Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp suffered a major global outage on Monday, leaving millions of users unable to access the services for nearly six hours. The disruption, which began around 5pm UK time, affected users in the UK, US, Australia and other countries, prompting an apology from the company.
Facebook attributed the outage to faulty configuration changes on its backbone routers, which coordinate network traffic between data centres. In a blog post, the company stated that these changes caused a cascading effect, halting communication between data centres and bringing services to a standstill. Facebook assured users that there was no evidence of data compromise.
Downdetector.com reported over 10.6 million problem reports globally, making it the largest outage the site had ever recorded. The majority of reports came from the US, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK. The outage also impacted countless businesses and websites reliant on Facebook's advertising network, highlighting the widespread dependency on the platform.
Small businesses worldwide, particularly those using WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook for operations, reported significant losses. A food delivery service owner in Delhi told the New York Times: 'My whole business is down.' The disruption of WhatsApp was especially challenging for millions who rely on it as their primary communication method.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologised once services were restored, acknowledging the reliance on the platforms for staying connected. The company used Twitter to communicate during the outage, with Twitter itself quipping: 'Hello literally everyone.'
