Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp experienced a significant global outage on Monday, leaving millions of users unable to access the platforms for nearly six hours. The disruption affected users in the UK, US, Australia, and many other countries, with Downdetector reporting over 10.6 million problem reports worldwide.
Facebook apologised for the extended disruption, stating that faulty configuration changes on its backbone routers were the root cause. In a blog post, the company explained that these changes interrupted network traffic between data centres, causing a cascading effect that halted services. Facebook also confirmed there was no evidence that user data was compromised.
The outage began around 5pm UK time, with users encountering error messages on Instagram and Facebook. WhatsApp acknowledged the issues on Twitter, saying they were working to restore normal service. The company used Twitter to communicate updates, as its own platforms were inaccessible.
The incident highlighted the global dependency on Facebook's services, affecting not only individual users but also businesses and organisations that rely on its advertising network. Small businesses, particularly those using WhatsApp for communication and orders, reported significant disruptions and financial losses.
Mark Zuckerberg apologised once services were restored, acknowledging the reliance on Facebook's platforms for staying connected. Experts initially attributed the problem to internal infrastructure issues, which were later confirmed to be configuration errors.
