UPDATED: Facebook and Instagram users reported widespread outages Monday, as the social media giant appeared to be again experiencing serious technical problems. The company’s WhatsApp and Messenger apps also were down, per user reports.
The company, in the spotlight over accusations by a whistleblower that the company prioritized profits over safety, saw its flagship Facebook app as well as Instagram and other apps go down for many users Monday before noon ET.
On Facebook’s website, an error message Monday said, “Sorry, something went wrong. We’re working on it and we’ll get it fixed as soon as we can” and the Facebook app was not loading some content. Instagram’s site displayed a “5xx Server Error” and its app showed an error message that said, “Couldn’t refresh feed.”
U.S. user reports of problems with Facebook and Instagram started to spike around 11:35 a.m. ET Monday, according to monitoring service DownDetector. Outages were also reported by users in other countries around the same time, per DownDetector.
In a message posted to Facebook’s main account on Twitter at 12:22 p.m. ET, the company said, “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.”
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.
— Facebook (@Facebook) October 4, 2021
Instagram’s PR account on Twitter posted shortly afterward, “Instagram and friends are having a little bit of a hard time right now, and you may be having issues using them. Bear with us, we’re on it! #instagramdown.”
Facebook reps did not immediately respond to a request for more information.
For June 2021, Facebook reported 1.91 billion daily active users for its flagship app, up 7% year over year. Daily users across all of the company’s family of apps (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger) averaged 2.76 billion for the month of June 2021, up 12% on an annual basis.