FACEBOOK appears to be back to life this morning after the most severe global outage in its history, with the social media giant and its family of platforms including Instagram and WhatsApp affected for over 12 hours.
Users across the globe struggled to gain access to the three networks from around 4pm GMT on Wednesday afternoon until early on Thursday morning.
Facebook confirmed it was aware of the outage on Twitter, writing: "We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps.
"We’re working to resolve the issue as soon as possible."
We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps. We’re working to resolve the issue as soon as possible.
— Facebook (@facebook) 13 March 2019
Facebook was quick to dispel rumours that a DDoS ((Distributed Denial of Service) attack – a cyber-attack in which a network is overloaded with bogus traffic to disrupt service – was involved.
"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," the social network added.
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.
— Facebook (@facebook) 13 March 2019
The real cause behind the disruption has not yet been made public.
Instagram and WhatsApp, which are both owned by Facebook, were also reportedly back to normal on Thursday morning.
Millions of Instagram users were similarly left unable to use the platform for several hours, while WhatsApp suffered less severe problems – such as pictures being unable to send.
WhatsApp did not release a statement, but Instagram tweeted: "We're aware of an issue impacting people's access to Instagram right now. We know this is frustrating, and our team is hard at work to resolve this ASAP."
After the disruption ceased, Instagram shared an Oprah Winfrey meme with the caption: "Anddddd... we're back."
Anddddd... we're back. pic.twitter.com/5E8UdlcsPJ
— Instagram (@instagram) 14 March 2019
The hashtags #FacebookDown and #InstagramDown were trending for much of Wednesday, but most users saw the funny side in having to use another Twitter to learn what was wrong with other social networks.
Some people even resorted to checking if they could still log-in to their old Myspace accounts.
Facebook AND Instagram are down...
MySpace, it's your chance to make a comeback!#FacebookDown pic.twitter.com/ILccg1PtC8
— Troy Osinoff (@yo) March 13, 2019
@instagram please contact me
— Lindsay Lohan (@lindsaylohan) March 13, 2019
When Whatsapp, Instagram, and Facebook going down together... #WhatsAppDown #instagramdown #facebookdown pic.twitter.com/TNaRJsYHkr
— Ahmad Ridho (@Ahmadridhopp_) March 14, 2019
Me after Whatsapp, Instagram and Facebook started working again but I still didn’t get no messages because I’m trash and unpopular but you still gotta act like it was a hard time #whatsappdown #facebookdown pic.twitter.com/wVFu935UTf
— 000000000000 (@Notmeatall71) March 14, 2019
At least we have @Twitter 💙
By @schulteofficial#FacebookDown #InstagramDown pic.twitter.com/VBVUiYysHO
— 9GAG (@9GAG) March 14, 2019
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