Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are down.
The websites and apps for all of the services were responding with server errors, and reports on DownDetector.com showed the outages appear to be widespread but it’s unclear if it impacts all users or just some locations. It’s not currently known what’s causing the outage.
All three platforms stopped working shortly before 12 p.m. EST.
“We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing Facebook app,” the company said on Twitter. “We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.” A similar tweet was posted about WhatsApp.
A Facebook spokesperson wasn’t immediately available for comment.
In 2019, a similar outage lasted about an hour. Facebook said that outage was caused by a technical issue. Major websites can also sometimes go down if content delivery networks, or CDNs, go offline. That happened in June, when one such CDN, Fastly, was down due to technical issues. That caused major websites like Amazon, Reddit and The New York Times to go down.
This news is developing. Please check back for updates.