Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp are currently down

Update 2:45 p.m. ET: You guessed it: Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger are still down the stopwatch crosses three hours. Meanwhile, Telegram has said it is experiencing performance issues because of “all the new folks signing up” while WhatsApp is down. Cybercrime reporter Brian Krebs attributes it to a major DNS problem.

Update 12:40 p.m. ET: Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger are still down, 1 hour later. Facebook’s internal tools for employees are also affected by this problem, and employees are referring to today as a “snow day.” Facebook stock is down 6% in light of the outage.

It’s not just you: Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are all currently down for users around the world. We’re seeing error messages on all three services across iOS applications as well as on the web. Users are being greeted with error messages such as: “Sorry, something went wrong,” “5xx Server Error,” and more.

Yep, Facebook and Instagram are down…

The outage is affecting every Facebook-owned platform, according to data on Downdetector and Twitter. This includes Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger. The outages appear to have started around 11:40 am ET/8:40 am PT and all of those services remain inaccessible.

The outages quickly started trending on Twitter as users flocked to the competing social network to check to see if other users were affected by the down time. Humorously, the hashtag “#DeleteFacebook” is also trending on Twitter as the company battles continued pushback against the effects its platforms have on younger users.

As the New York Times reports:

Facebook has already been dealing with plenty of scrutiny. The company has been under fire from a whistle-blower, Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager who amassed thousands of pages of internal research and has since distributed them to the news media, lawmakers and regulators. The documents revealed that Facebook knew of many harms that its services were causing.

While some Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp outages only affect certain geographic regions, the services are down worldwide today. This includes the United States, the UK, Brazil, Kuwait, and more.

The outage is also affecting platforms and services that use Facebook login. Niantic, creator of Pokémon GO, says that it is “looking into reports of errors associated with Facebook login, and will update here once we have more information.” Other services that also use Facebook login are believed to be affected, as well as Oculus.

Facebook has not yet publicly commented on the ongoing outages affecting all of its services. We’ll be sure to update this story as we learn more. The issue appears to be related to some sort of DNS problem affecting Facebook servers.

Are Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp currently down for you? Let us know in the comments below.

WhatsApp statement

In a statement, WhatsApp acknowledges that its service is down:

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.

Facebook statement

Facebook’s Andy Stone:

We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.

Facebook internal also affected

Facebook’s internal Workplace site and associated services for employees are also suffering from an outage today, according to Jane Manchun Wong. The company has distributed a memo to employees about the issues. Employees are referring to this as a “snow day,” including Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri.

Potential explanation

Cybercrime reporter Brian Krebs attributes it to a major DNS problem. Krebs explains that the DNS records that tell systems how to find Facebook and Instagram “got withdrawn this morning from the global routing cables.” At this point, however, it’s unclear how this happened.

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