Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp experience global outage
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">A massive worldwide global outage has affected millions of people trying to access Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp in several countries, including Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and the US.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Facebook users in affected areas have received the message: “Something went wrong. We’re working on it and we’ll get it fixed as soon as we can.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Instagram has been displaying a 5xx server error message, with the message: “Sorry, this page isn’t available.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The outage was first reported in Australia and New Zealand at about 2am on Tuesday morning, according to the downdetector.com site.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">As the outage continues, it is </span><a rel="noopener" href="https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/social/facebook-whatsapp-instagram-hit-by-global-outage-why-facebook-isnt-working/news-story/ba143d13bfd1eed83c7cd5e1394aa2e9" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">costing Facebook</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> $160 million every hour the three sites are down, according to NetBlocks. </span></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr">We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.</p>
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) <a href="https://twitter.com/andymstone/status/1445058088436908045?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 4, 2021</a></blockquote>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products,” Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone said on Twitter.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologise for any inconvenience.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">With the three popular sites down, Twitter poked fun at its rivals on their dedicated UK account.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Hello literally everyone,” they wrote.</span></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr">hello literally everyone</p>
— Twitter (@Twitter) <a href="https://twitter.com/Twitter/status/1445078208190291973?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 4, 2021</a></blockquote>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The outage has been blamed on a problem with the Domain Name System (DNS), which allows computers to connect to the web server and website users are looking for.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Adam Leon Smith of the Chartered Institute for IT, </span><a rel="noopener" href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/04/facebook-instagram-and-whatsapp-hit-by-outage" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">said</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">: “The outage is caused by changes made to the Facebook network infrastructure. Many of the recent high-profile outages have been caused by similar network-level events.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“It is reported by unidentified Facebook sources on Reddit that the network changes have also prevented engineers from remotely connecting to resolve the issues, delaying resolution.”</span></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr">Was just on phone with someone who works for FB who described employees unable to enter buildings this morning to begin to evaluate extent of outage because their badges weren’t working to access doors.</p>
— Sheera Frenkel (@sheeraf) <a href="https://twitter.com/sheeraf/status/1445099150316503057?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 4, 2021</a></blockquote>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Journalist Sheera Frankel said the outage was so severe that Facebook employees have been unable to enter company buildings because their passes were not working.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Image: Facebook, Instagram</span></em></p>
