On Wednesday, Facebook and Instagram both crashed!
It was not possible for users around the world who were trying to access the two social media sites to log in. Every time users tried to access Facebook, they got a blank screen. For others, the site did not load at all or only specific pages of the site could load. This crash also affected the Facebook app.
However, for some, Facebook and Instagram were working just fine. It got tricky though when they tried to post something either on their pages or on other pages. The users said that when they tried to post, the website just crashed. Although most of these issues were reported all over the world, the issues weren’t noticed at all by many users. They were actually able to login on Facebook and Instagram as usual.
The crash became clear when the Down Detector website reported thousands of complaints coming from users all over the world. In the UK, at least 90% of all the cases that were reported were either related to issues of login or blank screens. Users in the country were not able to log into their accounts for a while and the pages on the two social media sites were blank every time an attempt to load was made.
The problem was also acknowledged by Facebook on its developer page. A statement released by the company noted that API errors were being experienced at the time. The statement also went on to assure users that the problem will be investigated and an update would be provided.
Facebook is one of the biggest and widely used websites in the world. There are billions of people who log on to the platform on a daily basis.
Although Facebook rarely breaks down, even in these one-off outages the impact can be quite significant considering its popularity. We are still waiting for the update promised by the social media giant to see what exactly the issue was. We have also noted that a majority of these cases were concentrated in Europe and the US although some issues were reported in other parts of the world too.
But the extent in which the users in other regions across the world were affected cannot be clearly stated because of the time difference. At the time that these issues were being reported in Europe and the US, people in other regions might have been asleep. It is therefore likely that they may not have been in a position to access the website and experience these glitches.
It appears though that the issue has been fixed and users on the two social media platforms are now able to access their accounts anytime. We will, however, keep monitoring the situation over the next few days and update you if something new happens.
