#FacebookDown: Users React as Facebook Family Apps Suffer Most Severe Outage in History

Did you notice that one or all of Facebook’s family apps (Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram) were down at one point yesterday? You are not alone because Facebook suffered the most severe outage in its history yesterday.

Is #Facebookdown? Social media users experience issues with Facebook and Instagramhttps://t.co/OMahYYwQ4G

— The Scotsman (@TheScotsman) March 14, 2019

Facebook’s main products, its two messaging apps (WhatsApp, Messenger and its image-sharing platform Instagram) were all affected by the outage and many users all around the world were unable to access them.

Facebook’s main service appeared to load, but users were unable to carry out basic activities like posting, reacting to posts, sending messages etc. Those on Instagram were not able to refresh feeds or post new materials and WhatsApp users experienced issues with sending messages and voice notes.

However, after about 10 hours of outage, the social media sites were all back online.

Although the cause of the interruption has not yet been made public, the social media giant turned to Twitter to acknowledged the glitch on it platforms. It also noted that “the issue is not related to a DDoS attack.”

“We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps. We’re working to resolve the issue as soon as possible.” Facebook said in a statement on Twitter.

We're focused on working to resolve the issue as soon as possible, but can confirm that the issue is not related to a DDoS attack.

— Meta (@Meta) March 13, 2019

A Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS) is a type of cyber-attack that involves flooding a target service with extremely high volumes of traffic.

Facebook Continues to have Outages

The latest outage is estimated to have started at about 4 pm yesterday. Reports have it that the last time Facebook had a disruption of this magnitude was in 2008, when the site had 150m users – compared to its 2.32bn monthly active users today.

Its messaging platform, WhatsApp also experienced a major outage in most parts of the world earlier this year.

Users were quick to drop a barrage of jokes/memes on Twitter about the outage using the #FacebookDown and #InstagramDown hashtags.

fb is back up and this is the first meme on my feed: #FacebookDown pic.twitter.com/GqH55gvtz5

— ✨ (@vidawithsteph) March 14, 2019

People from instagram and facebook right now #FacebookDown pic.twitter.com/wu4asVNc0E

— Sebas_Sanchez (@Sebas_sf117) March 14, 2019

https://twitter.com/JJKfocuss/status/1106048556345905154

At least we have @Twitter 💙

By @schulteofficial#FacebookDown #InstagramDown pic.twitter.com/VBVUiYysHO

— 9GAG (@9GAG) March 14, 2019

When Whatsapp, Instagram, and Facebook going down together… #WhatsAppDown #instagramdown #facebookdown pic.twitter.com/TNaRJsYHkr

— 𝔸𝕙𝕞𝕒𝕕 ℝ𝕚𝕕𝕙𝕠 (@Ahmadridhopp_) March 14, 2019

Users who run “Facebook-centric” jobs were quick to express their panic.

me attempting to do my very facebook-centric job when facebook is down… #facebookdown pic.twitter.com/YsHn5FXu3R

— Stephanie Baiocchi (She/Her) (@stephbaiocchi) March 13, 2019

When your job revolves around social media and both Facebook and Instagram go down at the same time, it's quite the ride… #FacebookDown #InstagramDown pic.twitter.com/N1v3k7CnTI

— Jen McDonnell (@Jen_McDonnell) March 13, 2019

Due to today’s global Facebook outages, select committee meetings will not be live streamed this morning. Public meetings will be recorded and uploaded to committees’ Facebook pages later today. #nzpol https://t.co/LcWUcQlNKr

— NZ Parliament (@NZParliament) March 13, 2019

We can only hope the social media giant puts in efforts to ensure chances of future outages are reduced to the barest minimum.