• Friday, March 29, 2024
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BusinessDay

Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp suffer global outage

Facebook-Instagram-WhatsApp

Three famous social media platforms familiar with millions of Nigerians and the global audience, WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook have been hit by an outage lasting more than an hour.

The three apps are owned by Facebook, an American company offering online social networking services that is heavily relied on by most Nigerians for social interactions.

All three apps stopped working shortly before 5.00 p.m. Nigerian time.

Other products related to the apps, such as Facebook Workplace, were also observed to have stopped working.

Users of Facebook and Instagram applications could not view posts on refresh, while WhatsApp messages could not be sent or received.

According to a report from Reuters, security experts tracking the situation said the outage could have been triggered by a configuration error, which could be the result of an internal mistake, though sabotage by an insider would be theoretically possible.

Although the report noted that an outside hack was viewed as less likely, a massive denial-of-service attack that could overwhelm one of the world’s most popular sites, on the other hand, would require either coordination among powerful criminal groups or a very innovative technique.

Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone acknowledged on one of mainstream social media platform that “some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products.”

“We are aware some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We are working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and apologise for any inconvenience,” Facebook spokesperson said.

Read Also: Facebook, others launch #NoFalseNewsZone campaign

Also, @InstagramComms wrote on Twitter, “Instagram and friends are having a little bit of a hard time right now, and you may be having issues using them. Bear with us, we’re on it! #instagramdown.”

Online network experts speculated it may involve an error with DNS, or the domain name system, for Facebook sites.

DNS is often compared to an address book or phone book for the internet, pointing web browsers to the computer system which serves the website they are looking for.

“We’re aware that some people are experiencing issues with WhatsApp at the moment. We’re working to get things back to normal and will send an update here as soon as possible,” WhatApp’s official handle said.

Shares of Facebook, which has nearly 2 billion daily active users, fell by 6percent on Monday evening, inching towards its worst day in nearly a year.

Facebook has experienced similar widespread outages with its suite of apps this year in March and July.

The Facebook-owned apps, which have some three billion users worldwide, report occasional outages in March 2021 and July 2020, which often spark an array of comments on other social platforms.

Nigeria had about 33 million active social media users as of January 2021. WhatsApp is the most popular platform used in the country, with over 90 million users, according to Statista.

About 61.4 percent of Nigerian social media users use Twitter, 86.2 per cent use Facebook, 81.6 per cent use YouTube, 73.1 per cent use Instagram, and 67.2 percent use Facebook Messenger.

The platforms have also recorded increased usage since the suspension of microblogging site Twitter by the Federal Government of Nigeria in June 2021.