Facebook down - live updates: Company explains outage as WhatsApp, Instagram and other apps come back online

Latest news as Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are back up

Explained: Why Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp were all down

WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook are now back online after being down for more than six hours in a major outage.

The three apps – which are all owned by Facebook, and run on shared infrastructure – stopped working shortly before 5pm UK time on Monday.

Other related products, such as Facebook Messenger and Workplace, also stopped working.

Facebook has now explained in a detailed blog post what caused the outage - and why it took so long to fix.

It comes as former Facebook product manager and data scientist Frances Haugen testifies before a Senate subcommittee about the company’s research into Instagram’s effect on the mental health of young users.

In June and April this year, the social media giant’s platforms unexpectedly went down due to a “network configuration issue”.

Read our live coverage of the outage below

Key points

• Facebook outages can hit other services
• A Facebook whistleblower is currently testifying in the US Senate
• The outage was caused by changes to Facebook’s routers, which also stopped the company’s communication efforts

[5 October 2021 09:57 · Vishwam Sankaran]

WhatsApp is back and “running at 100 per cent”

The company head Will Cathcard tweeted that the messaging service app is “entirely back,” thanking everyone who worked hard to resolve the six-hour outage platforms including Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram experienced on Monday.

“We’ll learn and grow from this, and continue working to provide you with a simple, secure, and reliable private messaging app,” he added.

[5 October 2021 08:44 · Vishwam Sankaran]

Facebook.com was up for sale

For a few hours during Monday’s outage of platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp, numerous domain registration companies listed Facebook.com as up for sale.

This was because automated systems, which are used by these companies, look for registered domains that seem to be expired, recently vacated, or abandoned.

One such listing was mistakenly made in the domain registrar Uniregistry Market, owned by GoDaddy, but has since been removed.

“A third-party who doesn’t own Facebook.com attempted to list it for sale on Uniregistry.com and we inadvertently included it in search results. Because the third-party didn’t own or control the domain, it was never at risk of being sold and it remains with the current owner,” GoDaddy told The Mac Observer.

[5 October 2021 07:54 · Vishwam Sankaran]

Jimmy Fallon mocks Facebook after outage

Late Night comedy show host Jimmy Fallon takes a dig at Facebook following the platform’s six-hour outage on Monday.

“They were like, ‘Oh my god...this is the BEST press we’ve had in months!,’ Fallon said in his opening monologue on The Tonight Show.

Hinting at the Covid-19 vaccine misinformation spread on the platform, Fallon said “Facebook was down for only a day and in that short time, everyone got the vaccine.”

[5 October 2021 06:35 · Vishwam Sankaran]

Outage may have cost global economy over $1 billion

An hour of outage of Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger would cost the global economy about $160 billion, according to an estimate by London-based internet monitoring firm NetBlocks.

The firm’s Cost of Shutdown Tool (COST), estimates that the overall six-hour outage of the platforms may have resulted in losses to the global economy exceeding $1bn US dollars.

[5 October 2021 04:00 · Graeme Massie]

Facebook asked federal court to dismiss FTC complaint

The social media giant filed a motion in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, on the same day it was hit by a major outage.

Facebook said the Federal Trade Commission had failed to prove that it has a monopoly in the “personal social networking space.”

“The FTC’s fictional market ignores the competitive reality: Facebook competes vigorously with TikTok, iMessage, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn, YouTube, and countless others to help people share, connect, communicate or simply be entertained,” Facebook said in a statement.

“The FTC cannot credibly claim Facebook has monopoly power because no such power exists.”

[5 October 2021 03:46 · Vishwam Sankaran]

Facebook reveals what caused six-hour outage

Facebook said in an official blog post on Tuesday that the six-hour outage across its platforms including Instagram, Messenger, Whatsapp, and OculusVR were caused by configuration changes to its routers which coordinate network traffic between the company’s data centers.

“This disruption to network traffic had a cascading effect on the way our data centers communicate, bringing our services to a halt,” the company noted.

Facebook said it has no evidence yet that user data was compromised as a result of this downtime.

“The underlying cause of this outage also impacted many of the internal tools and systems we use in our day-to-day operations, complicating our attempts to quickly diagnose and resolve the problem,” it added.

[5 October 2021 02:45 · Graeme Massie]

Big tech expert advises how we should view Facebook’s mass outage

When Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp went dark for more than six hours, it left its billions of users without a major form of communication and severely disrupted their online lives.

Facebook and its apps, which are all owned by Mark Zuckerberg’s social media giant stopped working at around 11.40am Eastern Time on Monday, and started coming back to live after 6pm.

More below.

[5 October 2021 01:45 · Graeme Massie]

Facebook whistleblower will urge Congress to regulate the company

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen will urge the US Congress on Tuesday to regulate the social media giant, which she will compare to tobacco companies.

“When we realised tobacco companies were hiding the harms it caused, the government took action. When we figured out cars were safer with seatbelts, the government took action,” said Haugen’s written testimony to be delivered to a Senate Commerce subcommittee, according to Reuters.

“I implore you to do the same here.”

Haugen will tell the committee that Facebook executives routinely chose the firm’s profits over user safety.

“The company’s leadership knows ways to make Facebook and Instagram safer and won’t make the necessary changes because they have put their immense profits before people. Congressional action is needed,” she will say. “As long as Facebook is operating in the dark, it is accountable to no one. And it will continue to make choices that go against the common good.”

In this Sept. 16, 2021, photo provided by CBS, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen talks with CBS’ Scott Pelley on “60 Minutes,” in an episode that aired Sunday, Oct. 3. (AP)

[5 October 2021 00:42 · Graeme Massie]

Facebook stock nosedive costs Zuckberg $6bn as whistleblower interview and service outage rattle investors

Shares in Facebook fell sharply on Monday in the aftermath of the explosive interview with whistleblower Frances Haugen and as its service outage dragged on for fifth hour.

It is the worst session performance for the company in nearly a year with the share price falling 4.9 per cent – the worst decline since the five per cent drop recorded on 9 November 2020.

Oliver O’Connell has the story.

[4 October 2021 23:48 · Graeme Massie]

Facebook apologises for company outage

“To the huge community of people and businesses around the world who depend on us: we’re sorry. We’ve been working hard to restore access to our apps and services and are happy to report they are coming back online now. Thank you for bearing with us,” the company said in a statement posted on rival platform Twitter.