UPDATE 1 [12:34 AM]: Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram have posted their official statements on Twitter, informing users that they are aware of the situation and that an investigation into the matter is underway. ORIGINAL STORY [12:09 AM]: If you’ve been having difficulties trying to access your Facebook page, sending a message via WhatsApp, or post a picture on Instagram, you’re not the only one. At the time of writing, both the social network and its owned apps seem to be offline and unavailable.
The issue seems to have started with Facebook’s social messaging app, WhatsApp, and more specifically, the desktop version of the app. Users were reportedly unable to launch the app and were greeted with a “ffmpeg.dll not found” error, along with a suggestion to try reinstalling the desktop app once again. Seeing how we were affected, we tried to reinstall the app and it worked, if only for a brief moment. Almost immediately after we did so, the connection to the platform went down and when we tried to relaunch it, we were greeted with the message that our system was not connected to the internet. Despite the fact that we were.
On another hand, Instagram showed this error when you tried to browse its website:
At the time of this publication, Facebook has not released an official statement or explanation as to why this is happening. UPDATE 1 [12:34 AM]: Facebook has acknowledged that its services are facing difficulties at the moment. However, it seemed that the company may have downplayed the severity of the downtime by saying that “some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products,” even though what is really happening is a global-scale downtime.
— Facebook (@Facebook) October 4, 2021 Instagram and WhatsApp have published similar tweets as well:
— Instagram Comms (@InstagramComms) October 4, 2021
Thanks for your patience! — WhatsApp (@WhatsApp) October 4, 2021 UPDATE 2 [7:15 AM]: After more than six hours of downtime, Facebook, Instagram and Instagram are now back to normal according to the updates that they have posted through Twitter:
— Facebook (@Facebook) October 4, 2021
— Instagram Comms (@InstagramComms) October 4, 2021
Thank you so much for your patience. We will continue to keep you updated when we have more information to share. — WhatsApp (@WhatsApp) October 4, 2021 In addition to these updates, the Chief Technology Officer of Facebook, Mike Schroepfer has mentioned that the global-scale downtime was caused by networking issues although he didn’t provide in-depth details regarding them. On a related side note, Mike who is a 13-year veteran at Facebook will be stepping down from his CTO post later this year although he will continue to be with the company on a part-time basis as a Senior Fellow.
— Mike Schroepfer (@schrep) October 4, 2021 Despite these brief statements, neither Facebook nor its subsidiaries have provided detailed explanations behind the massive downtime that they have experienced for the past few hours. (UPDATE – 11:55 AM: The company said that the downtime was due to router configurations.)
