Millions of users worldwide, including in India, were left puzzled on Wednesday evening when Facebook and its family of apps including WhatsApp and photo-sharing platform Instagram went down due to a global outage. People took to Twitter to share their experiences.
"Everyone moves to twitter when instagram, Facebook, and Whatsapp get down, including me!" tweeted one Indian user. "Social media breakdown is the only thing that unites the world," said another user.
Users faced specific problems rather than the entire app not working. On Facebook, users reported that specific posts or photos did not appear, but that the page was loading. Millions of users had problems sending photos, videos and voice messages on WhatApp in India. Only the text messages were being shared on the mobile messaging service.
At Instagram, people failed to upload photos in various parts of the world.
Online outage tracker Down Detector logged several complaints from across the world including in India.
Meanwhile, Facebook confirmed in a statement that there is a problem with its apps, and it's "working as quickly as possible" to fix it.
In an update in the early hours of Thursday, Facebook said, "Earlier today, some people and businesses experienced trouble uploading or sending images, videos and other files on our apps and platforms. The issue has since been resolved and we should be back at 100% for everyone. We're sorry for any inconvenience. (sic)"
However, the outage prompted many users to take to Twitter with their take on the incident.
This is Twitter users when Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp is Down #instagramdown #WhatsAppDown #facebookdown pic.twitter.com/3XKapghtOU
— Atul Shokeen (@AtulShokeen2) July 3, 2019
#instagramdown #facebookdown#whatsappdown
— Jèfé Juan José (@Jefe_says) July 3, 2019
Twitter, before
WhatsApp,
Crashed Twitter now pic.twitter.com/Rjvwiymrq5
Twitter when WhatsApp,Facebook and instagram went down#WhatsAppDownpic.twitter.com/Vz9s6qwv0q
— DAILY WAVE TV (@dailywavetv) July 3, 2019
Whatsapp, instagram and facebook users coming to twitter #whatsappdown pic.twitter.com/e0osDCefEm
— Samuels.C (@_KSamuels) July 3, 2019
When I wait for the apps to be fixed #whatsappdown #instagramdown #الواتساب_معلق pic.twitter.com/DcAjOucBMK
— Hanan (@nown_alm) July 3, 2019
Earlier this year in April, the three social media platforms owned by Facebook reported a similar problem. Either users couldn’t access the platform, or their feeds refused to refresh.
A month before that, Facebook users worldwide reported problems logging into their accounts, sharing posts on its website and Instagram and not being able to refresh feeds or post new files. It was one of Facebook’s worst outages as it lasted many hours, which the social media giant had acknowledged, and attributed to a “server configuration change”.
IANS inputs