Facebook down: Site and app not working and fail to load amid major crash

Some people are writing out posts – and then finding that they've disappeared

Facebook and Instagram completely broke for users around the world on Wednesday.

Those who attempted to go onto Facebook were shown a blank page, with nothing loading. Others reported that they could only load specific parts of the site or app.

Some found the site working entirely normally until they tried to post something, at which point it broke down.

The issues were seen across the world, though not for all users. The website Down Detector showed thousands of people complaining about the issues.

Almost 90 per cent of problems on Facebook in the UK were reported as total blackouts or users being unable to log in, while on Instagram the core issue was with its news feed.

Facebook confirmed on its developer page that it was experiencing "an increased number of API errors". It was investigating the problem and would provide an update when it was identified, it wrote.

It's rare that the site – used by more than a billion people in countries around the world – breaks. But because of its huge size, any outage can be hugely significant, even if it is down for just moments.

The problems did appear to be focused in the US and Europe. But that's probably a consequence of the timezones in which people are awake, since the problems do appear to be happening around the world.