For many hours nothing went at all: online giant Facebook and its subsidiary services Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger were not available anywhere in the world.
San Francisco – The massive outage of Facebook as well as Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger that lasted several hours now seems to have been largely resolved. The online services were unavailable for more than six hours on Monday evening (October 4th, 2021 CET). In the meantime, the providers are gradually going back online, as numerous users discovered on Tuesday night. The cause of the failure has not yet been clarified.
The Downdetector website said it had received 10.6 million error messages from the United States and Europe, as well as countries like Colombia and Singapore. The first error messages were registered around 5.45 p.m. CEST.
Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp down: back online since midnight
Users tried unsuccessfully to access their accounts on Facebook, to use the photo and video service Instagram or to send messages via the messenger service Whatsapp. Facebook users: The error message was displayed inside: “Something went wrong. We are working on it and will fix it as soon as possible. “
The number of breakdown reports received by Downdetector has fallen sharply since midnight. “No doubt the services Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram will need more time to go online, but since 10:28 p.m. UTC (00:24 p.m. CEST), Facebook seems to be connected to the global Internet again and the domain name system is working again,” the statement said Internet security specialist company Cloudflare posted a blog on Monday night local time.
Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp down: the company is silent
Facebook initially did not provide any information about the possible cause of the failure. IT security experts said there was evidence that online connections that lead users to the network were interrupted. Facebook and its subsidiaries “disappeared from the Internet in a series of BGP updates,” said John Graham-Cumming, chief technology officer at Cloudflare, on the online service Twitter. The BGP or Border Gateway Protocol is the routing protocol used on the Internet that connects autonomous systems with one another.
Facebook technology boss Mike Schroepfer apologized “sincerely” to all concerned on Twitter. In an initial reaction to the mishap, Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said on Twitter: “We know that some users have problems accessing our apps and products.” The company is working on “getting things back as soon as possible normalize.”
UPDATE: 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.
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) October 4, 2021
The failure hits Facebook in the middle of a crisis phase. For weeks there have been negative headlines about how the Californian Internet giant has dealt with its own research on the question of how harmful online offers – especially Instagram – are for young users, for example.
Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp not available: Twitter benefits from the failure
For Facebook, which is currently under increased political pressure in the USA, the failure of several hours was, as it were, a disgraceful coronation of already bad weeks. It was only on Sunday that the former Facebook employee Frances Haugen identified herself as a whistleblower who had forwarded the company’s documents to the Wall Street Journal. The 37-year-old accuses her former employer, among other things, of systematically putting profit above security.
The short message service Twitter was full of jokes on Monday about how the disappearance of Facebook had made everything better in one fell swoop, including world peace. “Hopefully Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp will never work again,” tweeted satirist Jan Böhmermann. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden took the opportunity to recommend the Signal chat app as an alternative that offers more privacy. (skr / afp / dpa)
Header list image: © LIONEL BONAVENTURE / AFP
