WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook are all suffering a major global outage, completely bombing shortly before 5pm. As they are all owned by Facebook and share the same infrastructure, this also means that apps like Facebook Messenger and Facebook Workplace are also down.
DownDetector, which collects status reports on the services, showed 73,804 problems with WhatsApp had been recorded in a spike at 4:53pm.
It showed 43% of the problems were associated with the app and 28% were related to sending messages.
A company spokesperson said that it apologised for the problem but gave no indication of why the outage began or how long it might take to fix.
“We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products,” spokesperson Andy Stone said on Twitter. “We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”
The same statement was posted shortly after on the official Facebook Twitter page.
Instagram also shared a similar update.
“Instagram and friends are having a little bit of a hard time right now, and you may be having issues using them,” it wrote on its communications page. “Bear with us, we’re on it!”
And WhatsApp also updated users through its official Twitter account.
“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,” it said.
“Thanks for your patience!”
