Facebook Inc has said it is working to restore access to its social media platforms, including photo-sharing platform Instagram and messaging app WhatsApp, after an apparent global outage.
The platforms were down for tens of thousands of users on Monday, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com.
The website was showing outages in heavily populated areas like Washington, DC, and Paris, with problems being reported from about 15:45 GMT.
“We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products,” Facebook said on Twitter. “We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”
A similar message confirming the outage also was posted on WhatsApp’s Twitter account.
The error message appearing on Facebook.com read: “Sorry, something went wrong. We’re working on it and we’ll get it fixed as soon as we can.”
Al Jazeera could not immediately confirm what was affecting the platforms.
Facebook did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the Reuters and AFP news agencies on the outage.
The error message on Facebook’s webpage suggested a Domain Name System (DNS) error, Reuters reported.
Downdetector, which only tracks outages by collating status reports from a series of sources, including user-submitted errors on its platform, showed there were more than 50,000 incidents of people reporting issues with Facebook and Instagram.
But the outage might be affecting more users.
WhatsApp was also down for more than 22,000 users, while Messenger was down for nearly 3,000 users.
source: Aljazeera