Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are DOWN

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Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are down for users around the world, with the first report of problems coming in this afternoon.

According to DownDetector, the issues started at around 16:44 BST (11:44 ET), with tens of thousands of users reporting problems connecting.

NetBlocks, which tracks internet outages and their impact, estimate the outage has already cost the global economy $160m (£117 million), and sent the Facebook share price down by more than five per cent.

The exact cause of the outage is still unclear, but Dane Knecht, Senior VP of web security firm Cloudflare, says the Facebook Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routes, used by networks to deliver internet traffic, have been ‘withdrawn from the internet.’ 

Cybersecurty expert, Kevin Beaumont, wrote on Twitter: ‘This one looks like a pretty epic configuration error, Facebook basically don’t exist on the internet right now. Even their authoritative name server ranges have been BGP withdrawn.’ 

Facebook staff were also reportedly unable to get in to their offices today to evaluate the extent of the outage because their security passes were not working.  

Whatsapp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger, which are all owned by Facebook, run on a shared back-end infrastructure, creating a ‘single point of failure’ according to experts.

It wasn’t just the main Facebook apps going down, other services, including Facebook Workplace and the Oculus website were also down.

In the US, internet services on phones supported by Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T are also down. In the UK, internet services for users of mobile network EE are also affected. 

There have been a number of social media outages in recent months, with Instagram going down for 16 hours just last month, and all Facebook platforms going offline in June. 

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey appeared to make light of Facebook’s plight this evening. Responding to a post which appeared to show how the facebook.com domain is for sale as a result of the outage, he jokingly asked: ‘How much?’ 

The cause of then outage is unconfirmed and it’s unclear if all are linked but not long before Facebook’s entities went down, entries for Facebook and Instagram were removed from the Domain Name System (DNS) it uses. 

A DNS is essentially an internet directory. Whenever someone opens a link or an app, their device has to search the DNS used by the service they are trying to access to find it and then connect them to it. 

Major DNS providers are Google, Amazon and CloudFare. It’s unclear if all of the sites and services that went down on Monday use the same DNS or not. 

A similar outage at cloud company Akamai Technologies Inc took down multiple websites in July.

According to Reuters news agency, security experts tracking the situation said the outage could have been triggered by a configuration error, which could be the result of an internal mistake, though sabotage by an insider would be theoretically possible.

An outside hack was viewed as less likely. A massive denial-of-service attack that could overwhelm one of the world’s most popular sites, on the other hand, would require either coordination among powerful criminal groups or a very innovative technique.

Shares of Facebook, which has nearly 2 billion daily active users, fell 5.5 per cent in afternoon trading on Monday, inching towards its worst day in nearly a year.   

Whilst EE has not made an official announcement to say that their mobile internet services are affected, thousands of social media users have reported problems.

One Twitter user said there was ‘obviously’ a ‘nationwide issue’ and demanded that the network announce if there is a problem. ‘EE down’ is trending on the platform. 

On DownDetector, thousands of reports of problems have been filed by EE users, with more than 72 per cent of them related to problems with mobile internet services. 

On Twitter, Facebook communications executive, Andy Stone said they were aware some people were having trouble accessing Facebook apps and products.

‘We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience,’ the executive said in a tweet.

Soon after the first report came through, the hashtag #facebookdown was trending on Twitter, with users worldwide reporting issues connecting. 

The hashtag #instagramisdown and ‘WhatsApp’ were both also trending on Twitter, with a number of users saying they checked their internet connection when they couldn’t get on Facebook. 

Instagram comms tweeted: ‘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!’

WhatsApp tweeted: ‘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. Thanks for your patience!’

Even Oculus, the virtual reality gaming platform owned by Facebook was having problems, with one user describing their headset as being ‘like a paperweight’.

Oculus tweeted: ‘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.’ 

Every time Facebook and Instagram are down, it draws people to Twitter. 

Today, one user shared a meme of Homer Simpson jumping from his house to Moe’s bar, with the Twitter logo over the door.

Even Google got in on the action, tweeting: ‘Everyone going to Google to check if Instagram is down.’ 

There were multiple jokes along the same lines, with one showing a fast track race and the caption: ‘Me and my friends running to twitter to see if fb, whatsapp and insta are down.’ 

It is unclear what has caused the issue, although it has disrupted all Facebook owned platforms, including the Oculus Virtual Reality gaming website and Facebook Workplace.

NetBlocks, which tracks internet outages, tweeted: ‘Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger are currently experiencing outages in multiple countries.’

Adding that the ‘incident not related to country-level internet disruptions or filtering.’

When attempting to visit Instagram using a desktop web browser, it gives up a ‘5xx Server Error’ and Facebook simply says ‘this site can’t be reached.’ 

The last major outage of Facebook platforms was in June 2021, when people in the US, Morocco, Mexico and Brazil all reported not being able to connect. 

However, there were also problems last month, when Instagram went down for a whopping 16 hours. 

Jake Moore, cybersecurity specialist at ESET said outages are increasing in volume and are becoming increasingly harder to predict.

He said initially, a major problem with a website or app can point towards a cyber attack – but that can add to confusion and be misleading.

‘With recent issues such as what happened with Fastly [the web service platform that saw a major global outage on June 8] it highlights the power of an undiscovered software bug or even human error,’ Moore explained.

‘Although these are increasing in frequency and require more failsafes in place, predicting these issues is increasingly more difficult as it was never thought possible before. Luckily, most outages only last under an hour.’

This latest outage highlights the major issues with using centralised systems, according to Matthew Hodgson, Co-founder and CEO of Element and Technical Co-founder of Matrix.

“The ongoing outage of WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook (including Facebook Messenger and Facebook Workplace) highlights that global outages are one of the major downsides of a centralised system,’ he said.

Centralised apps, like having a single back end for Facebook products, means putting ‘all the eggs in one basket,’ Hodgson explained.

‘Decentralised systems are far more reliable. There’s no single point of failure so they can withstand significant disruption and still keep people and businesses communicating.’