WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook servers crash worldwide; Company confirms outage

In a massive development, several users on Monday evening complained that servers of WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram are down. Users complained about not being able to connect to the servers meaning that they were not able to send or receive messages to their contacts on each of these platforms.

Other Facebook-owned services including its own site, Instagram and Messenger are all experiencing this issue. Users worldwide took to their Twitter handles to share their views on this issue. According to Downdetector, the outages appear to have started around 11:40 am ET/9:10 pm IST. Downdetector logged tens of thousands of reports for each of the services.

Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram down

According to 9to5Mac, the outage is also affecting platforms and services that use Facebook login. Niantic, the creator of Pokemon GO, says that it is "looking into reports of errors associated with Facebook login, and will update here once we have more information."

9to5Mac also reported that users were being greeted with error messages such as: “Sorry, something went wrong,” “5xx Server Error,” and more.

Here are some netizen reactions on these apps' servers being crashed.

WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram issue statement

"We’re aware that some people are experiencing issues with WhatsApp at the moment. We’re working to get things back to normal and will send an update here as soon as possible."

Facebook’s Andy Stone in a tweet said that "We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience."  

Meanwhile, app researcher Jane Manchun Wong claimed that Facebook’s internal Workplace site and associated services for employees are also suffering from an outage.

India has one of the highest user bases of Facebook as well as its other platforms. According to Statista, there are over 340 million Facebook users in India. 

Earlier in July this year, various online platforms in the country, including Zomato and Paytm, faced temporary disruption in services due to a global outage at internet infrastructure company Akamai Technologies. In a tweet around 10 PM IST on July 22, Akamai said it was experiencing a service disruption. It said it was actively investigating the issue, and clarified that this was not the result of a cyberattack on its platform.

In a later update at 10.42 PM IST, Akamai said it has implemented a fix for the issue, and based on current observations, the service is resuming normal operations.

(With inputs from agencies)