Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram are back online after a nearly six-hour outage that began around 16:00 GMT on Monday. The company attributed the disruption to an internal technical issue, which also affected employees' work passes and email systems.
Facebook stated that a faulty configuration change compromised internal tools and systems, complicating efforts to resolve the problem. The New York Times technology reporter Sheera Frenkel noted that technicians initially could not even enter the building to diagnose the issue.
Downdetector recorded approximately 10.6 million problem reports worldwide, though the actual number of affected users is far higher given that over 3.5 billion people use Facebook's services. The outage impacted small businesses reliant on social media and also affected Oculus VR headsets and apps requiring Facebook logins, such as Pokémon Go.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg apologised for the outage, which reportedly cost him an estimated $6 billion as shares fell. The company confirmed there was no evidence of user data compromise.
The outage occurred the day after former Facebook employee Frances Haugen leaked internal documents, alleging the company prioritised growth over safety. She is set to testify before a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday regarding Instagram's impact on young users' mental health.
This incident marks one of the longest global outages for Facebook, surpassing a 2019 disruption that lasted over 14 hours. Competitors like Reddit and Twitter mocked the social media giant during the downtime.
