There is currently a massive social media outage with the likes of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp all being down.
On Monday, October 4, social media users were greeted with ‘Error’ messages when logging onto their favorite platforms.
I myself was trying to sleuth on Kylie Jenner and couldn’t open her Instagram page.
According to the Independent, all three apps are owned by Facebook and run on shared infrastructure – all completely stopped working shortly before 5pm.
Facebook users were met with a “Sorry, something went wrong message,” while some IG and WhatsApp users were able to open the app, but no new content was fed to them.
Of course, Twitter didn’t go down and got to sit back and laugh while mass chaos broke out on the other platforms.
Twitter During Social Media Outage!
FB and IG” began trending on the platform with many Twitter users taking this outage as an opportunity to make memes out of the situation.
One person wrote, “Everyone coming to twitter to see if instagram and whatsapp are down for everyone else #instagramdown #whatsappdown #facebookdown”
Everyone coming to twitter to see if instagram and whatsapp are down for everyone else #instagramdown #whatsappdown #facebookdown pic.twitter.com/1rRzaRwbLB
— Lavanya Kawale (@KawaleLavanya) October 4, 2021
Another tweeted, “Whatsapp, Facebook and Instagram are down currently Twitter is still the best APP
Whatsapp, Facebook and Instagram are down currently😃
Twitter is still the best APP 🥰 pic.twitter.com/hVMP2S2AZu— Shailesh Chaudhary (@Mr_shailesh09) October 4, 2021
This twitter fan wrote, “WhatsApp down, Instagram down, Facebook down? That’s where Twitter comes in..”
WhatsApp down, Instagram down, Facebook down?
That’s where Twitter comes in.. pic.twitter.com/E5BoLRix0F
— Khizer (@khiz_7) October 4, 2021
Facebook outages happen rarely with their higher-ups at the company often staying mum about issues behind the scenes.
The last big outage occurred in 2019. The company only said that it had “triggered an issue” during “routine maintenance operations.”
In a leaked transcript published in The Verge in 2019, Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, noted that such outages are a “big deal.”
Any problems can often lead people to start using competitors instead, i.e. Twitter, and he noted that it can take “months” to win back trust and get people back on Facebook’s platforms – if they come back at all.
As of the writing of this article, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp were still down and out. An official statement from Facebook has not yet been released.
