WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook are currently down for many users. WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook have all gone down in global outages hitting the social networks.
The three apps - which are all owned by Facebook, and run on shared infrastructure - all completely stopped working shortly before 5 pm. Other products that are part of the same family of apps, such as Facebook Workplace, also stopped working.
When Naijakit visited the Facebook website, there was an error page, that is, a message that their browser could not connect.
WhatsApp was the first to fail - initially the web version, then the phone app, before Facebook and Instagram followed suit, leaving users unable to view their messages or feeds on the three social networks.
The outage wasn't concentrated on one region either, with reports of issues throughout the USA, UK, and Europe, as well as Latin America.
As is somewhat customary during such outages, users thought that the internet itself was down, or there was an issue with devices. However, other social networks such as Twitter, TikTok, and Telegram were operating as normal.
The last time the three Facebook-owned networks went down was on March 19, 2021, and on that occasion, it took a couple of hours for the sites to regain proper functionality.
How do you know if your WhatsApp is down?
The easiest way to verify if WhatsApp is down for you is to try sending a message via the app. You will notice that there aren't the usual ticks to say the message is sent, but instead, the clock symbol to indicate the message is pending delivery.
Why did WhatsApp go down?
As yet, WhatsApp hasn't issued any updates via their Twitter account.
What happened to Facebook and Instagram?
Like WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram haven't been able to update the feeds on their applications. Though they have issued a message via Twitter.
"We're aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products," Facebook tweeted. "We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience."
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 (@Facebook) October 4, 2021
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!
Instagram and friends are having a little bit of a hard time right now, and you may be having issues using them. Bear with us, we’re on it! #instagramdown
— Instagram Comms (@InstagramComms) October 4, 2021