Instagram, Facebook and Messenger down – live updates: Users unable to access apps amid major Thanksgiving outage

Facebook and Instagram down

Instagram, Facebook and Messenger have gone down in a major Thanksgiving outage.

Almost all of Facebook's products were hit by the problems, with the exception of WhatsApp, which appears to have successfully stayed online.

The problems were seen across the world, though did not appear to affect all users the same. Some said they were still able to see parts of each app, while others reported that the services appeared to be working as normal.

The outage recalls the major problems over summer, during which the entire Facebook suits of products went offline for almost a day.

Please allow a moment for the live blog to load

[28 November 2019 15:34 · Andrew Griffin]

Facebook Twitter page and other profiles still silent

There's no post on the official Facebook page on Twitter, either. In the past the company has used that profile to give notifications about outages – and even explain them, in its own mysterious way. But its latest post was sent yesterday, and concerned buying things on Instagram.

[28 November 2019 15:38 · Andrew Griffin]

Problems at Facebook not letting up

As this chart from Down Detector shows, there is no sense that the outage or reports of it are going away. There are a vast number of complaints, and they are not reducing:

[28 November 2019 15:40 · Andrew Griffin]

Outage comes at perhaps worst possible time

As well as being Thanksgiving day – when presumably few Facebook engineers are at work, or at least planned to be – the outage has started very early in the West Coast. It's still 7.30 in the morning in Facebook's home of California.

(Though you would hope, of course, that it has engineers elsewhere, who don't have holidays and are on a different timezone..)

[28 November 2019 15:42 · Andrew Griffin]

​A long way to go to trouble any records

If this outage is going to try and hit some records, it's going to have to wait for a while. In March, when Facebook (and its other apps) were hit by a major outage, it took more than 24 hours for the company to announce the problem was fixed. So we've got 22 or so hours to go!

[28 November 2019 15:43 · Andrew Griffin]

​Did Facebook do another 'server configuration change'?

Here's what the company said on Twitter in March, after that major outage:

[28 November 2019 15:44 · Andrew Griffin]

Instagram responds to outage

Instagram speaks! Here's the latest from its Twitter account:

[28 November 2019 16:00 · Andrew Griffin]

Reaction to Thanksgiving outage continues

How people feel about the outage varies. But there's certainly a lot of feelings, which tend to either be joy at not being subjected to boring Thanksgiving posts, or upset about not having something to distract from the real world.

[28 November 2019 16:11 · Andrew Griffin]

Outage shows no sign of abating

Reports of problems continue to grow over on Down Detector.

[28 November 2019 16:31 · anthony.cuthbertson]

Instagram coming back?

While Facebook issues continue to grow, Instagram seems to be slowly coming back online.

[28 November 2019 16:43 · anthony.cuthbertson]

Not so happy Thanksgiving for Instagram

Instagram users around the world are turning to other platforms to vent their frustrations. 

On Twitter, #InstagramDown has become the number two trend worldwide, with only 'Happy Thanksgiving' topping it.