Major social media websites Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger services in most parts of the world, including Pakistan, have been suspended for several hours.
According to foreign news agencies, the issue started at 8:44 pm Pakistani time, after which users around the world are having difficulty accessing these web social media platforms.
Four hours into the night, these services could not be restored.
"Some people have difficulty accessing and using our products and applications," Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said in a Twitter message.
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.
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) October 4, 2021
"We are doing everything possible to normalize the situation as soon as possible and apologize for the inconvenience," he added.
WhatsApp also said in a message on the social networking site Twitter that "we are aware that some people are having problems using WhatsApp at the moment, we are working to restore the situation to normal and soon We will keep you updated.
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.
— WhatsApp (@WhatsApp) October 4, 2021
Thanks for your patience!
Later, Instagram also confirmed the problems in a statement released on Twitter, saying that Instagram and friends are facing some problems at the moment and you may have problems using it.
According to the website DownDictor, 20,000 people have reported Facebook and Instagram affected.
Similarly, 14,000 users have complained about the messaging platform WhatsApp, while more than 3,000 users say they are unable to use Messenger.
However, given the worldwide use of Facebook, it is feared that millions of people could be affected by the service's impact.
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
— Instagram Comms (@InstagramComms) October 4, 2021
All three of these applications, owned by Facebook, run on a common infrastructure and are unable to function.
Users who open Facebook are receiving 'error page' or 'this browser not connected' messages.
In addition to mobile phone apps, there are difficulties in using the desktop versions of Facebook and Instagram.
Messenger users have difficulty sending and receiving messages, as well as accessing other Facebook-linked websites such as workplaces.
Whatsapp, Instagram and Facebook down . Users throughout out the world are facing the outage. #Facebookdown#instagramdown #Whatsappdown
— Prashanth Rangaswamy (@itisprashanth) October 4, 2021
On the social networking site Twitter, people are posting messages affecting the services of Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, etc. in their respective countries.
Websites like Facebook are generally less affected, but whenever this problem occurs, the effects are compounded, as it causes the world's three most widely used applications to stop working simultaneously.
Whenever there has been such a problem before, the company has always been unable to give reasons or details even after the problem has been resolved.
Earlier, when the problem occurred in 2019, after the network was restored, Facebook was content to say that there was a problem with their system while repairing the room.
In documents released in 2019, Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg called the impact of the services the biggest problem.
He said that whenever such a problem arises, people start using another network or platform and it is very difficult to restore their confidence and persuade them to use Facebook again.
It should be noted that even before this, the service of Facebook and their social sharing website Instagram has been down.
The last time this problem occurred was in March last year, and even then millions of consumers around the world were facing difficulties.
