Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram Face Outage; How Serious Are The Consequences?

Facebook was once again in the spotlight as all of its services were down across the globe. The list includes Facebook, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram, which faced an outage briefly yesterday (March 19) around 10:30 PM IST. The apps began functioning once again an hour later, around 11:30 PM.

Facebook Services Went Down

From the looks of it, WhatsApp was one of the worst affected services from the outage. People across the globe, including regions in India, were unable to send or receive messages on the platform. Moreover, the website outage tracker - Downdetector revealed the outage last for approximately an hour.

The problem didn't limit to only WhatsApp but also extended to other platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger. Further, the outage was spread across both the app and the website as neither were in working condition for about an hour.

That was sufficient time for users to take to other platforms like Twitter to bring in complaints, and of course, memes! Users also took to Downdetector to complain about the outage, and nearly 40,000 reports were filed from users globally. This further indicated the outage problem wasn't limited to only select regions but simply spread across the planet.

Why Did Facebook Face An Outage?

"Earlier today, a technical issue caused people to have trouble accessing some Facebook services. We resolved this issue for everyone, and we apologize for any inconvenience," a Facebook spokesperson told Indian Express.

Presently, there is no concrete detail about what happened and why it happened. Facebook's downtime dashboard doesn't reveal any details about the outage or the reason behind it. But looking into its 90 days history, the downtime dashboard reveals issues in January and the massive one back in December.

On the other hand, users took to Twitter to express their concern over the outage. Bringing in hordes of memes, Twitter was full of trending hashtags like #InstagramDown, #WhatsAppDown, and so on. Users also suspected it could be another massive hack attack on the popular social media platform. Since there is no official report about any loss of data, one can rule out hacking as the reason.

Jokes aside, such outages can have several serious consequences. Facebook and its services like WhatsApp are heavily relied upon for everyday communication. When services go under for an hour, it could have a serious impact on businesses and communities who depend on it.