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Update: 5:55 p.m. ET: Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger are slowly but surely coming back up after more than 6 hours of being down. Your mileage may vary for now, but the services are in the process of coming back to life.

Update 4:30 p.m ET: Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp have now been down for five hours. In the latest update, Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer says that Facebook is "experiencing networking issues and teams are working as fast as possible to debug and restore." There is, however, no timeline on when to expect the services to come back online.

Head below for a potential explanation...

It's not just you: Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are all currently down for users around the world. We're seeing error messages on all three services across iOS applications as well as on the web. Users are being greeted with error messages such as: "Sorry, something went wrong," "5xx Server Error," and more.

Yep, Facebook and Instagram are down...

The outage is affecting every Facebook-owned platform, according to data on Downdetector and Twitter. This includes Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger. The outages appear to have started around 11:40 am ET/8:40 am PT and all of those services remain inaccessible.

The outages quickly started trending on Twitter as users flocked to the competing social network to check to see if other users were affected by the down time. Humorously, the hashtag "#DeleteFacebook" is also trending on Twitter as the company battles continued pushback against the effects its platforms have on younger users.

As the New York Times reports:

Facebook has already been dealing with plenty of scrutiny. The company has been under fire from a whistle-blower, Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager who amassed thousands of pages of internal research and has since distributed them to the news media, lawmakers and regulators. The documents revealed that Facebook knew of many harms that its services were causing.

While some Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp outages only affect certain geographic regions, the services are down worldwide today. This includes the United States, the UK, Brazil, Kuwait, and more.

The outage is also affecting platforms and services that use Facebook login. Niantic, creator of Pokémon GO, says that it is "looking into reports of errors associated with Facebook login, and will update here once we have more information." Other services that also use Facebook login are believed to be affected, as well as Oculus.

Potential explanation

Cybercrime reporter Brian Krebs attributes it to a major DNS problem. Krebs explains that the DNS records that tell systems how to find Facebook and Instagram "got withdrawn this morning from the global routing cables." At this point, however, it's unclear how this happened.

Krebs writes in a blog post:

Facebook and its sister properties Instagram and WhatsApp are suffering from ongoing, global outages. We don't yet know why this happened, but the how is clear: Earlier this morning, something inside Facebook caused the company to revoke key digital records that tell computers and other Internet-enabled devices how to find these destinations online.

In simpler terms, sometime this morning Facebook took away the map telling the world's computers how to find its various online properties. As a result, when one types Facebook.com into a web browser, the browser has no idea where to find Facebook.com, and so returns an error page.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that even Facebook isn't entirely sure what the root cause of this issue is:

Several hours into the incident, Facebook's 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.

WhatsApp statement

In a statement, WhatsApp acknowledges that its service is down:

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.

Facebook statement

Facebook's Andy Stone:

We're aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.

Facebook internal also affected

Facebook's internal Workplace site and associated services for employees are also suffering from an outage today, according to Jane Manchun Wong. The company has distributed a memo to employees about the issues. Employees are referring to this as a "snow day," including Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri.

The New York Times report says that virtually everything inside Facebook is broken, including the ability to use keycards for entering buildings, security systems, an internal calendar and scheduling tools, and more. reports that Facebook employees have turned to platforms like Discord and FaceTime for communication.
Reload this page for the latest information.

Facebook and Instagram seem to be down. Has anyone thought about just leaving it that way to see what happens?

- Mike McHargue (@mikemchargue) October 4, 2021

I wonder how hard Twitter usage spikes when Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp all go down at once

- Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) October 4, 2021

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Check out 9to5Mac on YouTube for more Apple news:

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PSA: Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp went down for 6+ hours; here's why [U]

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Update: 5:55 p.m. ET: Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger are slowly but surely coming back up after more than 6 hours of being down. Your mileage may vary for now, but the services are in the process of coming back to life. Update 4:30 p.m ET: Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp have now been down for five hours.

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The private and personal information of over 1.5 billion Facebook users is allegedly being sold on a popular hacking-related forum, potentially enabling cybercriminals and unscrupulous advertisers to target Internet users globally. If authentic, this may constitute one of the biggest and most significant Facebook data dump to date. Update - 6 October: The thread advertising the claimed data scrape has disappeared from the hacker forum. The forum poster and alleged seller however was not banned (usually what happens when scam allegations turn out to be true).It is possible the thread was taken down due to a request by Facebook: Joe Osborne, a Facebook spokesman, commented to Newsweek, "We're investigating this claim and have sent a takedown request to the forum that's advertising the alleged data."Update - 5 October: The forum seller has today responded and denied the scam accusations, continuing to claim that the data is real. The seller commented they are willing to cooperate with administrators of the forum to prove the authenticity of the data. Yesterday, a number of forum posters accused the seller of not delivering the promised data after payment was made.

