Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram hit by Downtime

A glitch on Facebook’s main social media platforms led to unexpected downtime – and thousands of frustrated users – on Wednesday, 3 July.

According to outage-tracking website, Downdetector, some 14 000 users across the globe complained of being unable to send videos, images and other files over Instagram. Meanwhile, Facebook and WhatsApp received 7 500 and 1 600 reported issues, respectively.

The social media company reassured users that it was working on the problem: “During one of our routine maintenance operations, we triggered an issue that is making it difficult for some people to upload or send photos and videos.”

By Thursday morning, the issue had been resolved and users went back to their regular habits.

Earlier in March, the social media platform experienced one of its longest outages, which led some to believe the website to be the victim of hacking. Facebook quelled that thought when it tweeted that the issue was not related to any external forces, but to a server configuration change.