| SAN FRANCISCO â Facebook and its family of apps, including Instagram and WhatsApp, went down at the same time on Monday, taking out a vital communications platform used by more than three billion people around the world and adding heat to a company already under intense scrutiny.
Facebookâs apps â which include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Oculus â began displaying error messages around 11:40 a.m. Eastern time, users reported. Within five minutes, Facebook had disappeared from the internet. Hours later, the sites were still not functioning, according to Downdetector, which monitors web traffic and site activity.
Technology outages are not uncommon, but to have so many apps go dark from the worldâs largest social media company at the same time was highly unusual. Facebookâs last significant outage was in 2019, when a technical error affected its sites for 24 hours, in a reminder that even the most powerful internet companies can still be crippled by a snafu.
This time, the cause of the outage remained unclear. Several hours into the incident, Facebookâs security experts were still trying to identify the root issue, according to an internal memo and employees briefed on the matter. Two members of its security team, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said it was unlikely that a cyberattack had taken place because one hack was unlikely to affect so many apps at once.
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