Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram are all currently down, forcing (literally) billions of users offline. The DNS issue is affecting all of Facebook's major services, blocking users not only from accessing the main Facebook site, but also sending messages via Messenger or WhatsApp, accessing tools such as Facebook Workplace, or any Instagram features.
As usual, Facebook remains silent regarding the outage. Although Facebook blackouts take place periodically, the company never reveals much about why the network goes down, preferring to fix the issue and move on without explaining the technical details to its users.
Are All Facebook Services Down?
At around 11:45ET, users worldwide began flooding in with reports that Facebook is down. The outage is affecting all of Facebook's services, taking Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and any other Facebook-controlled service with it.
That means other sites that rely on Facebook's login to provide secure access to their own services are also affected, potentially locking users out even if they're not attempting to access Facebook specifically.
It also appears that it isn't just regular Facebook users that face issues with the service. A tweet from Jane Manchun Wong revealed that Facebook's internal services are suffering, too.
Why Is Facebook Down? Is Facebook Up Yet?
A DNS (Domain Name System) issue appears to be the culprit behind Facebook's massive outage.
Facebook's BGP routes were temporarily withdrawn from the internet, effectively removing Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram from the internet, for every user. As no one could exchange information properly with Facebook's DNS name servers, there was no way of accessing the site.
As per the tweet linked in the previous section, even Facebook's internal services were down in what's described as "a pretty epic configuration error."
The Hashtag #facebookdown Trends on Twitter
Within minutes of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram going down, the hashtag #facebookdown was trending on Twitter, amassing hundreds of thousands of tweets. #whatsappdown and #instadown also shot to the top of the Twitter trending charts as panicked users flocked en masse to the social network in an attempt to find out why Facebook is down.
Trending alongside the #facebookdown hashtag is, somewhat amusingly, the hashtag #deletefacebook, with the outage coming on the back of a tumultuous day for the social network. Prior to going offline, a Facebook whistleblower delivered a damning exposé on the company, alleging that Facebook always puts the company before the public, amongst other issues.
Developing story...
0 Comments