Facebook Finally Resolves Daylong Outages across Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger

Facebook users suffered problems of uploading images, videos, and other data across its apps, along with difficulty in viewing stories on Instagram or sending messages in WhatsApp and for others, they couldn’t even access the app. Instagram and Facebook were down worldwide and every time the social media platforms go down, the internet freaks out and there is no exception this time around.

According to outage tracking website Downdetector.com, more than 14,000 users reported the issues with Instagram, whereas more than 7,500 and 1,600 users complained about the problem about Facebook and WhatsApp. Downdetector’s live outage map also showed that the issues were mainly in parts of Europe and the United States.

Facebook responded immediately to disruption saying it is aware of the issues and was “working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible.” Facebook posted a message to its official Twitter account saying the “issue has since been resolved and we should be back at 100 percent for everyone. We’re sorry for any inconvenience.” 

The problem started early in the morning and began slowly clearing up after a couple of hours. The errors have not affected all the images. 

While many users have successfully uploaded pictures on Facebook and Instagram, others were appearing blank. DownDetector also said that they have received reports of the people, who are unable to load messages in Facebook Messenger.

The outage continued throughout the day, compelling Facebook to release a second statement, where it apologized “for any inconvenience” saying that the company is “working on a fix that will go out shortly.” Facebook also said, “During one of our routine maintenance operations, we triggered an issue that is making it difficult for some people to upload or send photos and videos”.

Instagram also confirmed the situation on their Twitter page but did not explain the cause, why the app was down worldwide. Side note, even they used the hashtag #instagramdown. The tweet reads, “We’re aware that some people are having trouble uploading or sending images and videos on Instagram. We're sorry for the trouble and are working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible. #instagramdown”. 

Apps and websites no doubt suffers occasional disruptions due to the complexity of the services they are offering. But even if the duration of the outage is long, they can become a real problem, as there are huge numbers of users, who are using these services regularly. A Facebook outage affects a group of popular apps and those apps collectively have billions of users, who completely rely on them. 

Such outage becomes more critical when the services are used for business and communications and every hour they are offline or acting strange can mean real inconveniences thereby losing money and business both.

Facebook, which earns $10 millions from advertising revenue daily, declined to comment when asked whether it will refund businesses. In a similar incident in the month of March, the company has said it would consider refunding advertisers for lost exposure.