Update [Thursday, 1:37 p.m.] — Facebook Says Server Change Caused Widespread Outage
Facebook and Instagram are partially down across the country for some users. While the apps for both are able to open, in many cases they’re missing a good bit of their functionality.
Both platforms seem to have issues, especially when sending and receiving messages as well as posting new content. While widespread, the issue isn’t impacting all Facebook and Instagram users. In just our small tests, two people working from the same office didn’t get the same results: one was able to send Facebook Messenger messages and load Facebook, while another was not.
Facebook Down. In an era of 24 x 7 availability this is unprecendented. What is happening? New features? Bug fix? Hacked? Too much user Load? # #facebookdown@facebook#whatwillwedopic.twitter.com/mK7eYsRrWa
— Dr Dang (@Sudip88818336) March 13, 2019
The outage does not appear to be impacting WhatsApp messages in the United States; however, users in Paraguay, India, Bangladesh, Argentina, and more note that they are experiencing issues with sending messages, according to The Verge.
Facebook has acknowledged the issue on Twitter and has said that it is working to correct the issue.
We're focused on working to resolve the issue as soon as possible, but can confirm that the issue is not related to a DDoS attack.
— Meta (@Meta) March 13, 2019
Even rapper Soulja Boy had something to say:
Oh wow the entire Facebook is down? That’s it I’m going to make a new social media network right now! This is unacceptable y’all have too much money for this smh 🤦🏾♂️
— Soulja Boy (Draco) (@souljaboy) March 13, 2019
An outage map on Down Detector suggests that the majority of the people experience the outage are located in New England, Texas, and the northwest United States, as well as the U.K., India, and the Philippines.
The outage has currently lasted several hours. The last time Facebook suffered a massive outage was November 2018.