Important Clarification: This is completely unrelated to the global Facebook outage experienced on 4 October 2021.
Several websites and Twitter accounts incorrectly attribute the 4 October Facebook outage to this alleged data leak.
Further Clarification: It's alleged that the data was obtained by scraping publicly available data shared by users. Several media outlets and Twitter users misinterpret this to have resulted due to a hack or data breach, which is not the case.

It is seemingly unrelated to an earlier 2021 Facebook data dump, where 500 million users were affected.

Highlights:

Data scrapers are selling sensitive personal data on 1.5 billion Facebook users.

Data contains users': name, email, phone number, location, gender, and user ID.

Data appears to be authentic.

Personal data obtained through web scraping.

Data can be utilized for phishing and account takeover attacks.

Sold data claimed to be new from 2021.

Some prospective buyers claim they were scammed by the seller and no data was delivered after payment was made

Seller responds to scam accusations. Claims is willing to cooperate with forum administrators to prove the authenticity of the data

In late September 2021, a user of a known hacker forum posted an announcement claiming to possess the personal data of more than 1.5 billion Facebook users. The data is currently up for sale on the respective forum platform, with potential buyers having the opportunity to purchase all the data at once or in smaller quantities.

One prospective buyer claims to have been quoted $5,000 for the data of 1 million Facebook user accounts.

According to the forum poster, the data provided contains the following personal information of Facebook users:

Name

Email

Location

Gender

Phone number

User ID

Related: Dark Web Price Index 2021 - We looked into the prices hackers charge for items such as hacked Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn accounts and even online banking logins on the dark web

Update, 5 October: The forum seller denies the scam accusations and claims is willing to cooperate with forum administrators to prove the authenticity of the sold data.

Update, late 4 October: After this news was initially published, a forum user and prospective buyer claimed they paid the seller but haven't received anything in return. The seller hasn't yet responded to these accusations.

All we know at this moment is that the multiple samples provided to forum users appeared to be real.

Samples presented on the forum show that the data indeed seems to be authentic.

Cross-checking them with known Facebook database leaks resulted in no matches, implying that at first glance, the sample data provided is unique and not a duplicate or re-sell of a previously known data breach or scraping.

The seller claims to represent a group of web scrapers in operation for at least four years, alleging that they've had over 18,000 clients during this time.

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Data of Over 1.5 Billion Facebook Users Sold on Hacker Forum

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The private and personal information of over 1.5 billion Facebook users is allegedly being sold on a popular hacking-related forum, potentially enabling cybercriminals and unscrupulous advertisers to target Internet users globally. If authentic, this may constitute one of the biggest and most significant Facebook data dump to date.

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Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen: The 60 Minutes Interview

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With the start of a new work week, social media users were disappointed to learn that Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp were experiencing issues that led to a temporary shut down. On Monday (Oct. 4), the sites went down, prompting thousands of users to report the occurrence. A slew of people took to Twitter to confirm they weren't the only ones unable to access the platforms, while others chose to make light of their frustrations.

"#serverdown. Me enjoying all the memes on Twitter after instagram and Facebook is down," wrote user @venkateshlyer. Next to the caption was a GIF of a child playing on swings as emergency responders worked hard to extinguish a fire in the area.

In another post, @AlexUlricch chose a meme of a confused Drake scrolling through his phone to illustrate the following sentiment: "Everyone checking Instagram and Facebook every 5 minutes hoping it's back up after being down for over an hour..."

Several memes attempted to highlight the influx of users who made their way to Twitter in the wake of the news. @Phil_Lewis_ specifically poked fun at those users who are unfamiliar with using the site. Alongside a GIF of The Weeknd making a way through a maze of mirrors amid his 2021 Super Bowl performance, he wrote, "Instagram and Facebook users trying to navigate Twitter."

Per reports, social media platforms went down a little before noon. It's unclear what caused the sites to go out, but Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp have acknowledged the issue and are reportedly working to get the sites up and running again.

"We're aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products," a spokesperson said in a statement. "We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience."

Look below to see the funniest reactions to the social media shut down.

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The funniest reactions to Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp being down

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With the start of a new work week, social media users were disappointed to learn that Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp were experiencing issues that led to a temporary shut down. On Monday (Oct. 4), the sites went down, prompting thousands of users to report the occurrence.

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Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp were inaccessible for more than six hours on Monday.

Social media outages are not uncommon: Instagram alone has experienced more than 80 in the past year in the US.

This week's Facebook outage was rare in its length and scale, however.

Hundreds of millions of people were unable to access Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp for more than six hours on Monday, underscoring the world's reliance on platforms owned by the Silicon Valley giant.

But what actually caused the outage?

What does Facebook say happened?

