Thousands of users are reporting that Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp have all crashed. People are sharing that they’ve encountered errors, including a “something went wrong” message, when they try to access the platforms. A 5xx error message appears on Instagram’s website, which points to a server issue. The issue appears to be widespread, as people are reporting problems around the world. Both Facebook and Instagram have said they are working on the problem. However, it’s possible it could take some time to fix the issues if servers are involved.
Here’s what you need to know.
People Began Reporting Issues with All Three Platforms at the Same Time
DownDetector reported a spike in issues for all three platforms just before 12 p.m. Eastern on Monday, October 4.
You can see exactly when the spike happened on Instagram in the chart below, DownDetector reported. Users reported 44% of the issues with the app, 29% on the website, and 27% with a server connection issue.
Down Detector
You can see also when the spike happened on WhatsApp in the chart below, DownDetector reported. Users reported the same issues with this platform, including issues with the app, server connection, and issues sending messages.
Down Detector
You can see that the spike of issues happened at the same time on Facebook in the chart below, DownDetector reported.
Down Detector
The issues were mostly with the website on Facebook, according to users, but some also reported issues with the app and the server connection.
People Are Reporting Server Errors & “Something Went Wrong’ Messages
Heavy observed an error message that read: “Sorry, something went wrong. We’re working on it and we’ll get it fixed as soon as we can.”
Instagram’s website is also completely down, including its Help page, where people often go when encountering errors. Instagram’s Help page simply reads “5xx Server Error” as of 12:05 p.m. Eastern.
ATT explained that a 5xx code means the issue is with the server. The website noted: “These [5xx] errors are caused by the server being unable to fulfill an apparently valid request from a visitor. Often, you will need the help of a server administrator to investigate them. It is also important to consider that quite often, a chain of servers is handling an HTTP request, so that it may not be your server that is returning the error.”
Facebook’s Developers Platform Status can sometimes help point to the source of issues with Facebook and Instagram. However, that page simply reads the same “Something went wrong” error also.
On Reddit, users reported testing the social media platforms with different ISPs and still encountering the same issue.
Just before 12:30 p.m. Eastern, more than half an hour after the platform crashed, Instagram’s official Twitter account finally posted about the issue.
The Twitter account wrote: “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!”
Facebook also acknowledged the issue in a tweet.
Facebook tweeted: “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.”
Neither tweet addressed what was causing the issue or gave a timetable for when to expect the platforms to be up and running again.
Facebook, Instagram & WhatsApp Could Be Down for Some Time Today
This likely won’t be a quick fix for the social media platforms, people are warning on Reddit’s sysadmin subreddit. One person in the subreddit suggested that because staffing in data centers is lower right now due to the pandemic, it might take longer to fix the problem. An issue this widespread, involving servers, might also take longer.
They posited: “DNS for FB services has been affected and this is likely a symptom of the actual issue, and that’s that BGP peering with Facebook peering routers has gone down, very likely due to a configuration change that went into effect shortly before the outages happened (started roughly 1540 UTC).”
You can see the DNS issues yourself by checking DNS Checker here.
Facebook’s Shares Were Down This Morning After a ’60 Minutes’ Whistleblower Report
Facebook was already in the news before the outage. Its shares were down after a “60 Minutes” episode the night before on Sunday, October 3. In the episode, a whistleblower said there were conflicts of interest “between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook,” Yahoo reported this morning. Shares were down by 4.5% on Monday — their lowest since June 21. The whistleblower, Frances Haugen, is appearing before a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday, October 5.
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