Facebook, the world’s number one social media platform, and subsidiary Instagram are apparently taking some holiday breaks on Labor Day. As of this writing, Facebook and Instagram were facing more than 30 minutes of downtime, with Twitter users taking to their feeds to share the news. Users internationally also reported simultaneous and massive WhatsApp outages.
Those already in areas suffering from sweltering summer heat have been hot with a double whammy by not being able to escape to social media to avoid those awkward conversations at family barbeques? Oh, the panic!
Hopping onto Twitter, users have started tweeting with the hashtags, “#facebook,” and “#facebookdown“, as well as “#instagram” and “#instagramdown“, with some users sharing screenshots of either blank browser pages, “Service Unavailable” text, or an actual official Facebook page that says, “Something went wrong.” Facebook’s own Twitter page hasn’t reported anything since August 31.
A personal attempt to access other parts of Facebook’s page, such as the “About Us” section and even a Google search link to Facebook of India, have shown that all of Facebook’s systems are in limbo – including the “Help” link.
DownDetector.com also reveals a huge and recent spike in down reports from users, with people commenting in the Disqus section from places as far as Hungary, Norway, Finland, and Turkey.
This downtime for the largest social media network won’t come as a surprise to some users, as recent complaints surfaced regarding user issues with Facebook Messenger over the past few days.
As of January 2018, Facebook reportedly has over 2.2 billion monthly active users. Its largest population of users interestingly isn’t the United States, which comes in second. Rather, it’s India, with 270 million active users as of July 2018, according to Statista.com. The U.S., according to the same source, reports 210 million active users, with Brazil and Indonesia following in third, with 130 million each.
While writing this article, Facebook seems to have returned to functioning status. Though users updating the comment section vigorously on DownDetctor.com report rolling outages in various areas, with Facebook Messenger and Instagram are still malfunctioning. Britain’s Express and Daily Mail are also reporting downtime on their end, with reports of WhatsApp malfunctions too.
So while Facebook and Instagram get their act together, it seems those tied to the social network will be forced to find some other activity to do on this day of relaxation.
We’ve reached out to Facebook’s press department to see what’s up, and will report back when we hear something.
