FYI(News): Facebook has been down for hours, Instagram and WhatsApp also affected

[Arcadia]

From CNBC https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/13/facebook-suffers-outage-related-to-core-whatsapp-and-instagram.html

“Published 3 hours ago Updated Moments Ago

Facebook users around the world are reporting issues logging into and posting on the site as well as on Instagram and WhatsApp. Facebook hasn’t given a reason for the outage, and provided minimal information other than acknowledging it is aware services are down in some areas.

Facebook shares were relatively unchanged Wednesday afternoon.

The company acknowledged the outage in a tweet Wednesday, saying, “We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps. We’re working to resolve the issue as soon as possible.”

It later confirmed the problem was not the result of a DDoS attack, which refers to a Distributed Denial-of-Service attack in which a hacker overwhelms a site by flooding it with fake traffic.”

[Chris in VA]

Been trying to post some good news for a change and can't. I wonder what happened!

[4everHis]

Mine is still spotty. That's phone and desk top.

[Ellie]

I can read FB (although earlier today it wouldn't load), I can react to messages, I can reply to private messages, but I cannot otherwise comment, neither on my phone nor on my computer.

[alisoncooks]

Weird. Everything was normal for me today. 

[Chris in VA]

seems fixed now.

[Arcadia]

12 hours ago, alisoncooks said:

Weird. Everything was normal for me today. 

 

I think the main outage areas were in the east coast and west coast. 

From Fortune http://fortune.com/2019/03/14/mystery-14-hour-facebook-outage/

“A widespread outage affecting the Facebook(FB, -2.05%) family of apps for more than 14 hours on Wednesday and Thursday remains unexplained.

Worldwide, many users reported issues using Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Oculus VR and WhatsApp. For some, the websites were down completely, while others struggled with limited functionality. User reports of Facebook being unreachable continued at Down DetectorThursday morning, while Instagram tweetedovernight that service had been restored.

Facebook had to go to Twitter (TWTR, -0.48%) to report that it was investigating the outage, which it said was not the result of a distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attack.

...

A Facebook executive told Wired that outside hackers were not to blame, and security experts concurred that there was no evidence of a malicious attack. More likely were any number of boring culprits, from routine maintenance gone wrong to a Domain Name System issue.

CNET reported the outage was the longest in Facebook’s 15-year history. The previous longest occurred in 2008, when Facebook had just 125 million users. Facebook and Instagram now have more than 2.3 billion and 1 billion users, respectively.

Secure messaging service Telegram got 3 million new users during the Facebook outage, TechCrunch reports. It’s reminiscent of the Friendster outages that sent users to MySpace.

The Facebook outage also affected the Ads Manager tool, which is infuriating to the 6 million advertisers who spend more than $90 million per day to reach potential customers, AdAge reports.

On Wednesday, Facebook was also facing another pressing issue: The New York Timesreported federal prosecutors are conducting a criminal investigation into data deals Facebook struck with smartphone companies. A grand jury is subpoenaing records regarding the broad access to the personal information of hundreds of millions of Facebook users.”

[Liz CA]

Halleluja  😋

[Arcadia]

Explanation given from Fortune article http://fortune.com/2019/03/14/cause-of-facebook-outage/

“Facebook Says Server Change Caused Widespread Outage

Facebook Inc. said a change in the way it configured computer servers caused a widespread outage of the social-media network and its other services that stretched over two days.

“As a result of a server configuration change, many people had trouble accessing our apps and services,” Facebook said in a tweet. “We’ve now resolved the issues and our systems are recovering.”

From about noon New York time Wednesday, global users encountered only partially loaded pages or no content at all on Facebook’s main social network and its related services, including photo-sharing site Instagram and messaging tools Messenger and WhatsApp. Several brand marketers tweeted that Facebook’s ad-buying system was down as well. The company said it was considering refunds for advertisers. Ad sales are the company’s central revenue source.

Instagram service resumed shortly after midnight, the app tweeted from its official Twitter account.”