedly hit only certain parts of the world but the latest outage is a widespread issue affecting many users as services are down across the globe. On the other hand, Facebook's stock has also declined by about 6% in light of this massive outage.
Twitter Post
Here's what Facebook posted on Twitter
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.
— Facebook (@Facebook) October 4, 2021