Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and other Facebook services went down for about an hour on Friday, but appear to be recovering.
At one point, more than 119,000 users reported problems with Instagram on DownDetector. More than 25,000 users have reported problems with WhatsApp on DownDetector as well. Facebook Messenger was also affected, with more than 5,000 problem reports on DownDetector.
When navigating to the Instagram website during the interruption, I saw a blank page with the message “5xx Server Error”. While the service was having problems, I also downloaded Instagram again to my phone and tried to login, but I found an error there too.
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Facebook, owner of Instagram and WhatsApp, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Facebook Gaming Twitter account acknowledged that “There are a number of issues that affect Facebook products, including game streams.” The account said that several teams are working on the problem.
There are a number of issues affecting Facebook products, including game streams. Several teams are working on this and we will update it when possible.
– Games on Facebook (@FacebookGaming) March 19, 2021
As expected, memes about the outage have been strong on Twitter (which, fortunately, seems to be persisting):
This is not the only recent problem with Facebook services: Facebook Messenger and Instagram DMs fell in December. Facebook and Instagram also suffered major disruptions on Thanksgiving Day in 2019.
Under development…