Fury as 500 not working error hits Instagram and Snapchat users as apps crash

Hidden WhatsApp features

WhatsApp lets you send disappearing messages that self-destruct after a week.

The new feature automatically deletes texts sent to contacts or groups – potentially saving you future embarrassment.

Read receipts are the little blue ticks that appear next to a message after a recipient has seen it.

One grey tick means your message has been sent, two grey ticks means it’s reached their device and a pair of blue ticks means it’s been read.

If you do not want to send or receive read receipts, it’s an easy process to turn them off.

Rare for all to go down at once

Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp commonly experience small individual outages, but it’s rare for the apps to all go down at once.

They run on a shared infrastructure, and other Facebook-owned services are also down, including the Oculus website and Facebook Workplace.

Outages on other platforms

Google, Amazon, Spectrum, Verizon, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, Apple, and Cricket Wireless are also reporting outages. It’s not immediately clear if all of these tech issues are connected.

Many are reporting that they are unable to access the smartphone apps and websites of the hugely popular services.

#facebookdown

The hashtag facebookdown and instagramdown are currently trending on twitter following their outage.

Many people are unable to use the app with thousands complaining on twitter with one saying “Facebook keeps crashing and saying check your Internet even though nothing is wrong with my internet.”

Many have been checking their internet connection, thinking that might be the issue.

Hundreds of thousands hit by outage

More than 80,000 people in the US have reported problems with Facebook in the past hour

Hundreds of thousands of people have reported issues with the social networking apps on the website DownDetector.

Many are reporting that they are unable to access the smartphone apps and websites of the hugely popular services.

WhatsApp trying to fix their app

WhatsApp messages are not reaching their recipients, with sent texts sitting with a clock icon next to them to indicate that they haven’t been dispatched.

It remains unclear precisely what’s behind the mass outage.

WhatsApp are currently working to fix the outage.

Many took to twitter to share their problems

Over on Twitter, a concerned user wrote: “Anyone else noticing every Facebook-owned property (WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, etc.) is returning a 500 server error?”

Others took the situation a little more lightly, with one person tweeting: “Well I guess I’ll be getting some actual work done since FB and IG are down!”

Mass issue

According to DownDetector, Monday’s outage is affecting users in the UK, US, Austrlia and countries across Europe, Asia and Africa.

Users shared their experiences of the outage on DownDetector, with one writing: “Can’t get on fb at all.”

Another said: “Facebook keeps crashing and saying check your Internet even though nothing is wrong with my internet.”

‘Software bug or human error’

According to analyst Jake Moore, it’s likely the latest outage is the result of a software bug or human error.

“Outages are increasing in volume and can often point towards a cyber-attack, but this can add to the confusion early on when we are diagnosing the causes,” said Moore, a specialist at cybersecurity firm ESET.

“Web-blackouts more often originate from undiscovered software bug or even human error.

“Although these are increasing in frequency and require more failsafes in place, predicting these issues is increasingly more difficult as it was never thought possible before.”

Not the first time

Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp commonly experience small individual outages, but it’s rare for the apps to all go down at once.

They run on a shared infrastructure, and other Facebook-owned services are also down, including the Oculus website and Facebook Workplace.

Previous mass web blackouts in March 2021 and July 2019 have knocked all of the company’s services offline for hours at a time.

On those occasions, Facebook blamed a technical fault on the downtime.

Facebook are ‘working to get things back to normal’

Facebook’s head of communications, Andy Stone, tweeted: “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.”

WhatsApp messages not sending

WhatsApp messages are not reaching their recipients, with sent texts sitting with a clock icon next to them to indicate that they haven’t been dispatched.

It remains unclear precisely what’s behind the mass outage.

‘500 server error’

Those attempting to open the sites on desktop are reportingly being met with a black white page and a message that reads “500 server error”.

Many can’t access app

Many are reporting that they are unable to access the smartphone apps and websites of the hugely popular services.

The iOS and Android versions of the Instagram and Facebook apps will open but will not load users’ feeds or show them new content.

WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram go down

WHATSAPP, Facebook and Instagram have gone down for millions of users in a massive global outage.

Problems with the services, which are all owned by Facebook, began around 4:45pm BST (11:45am EST), according to online outage trackers.

Hundreds of thousands of people have reported issues with the social networking apps on the website DownDetector.