Facebook and Instagram users around the world reported issues about posting and logging into the social media sites throughout the day on Wednesday, March 13. WhatsApp users also reported the same issue with the application. The outages on the said sites lasted about a whole day and it was the respective site's longest downtime ever.
Facebook posted a statement on Twitter on March 14, and they stated that they had server configuration change and it is to be blamed for the outages. Facebook said that their services were coming back online and that it should be working as well as it used to.
"Yesterday, as a result of a server configuration change, many people had trouble accessing our apps and services," the statement said. "We've now resolved the issues and our systems are recovering. We're very sorry for the inconvenience and appreciate everyone's patience."
Early Thursday morning, Instagram tweeted that their service was back.
"We're aware of an issue impacting people's access to Instagram right now. We know this is frustrating, and our team is hard at work to resolve this ASAP. Anddddd... we're back."
Facebook acknowledged the outage in a tweet Wednesday, saying, "We're aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps. We're working to resolve the issue as soon as possible."
There were speculations that a widespread hacking was done. It later confirmed the problem was not the result of a DDoS attack, which refers to a Distributed Denial-of-Service attack in which a hacker overwhelms a site by flooding it with fake traffic.
Reports of problems with Facebook was around 12,000 worldwide late Wednesday according to the website Downdetector, it is a website where users from around the world can report problems on applications and websites. Downdetector listed around 300 reports on Thursday morning, and a lot of people reported their access had been restored and that they were able to post and log in again, but Facebook has not yet confirmed the that issues thatt they had were resolved.
"Today is the technical difficulties day for Facebook, I guess," cracked Paresh Rajwat, in a reference to the company's worldwide service outage when his presentation's video failed to include audio. Rajwat was announcing new features for Facebook's Watch video service.
Facebook previously experienced an outage on the site for advertisers in November of last year, it as around the time when marketers were trying to place advertisments for the Black Friday event and Cyber Monday.
In 2013, Facebook experienced a glitch which took a lot of websites down with it, it is because of the prevalence of its login feature across the internet. When users tried to log into a website with their Facebook account, they were directed to an error page on Facebook. This glitch only lasted for a few minutes but it affected websites including The New York Times and CNN.
