Social media platforms WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook experienced an outage on Monday affecting users worldwide. An outage that lasted for hours saw all three Facebook-controlled and owned services going unresponsive due to the shared infrastructure. The tracking website, Downdetector reported over 80,000 outages for WhatsApp and 50,000 for Facebook.
We’re aware that some people are experiencing issues with WhatsApp at the moment. We’re working to get things back to normal and will send an update here as soon as possible.
— WhatsApp (@WhatsApp) October 4, 2021
Thanks for your patience!
Online network experts hinted at an error with the Domain Name System (DNS) for Facebook sites as the possible reason for the outage which affected not only the app but also the websites of these services.
Meanwhile, as the technical team at the Menlo Park headquarters in California, USA worked to resolve the issue, netizens took to Twitter to express themselves.
Me apologize to my wifi when WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook goes down and realise that's not wifi fault #serverdown pic.twitter.com/5VlLvfnr45
— Muhammad Waseem CH (@Itx_WasiCH_56) October 4, 2021
Me coming on Twitter after FB, IG and Whatsapp go down……#serverdown #facebookdown #instagramdown pic.twitter.com/7Wqg9pi6n4
— The H.M (@TheHM16) October 4, 2021
As WhatsApp trended on Twitter, the microblogging site poked fun at former.
hello literally everyone
— Twitter (@Twitter) October 4, 2021
Netflix and Amazon Prime also chimed in.
When Instagram & Facebook are down. pic.twitter.com/mVFlVOOCOC
— Netflix (@netflix) October 4, 2021
just leaving it here pic.twitter.com/DCp0mHClCN
— amazon prime video IN (@PrimeVideoIN) October 4, 2021
The problems for Facebook seem to have increased after a dismal performance in the stock markets as the company’s shares on NASDAQ fell 5.5 percent in afternoon trading on Monday, its worst indices in a year. Interestingly, the outage comes a day after the data scientist Frances Haugen blew the whistle on Facebook’s acts and policies in an interview to the ’60 Minutes’, a television program of CBS.
“When we live in an information environment that is full of angry, hateful, polarizing content it erodes our civic trust, it erodes our faith in each other, it erodes our ability to want to care for each other, the version of Facebook that exists today is tearing our societies apart and causing ethnic violence around the world.”
Frances Haugen, Data Scientist