Instagram, Facebook and Messenger have gone down in a major Thanksgiving outage.
Almost all of Facebook's products were hit by the problems, with the exception of WhatsApp, which appears to have successfully stayed online.
The problems were seen across the world, though did not appear to affect all users the same. Some said they were still able to see parts of each app, while others reported that the services appeared to be working as normal.
The outage recalls the major problems over summer, during which the entire Facebook suits of products went offline for almost a day.
Welcome to The Independent's coverage of the Instagram, Facebook and Messenger outage.
How can Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp all break at the same time?
Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp have all gone down in a simultaneous and strange outage. The three apps might appear to be run separately, even if they are all owned by the same company. On the face of it, there is nothing obvious to link the three different services, and each of them can be used individually.Here's our story about Facebook being down
Facebook has stopped working
Facebook has stopped working, amid a major Thanksgiving outage.Here's our story about Instagram being down
Instagram has broken
Instagram is down, according to some of its users. A huge number of people rushed to complain that the photo sharing website had broken. The outage comes on Thanksgiving morning in the US, leading many to joke that they had been forced to engage with their family members. The problems are being seen across the world, according to tracking website Down Detector.And – last but not least – here's our story about Facebook Messenger being down
Facebook Messenger down as Instagram also hit by Thanksgiving outage
Facebook Messenger has suffered a major outage, leaving users unable to send or receive messages. It is one of several Facebook apps to experience difficulties, with both the main Facebook app and Facebook-owned Instagram also going down. It is not yet clear what caused the issue, though it is the latest in a series of significant outages for the social media giant. According
Police forced to tell public not to ring them when Facebook breaks
Forces urge users to spend time with their families insteadFacebook was hit by problems during the last UK election period, too. Here's a story from June 2017, when the site went down on election day.
Facebook is broken on election day
The IndependentBoth individual users and the world's biggest news publishers have been hit by the problemThanksgiving outage leads to jokes and frustration
Reaction on Twitter – which is still working – is somewhere between joy and frustration that people won't be able to post about Thanksgiving:
Facebook's status page says site is still working
Facebook's server status page – which is intended to announce when there are problems with the platform – suggests that the site is still working:
This page is intended for developers, which is why it focuses on how the platform itself is working rather than whether the site is working. But even on there, as can be seen, there seems to be an uptick of problems recently.
Instagram doesn't have a version of this site. During previous widespread outages, the company has posted on its Twitter account, but it has not yet done so.
Instagram's Thanksgiving post remains last tweet on profile
Instagram's last official tweet was about Thanksgiving pie, noting that most people had been posting about pumpkin, followed by pecan. But sadly people won't now be able to post them.
Facebook Twitter page and other profiles still silent
There's no post on the official Facebook page on Twitter, either. In the past the company has used that profile to give notifications about outages – and even explain them, in its own mysterious way. But its latest post was sent yesterday, and concerned buying things on Instagram.
Problems at Facebook not letting up
As this chart from Down Detector shows, there is no sense that the outage or reports of it are going away. There are a vast number of complaints, and they are not reducing:
Outage comes at perhaps worst possible time
As well as being Thanksgiving day – when presumably few Facebook engineers are at work, or at least planned to be – the outage has started very early in the West Coast. It's still 7.30 in the morning in Facebook's home of California.
(Though you would hope, of course, that it has engineers elsewhere, who don't have holidays and are on a different timezone..)
A long way to go to trouble any records
If this outage is going to try and hit some records, it's going to have to wait for a while. In March, when Facebook (and its other apps) were hit by a major outage, it took more than 24 hours for the company to announce the problem was fixed. So we've got 22 or so hours to go!
Did Facebook do another 'server configuration change'?
Here's what the company said on Twitter in March, after that major outage:
Instagram responds to outage
Instagram speaks! Here's the latest from its Twitter account:
Reaction to Thanksgiving outage continues
How people feel about the outage varies. But there's certainly a lot of feelings, which tend to either be joy at not being subjected to boring Thanksgiving posts, or upset about not having something to distract from the real world.
Outage shows no sign of abating
Reports of problems continue to grow over on Down Detector.
Instagram coming back?
While Facebook issues continue to grow, Instagram seems to be slowly coming back online.
Not so happy Thanksgiving for Instagram
Instagram users around the world are turning to other platforms to vent their frustrations.
On Twitter, #InstagramDown has become the number two trend worldwide, with only 'Happy Thanksgiving' topping it.
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