Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are Back Up and Running, After Going Offline for More than Six Hours

     Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are back up and running, after going down this morning at 11:44am: leaving millions of users worldwide without access to the social media apps and messaging platforms for more than six hours.
     Instagram and WhatsApp are both owned by Facebook, which bought the platforms in 2012 and 2014, respectively.

     Today at noon, Down Detector, a website that tracks outages, showed that more than 80,000 users reported that Facebook was down, more than 60,000 users reported that Instagram was not working, and more than 20,000 users reported that they could not send or receive WhatsApp messages, which stayed stuck in the users’ outboxes all day.

     Instead of seeing their colorful Instagram feeds, users of the social media site reported seeing blank screens that included messages of a "5xx server error," which was also seen by WhatsApp users who tried to download the app.
     During the outage, Facebook issued its standard message for technical glitches, which informs users that "something went wrong" and the platform would "get it fixed as soon as we can."

     While some users could launch the WhatsApp mobile application, the connection to their phones could not be established: leaving many without an easy and convenient way to communicate.