In an apologetic blog post, Santosh Janardhan, Facebook's vice president of infrastructure, said that "configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between our data centres caused issues that interrupted this communication".

Can you explain that in plain English?

Cyber experts think the problem boils down to something called BGP, or Border Gateway Patrol - the system the internet uses to pick the quickest route to move packets of information around.

Sami Slim of data centre company Telehouse compared BGP to "the internet equivalent of air traffic control".

In the same way that air traffic controllers sometimes make changes to flight schedules, "Facebook did an update of these routes," Slim said.

But this update contained a crucial error.

It's not yet clear how or why, but Facebook's routers essentially sent a message to the internet announcing that the company's servers no longer existed.

Why did it take so long to fix the problem?

Experts say Facebook's technical infrastructure is unusually reliant on its own systems - and that proved disastrous on Monday.

After Facebook sent the fateful routing update, its engineers got locked out of the system that would allow them to communicate that the update had, in fact, been an error. So they couldn't fix the problem.

"Normally it's good not to put all your eggs in one basket," said Pierre Bonis of AFNIC, the association that manages domain names in France.

"For security reasons, Facebook has had to very strongly concentrate its infrastructure," he said.

"That streamlines things on a daily basis - but because everything is in the same place, when that place has a problem, nothing works."

The knock-on effects of the shutdown included some Facebook employees being unable to even enter their buildings because their security badges no longer worked, further slowing the response.

Social media outages are not uncommon: Instagram alone has experienced more than 80 in the past year in the United States, according to website builder ToolTester.

This week's Facebook outage was rare in its length and scale, however.

There is also a precedent for BGP meddling being at the root of a social media shutdown.

In 2008, when a Pakistani internet service provider was attempting to block YouTube for domestic users, it inadvertently shut down the global website for several hours.

Between Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, "billions of users have been impacted by the services being entirely offline", the Downdetector tracking service said.

Facebook, whose shares fell nearly five percent over the outage, has stressed there is "no evidence that user data was compromised as a result of this downtime".

But even though it lasted just a few hours, the impact of the shutdown ran deep.

Facebook's services are crucial for many businesses around the world, and users complained of being cut off from their livelihoods.

Facebook accounts are also commonly used to log in to other websites, which faced additional problems due to the company's technical meltdown.

Rival instant messaging services meanwhile reported that they had benefited from the fact that WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger were down.

Telegram went from the 56th most downloaded free app in the US to the fifth, according to monitoring firm SensorTower, while Signal tweeted that "millions" of new users had joined.

And among the more curious side-effects, several domain name registration companies listed Facebook.com as available for purchase.

"There was never any reason to believe Facebook.com would actually be sold as a result, but it's fun to consider how many billions of dollars it could fetch on the open market," said cyber security expert Brian Krebs.

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EXPLAINER | Why did Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp shut down? | Fin24

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Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp were inaccessible for more than six hours on Monday. Social media outages are not uncommon: Instagram alone has experienced more than 80 in the past year in the US. This week's Facebook outage was rare in its length and scale, however.

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It was already a brutal moment for Facebook. The social media goliath had just capped off a week of negative press around its halted Instagram Kids project with a bombshell 60 Minutes interview, in which a whistleblower detailed how the company has misled the public about its efforts to curb misinformation and hate speech.

In timing that may or may not be coincidental, however, the situation further deteriorated on Monday morning when Facebook and its other platforms, WhatsApp and Instagram, suffered their worst outages in recent memory.

Confirmed: The DNS records that tell systems how to find https://t.co/qHzVq2Mr4E or https://t.co/JoIPxXI9GI got withdrawn this morning from the global routing tables. Can you imagine working at FB right now, when your email no longer works & all your internal FB-based tools fail?

- briankrebs (@briankrebs) October 4, 2021

Adding insult to injury for the troubled juggernaut, Facebook's misfortune has been a bonanza for other social media companies, namely Twitter, which has been rife with memes about the mishap.

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How Twitterers celebrated the great Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram shutdown of 2021

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It was already a brutal moment for Facebook. The social media goliath had just capped off a week of negative press around its halted Instagram Kids project with a bombshell 60 Minutes interview, in which a whistleblower detailed how the company has misled the public about its efforts to curb misinformation and hate speech.

