Facebook down: Users report outage for Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp

Users are reporting issues in Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Brazil, and more

(Getty Images)

Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp services unexpectedly went down.

Users reported issues in Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Brazil, Bangladesh, and more. There were also intermittent problems for users in the United States and the United Kingdom.

According to the website DownDetector, which tracks online outages, the issue began at 6:40pm EDT / 11:40pm GMT.

Over 40 per cent of reports on the DownDetector website stated that there was a total blackout of the social media platform’s services. On Twitter, users reported that they are having difficulties loading photos and posts.

Facebook’s official status page also did not indicate there is an issue, despite numerous reports from users. Insiders claimed that Facebook is currently restoring operability.

“Yesterday, a network configuration issue caused some people to have trouble accessing Facebook technologies. We quickly resolved this issue for everyone, and we apologize for any inconvenience,” a Facebook company spokesperson told The Independent.

The networking giant had experienced issues like this before in April this year, as well as in March.

Facebook has been working to integrate its various services, including the backend of WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger, in order to allow cross-platform messaging between the apps.

However, critics have highlighted that increased integration means outages are more dramatic - as well as making it harder for lawmakers to break up the platform, something they have proposed before.

The outage also follows a number of major websites including Reddit, Amazon, the UK government and many of the world’s biggest news organisations going dark due to a software bug from content delivery network company Fastly.