Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and other Facebook services were down for many for about an hour on Friday, but they seem to be recovering.
At one point, more than 119,000 users reported issues with Instagram on DownDetector. More than 25,000 users reported issues with WhatsApp on DownDetector, too. Facebook Messenger was affected as well, with more than 5,000 reports of problems on DownDetector.
When navigating to Instagram’s website, I saw a white page with the message “5xx Server Error.” And when the outage was happening, I redownloaded Instagram to my phone and tried to log in but hit an error there, too.
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Facebook, which owns Instagram and WhatsApp, didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment. The Facebook Gaming Twitter account acknowledged that “there are a number of issues currently affecting Facebook products, including gaming streams.” The account said multiple teams are working on the issue.
There are a number of issues currently affecting Facebook products, including gaming streams. Multiple teams are working on it, and we’ll update you when we can.
— Facebook Gaming (@FacebookGaming) March 19, 2021
As expected, the memes about the outage have been strong on Twitter (which, fortunately, seems to be hanging on):
This isn’t the only recent blip in Facebook’s services: Facebook Messenger and Instagram DMs went down back in December. Facebook and Instagram also experienced big outages over Thanksgiving in 2019.
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