Facebook apps experienced some serious issues on March 19. Social media platforms WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger all suffered an outage. According to the Downdetector website, which tracks outages, the issue started to post 10 PM IST. Facebook has been working hard to integrate its different platforms — WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger. The company wants these platforms to be able to communicate and share features. Here’s all that happened.
What caused the outage
Facebook attributed the outage to unspecified “technical issues”. However, the company didn’t elaborate on the cause. But as it affected all popular Facebook services, it can be said that the glitch related to shared infrastructure
What was the bug
Instagram users saw error messages when they logged into their accounts. WhatsApp users were not able to send and receive messages.
Facebook apologizes to users
“A technical issue caused people to have trouble accessing some services. We resolved this issue for everyone, and we apologize for any inconvenience,” a Facebook spokesperson said. “Some people were having issues with their Instagram accounts earlier, but we’re back now. The issue has been fixed and we’re sorry for the trouble,” Instagram tweeted.
How long the outage lasted
The downtime lasted 45 minutes. “Thanks for your patience, that was a long 45 minutes but we are back!” WhatsApp posted on Twitter.
How widespread was the outage
The outage was global. Over a million people across the globe were affected, according to Downdetector.
No official accounts acknowledged the issues till it was fixed
No official accounts of services acknowledged the outage, except Facebook Gaming. “There are a number of issues currently affecting Facebook products, including gaming streams. Multiple teams are working on it, and we’ll update you when we can,” tweeted Facebook Gaming. Incidentally, WhatsApp has a “status” Twitter account that is meant to post problems with the platform, however, it has not been updated since 2014.
Last big Facebook outage
The last big Facebook outage took place in December 2020 when Messenger and Instagram DMs went down. The company faced its biggest-ever outage in March 2019, when it went down for almost a day.
