Facebook-owned platforms just suffered severe outages

The Facebook family, which includes Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram, has suffered severe service outages around the world today, leaving both users and Facebook employees confused and frustrated. Although Facebook has confirmed the outages are not a result of any sort of DDoS cyber-attack, the company has still not found the cause.

Earlier in the day, Facebook users reported trouble posting on their feeds and Instagram users were not able to refresh or post new content. According to reports, Messenger wouldn’t load on desktop, and users on the app were unable to send certain content like images. Meanwhile, WhatsApp users experienced similar problems.

“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,” tweeted Facebook.

DownDetecter, a third-party outage map, confirmed that the outage was global, with the most heavily affected areas being New England; Texas; Seattle, Washington; some areas of Latin America, including Peru; the UK; India; and the Philippines.

While most services have now been restored, there are still some users that are can’t refresh or post on any of their Facebook family accounts. Starting later in the day, people started reporting problems logging onto Spotify and Tinder, while Facebook-owned gaming platform Oculus has also gone down. According to Oculus players, users can’t purchase games through the Oculus store, log onto any multiplayer games bought through the Oculus store, or access their Oculus Home environments.

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