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I felt perplexed and confused

# data[].attributes.headline
I felt very relaxed and I did other things.

# data[].attributes.subject
I felt very relaxed and I did other things.

# data[].attributes.headline
Normal, because i had a lot of things to do at home this day

# data[].attributes.subject
Normal, because i had a lot of things to do at home this day

# data[].attributes.body
I feel quiet I don't worry for me

# data[].attributes.headline
I  was good because I knew that my family and boyfriend were good.

# data[].attributes.subject
I  was good because I knew that my family and boyfriend were good.

# data[].attributes.body
I was working so I wasn't a big deal

# data[].attributes.body
I tried messaging a few people, and deleted my WhatsApp and reinstalled it again, thinking it had a virus

# data[].attributes.body
On internet like google

# data[].attributes.body
Usually from the tv or from news sites where I receive a daily email with the most important updates

# data[].attributes.body
I felt really frustrated because I couldn't talk to my friends

# data[].attributes.body
No I don’t think so, I definitely use WhatsApp and Instagram the most because I like trying to talk to my friends and Instagram has pretty images

# data[].attributes.body
I was a walking with my daughter

# data[].attributes.headline
I don't remember. Perhaps I helped my mother with housework

# data[].attributes.subject
I don't remember. Perhaps I helped my mother with housework

# data[].attributes.body
No. Maybe whatsap is the most that i use daily

# data[].attributes.body
I went for a drive with my car

# data[].attributes.body
I was working in factory when the social media went down.

# data[].attributes.body
I prefer read news on internet or Twitter

# data[].attributes.body
I used to read it on the newspaper but now i prefer to read it online

# data[].attributes.body
I always get my news in newspaper or on TV.

# data[].attributes.headline
I don't have  facebook, Twitter, Instagram

# data[].attributes.subject
I don't have  facebook, Twitter, Instagram

# data[].attributes.body
I don't think, but my work is always online!

# data[].attributes.body
Maybe not addicted but i use them for many hours every day

# data[].attributes.headline
I dont remember,perhaps I was reading a book

# data[].attributes.subject
I dont remember,perhaps I was reading a book

# data[].attributes.headline
I think that I'm not adiccted but every day I see them

# data[].attributes.subject
I think that I'm not adiccted but every day I see them

# data[].attributes.body
Sometimes, in my opinion news are false.

# data[].attributes.body
I use Whatsapp.

# data[].attributes.body
Same as before, it’s not such an important

# data[].attributes.body
For me wasnt any problem because I don't use it a lot, anyways the app that I use the most it's discord

# data[].attributes.headline
First, it was strange because I didn't understand what was happening but when I realized, it was relaxing not being all the time with the mobile

# data[].attributes.subject
First, it was strange because I didn't understand what was happening but when I realized, it was relaxing not being all the time with the mobile

# data[].attributes.body
at the beginning I was working and then, when I realized it wasn’t working, I called to met with people

# data[].attributes.body
The same that I usually do, but when I gonna used Instagram I watched Twitter

# data[].attributes.body
I only have Whatsapp and I didn’t realy matter the go down

# data[].attributes.body
I usually listen the radio at early morning

# data[].attributes.body
I don’t trust everything even from tv news,

# data[].attributes.body
I usually watch the news in the TV, or maybe in Twitter sometimes

# data[].attributes.headline
I was doing other thinks, for example I was doing homeworks with my daugthers and I cooked the dinner

# data[].attributes.subject
I was doing other thinks, for example I was doing homeworks with my daugthers and I cooked the dinner

# data[].attributes.body
No, I don't use it more than 1 hour a day, and the most that I use its Instagram. And only to see what posted my friends

# data[].attributes.headline
I usually listen to the radio on my road to work and I use google for everything

# data[].attributes.subject
I usually listen to the radio on my road to work and I use google for everything

# data[].attributes.body
I was with my children and don’t whach the movil

# data[].attributes.body
I’m not addicted but I recognize when I’m bored I use it more than I should.
I usually use Fb to follow things I’m interesting

# data[].attributes.body
I get my news in tv because I trust it

# data[].attributes.headline
In TV and in the newspaper. No, I don' t trust everything, why I prefer listening other information

# data[].attributes.subject
In TV and in the newspaper. No, I don' t trust everything, why I prefer listening other information

# data[].attributes.headline
I listen the radio every morning. I turn on It while I Drive to muy job

# data[].attributes.subject
I listen the radio every morning. I turn on It while I Drive to muy job

# data[].attributes.headline
No, I'm not addicted. I use Facebook, WhatsApp and telegram

# data[].attributes.subject
No, I'm not addicted. I use Facebook, WhatsApp and telegram

# data[].attributes.headline
No. I only use WhatsApp and sometimes Instagram

# data[].attributes.subject
No. I only use WhatsApp and sometimes Instagram

# data[].attributes.body
I only use Whatsapp but I addict it because I use to comunicate with everybody

# data[].attributes.headline
I like to check instagram everyday for about 10 minutes but I don't think I am an addict because I don't feel it like a need, only it's for fun

# data[].attributes.subject
I like to check instagram everyday for about 10 minutes but I don't think I am an addict because I don't feel it like a need, only it's for fun

# data[].attributes.body
I think i'm not addicted to social media!