'Imagine a world where Facebook stayed down forever': Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp users respond to global outage
People around the world started off the work week with an outage on popular social media applications Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
To the huge community of people and businesses around the world who depend on us: we're sorry. We’ve been working hard to restore access to our apps and services and are happy to report they are coming back online now. Thank you for bearing with us.
— Facebook (@Facebook) October 4, 2021
Just before 6:00 p.m. ET on Monday, the social media platforms slowly started to come back online for users around the world.
"We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products," a statement posted on Facebook's Twitter account just after 12:00 p.m. ET reads. "We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience."
*Sincere* apologies to everyone impacted by outages of Facebook powered services right now. We are experiencing networking issues and teams are working as fast as possible to debug and restore as fast as possible
— Mike Schroepfer (@schrep) October 4, 2021
"We’re aware that some people are experiencing issues with WhatsApp at the moment," a message posted by WhatsApp, around the same time, reads. "We’re working to get things back to normal and will send an update here as soon as possible."
This outage came after a CBS 60 Minutes interview with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen aired on Sunday, where she states that the company, who owns Instagram and WhatsApp as well, "chooses profit over safety."
“The version of Facebook that exists today is tearing our societies apart and causing ethnic violence around the world," Haugen said.
Sometimes more people than usual use Twitter. We prepare for these moments, but today things didn’t go exactly as planned. Some of you may have had an issue seeing replies and DMs as a result. This has been fixed. Sorry about that! 💙
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) October 4, 2021
With the influx of people heading to Twitter as their social media platform of choice, with the other popular platforms down, that also caused a glitch on Twitter's end, but was fixed by the company just before 5:00 p.m. ET on Monday.
"Sometimes more people than usual use Twitter," a message from the company reads. "We prepare for these moments, but today things didn't go exactly as planned."
As people around the world waited and see if Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp became operational again, many people took to Twitter to share their thoughts on the outage.
Imagine a world where Facebook stayed down forever... #facebookdown pic.twitter.com/mVDcqTlstD
— Ken M. Haggerty (@kenmhaggerty) October 4, 2021
On the bright side:
Facebook complied with all relevant privacy laws for 6 hours in a row now.#facebookdown #instagramdown pic.twitter.com/drYVXjC8os— Ethics in Bricks (@EthicsInBricks) October 4, 2021
Mark Zuckerberg fixing the WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook crash😂😂😂 #facebookdown pic.twitter.com/ebieM1A6is
— mukkarm jutt (@JuttMukkarm) October 4, 2021
Mark Zuckerberg right now trying to fix the issue. #FacebookDown #MarkZuckerberg pic.twitter.com/2lTTphqUNC
— Alia (Meg’s wife) Will Ramos Supremacy (@TheAliaLink) October 4, 2021
Twitter and TikTok taking the place of Facebook and Instagram #facebookdown
pic.twitter.com/2YZdzF3XBC— Lauren💕 (@sadsnoopdog) October 4, 2021
WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook down? Gmail and Snapchat acting up? Time to go back to our roots.😂 #instagramdown #whatsappdown pic.twitter.com/QsaOftARVV
— 🇲🇦MCMoroccan (@CrewsmatMorocco) October 4, 2021
Here we go! pic.twitter.com/Ara8uUS6dl
— -statesman❄️ (@statesmansewe) October 4, 2021