Facebook and its applications, such as WhatsApp and Instagram, on Wednesday faced a global outage as users in Europe, United States, South America and Japan turned to Twitter to report technical glitches, Variety reported. Users reported problems while logging in, sharing, or even while trying to access Instagram.
Instagram started showing the glitches since 8.45 am Eastern Standard Time [6.15 pm India Standard Time] as images and video failed to load on the photo-sharing application. It was reported that Instagram was unable to load images on the desktop and was accompanied by a message saying “No photo description available”.
“We’re aware that some people and businesses are currently having trouble uploading or sending images, videos and other files on our apps,” Variety quoted a Facebook spokesperson as saying. “We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and we apologize for any inconvenience.”
The glitches were mostly reported from the east coast of the United States, according to tracking website Down Detector. However, reports of errors also came from Europe, South America and East Asia, The Independent reported.
Meanwhile, Twitter also reported certain problems with its direct messaging option. “We’re currently having some issues with DM [direct message] delivery and notifications,” it said in a tweet. “We’re working on a fix and will follow up as soon as we have an update for you. Apologies for the inconvenience.”
In March, when all three of Facebook’s major applications faced a similar outage, the problem lasted for many hours. The social media platform later blamed it on a server glitch that had a knock-on effect on Instagram and WhatsApp, according to The Independent.
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