Global outages cripple Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram

Several of Facebook’s most popular social media platforms are suffering partial outages around the world, largely affecting users across the Americas and Europe.

Service continues to be disrupted on Facebook’s main app, Messsenger, Instagram and Whatsapp. Users began reporting issues at around 4pm GMT, with full access to the platforms still ongoing.

Third-party outage tracker Down Detector said the worst hotspots were in California and New York in the US, and in the UK.

We're focused on working to resolve the issue as soon as possible, but can confirm that the issue is not related to a DDoS attack.

— Meta (@Meta) March 13, 2019

The company said in a statement last night that it was working to resolve the issue, and that the outage was not related to a so-called DDoS attack ­– a tactic used by hackers which involves a host of computers all sending traffic to a single point at once. The firm would not disclose any further details.

Facebook users reported issues posting on the platform, while Instagram users were load photos but could not view image descriptions, comments or likes.

Facebook’s business platform Workplace was also reported to be affected by the disruption.

https://twitter.com/Airaamdn/status/1105918409848418305

The outages come after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg floated the idea of integrating the messaging services of its family of apps into one place, meaning users would receive a combined message feed from all three apps.

Last week Zuckerberg also said the firm was exploring end-to-end encryption for the entire platform, extending the current security coverage of Whatsapp onto both Messenger and Instagram.