WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and Messenger are experiencing outage (October 4)

An outage affects several major social networks and messaging services on October 4. This applies to WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and Facebook. The problems seem to be global.

WhatsApp, Facebook and Messenger malfunction

There seem to be major problems with Facebook’s servers. Scrolling through your Instagram timeline, reading messages on Facebook and sending messages via Messenger and WhatsApp does not seem to be possible due to a malfunction. The outage started around 5:40 PM Dutch time and appears to be ongoing worldwide.

When you want to send a message with WhatsApp, a clock remains, which means that the message has not been sent. In addition, the web pages of Messenger are inaccessible and Facebook also loads only sparsely or not at all.

The cause of the outage is unknown at this time, but the problem appears to be related to the unreachable DNS server.

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Update 17:56: because none of the names answer anymore, it seems to be a problem with the DNS.

Update 6:00 PM: the problem is still going on. Facebook doesn’t seem to be reachable anymore.

Update 6:09 PM: the error is still not resolved. The problems with Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger are not only in the Netherlands; but worldwide.

Update 6:25 PM: after almost an hour that the outage has already lasted, still no sign of life at the mentioned services.

Update 6:59 PM: Facebook has posted on Twitter that it is dealing with problems. Various providers have now also sent a message into the world, stating that the problem with WhatsApp, for example, is not with them.

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 (@Facebook) October 4, 2021

Update 7:21 PM: CTO of Cloudflare indicates that he received several updates minutes before the outage from Facebook that the route to Facebook has been changed and/or removed. Services worldwide publish a kind of roadmap to their servers, by removing them Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and other Facebook-affiliated services are still offline.

About five minutes before Facebook’s DNS stopped working we saw a large number of BGP changes (mostly route withdrawals) for Facebook’s ASN. pic.twitter.com/dMTevg6hqj

— John Graham-Cumming (@jgrahamc) October 4, 2021

Update 20:12: the outage at Facebook is still ongoing. This also means that the other services are still not working.

Update 8:46 PM: there is still no indication of when Facebook and the other services will work again.

Update 21:33: Crowded on Twitter due to the outages. More and more users are now reporting problems with Twitter, where it is not always possible to retrieve tweets.

Update 11:12 PM: Based on an internal memo, The New York Times reports that a small group of engineers are on their way to Facebook’s data center in Santa Clara, California. The problems have not yet been solved and the end is not yet in sight.

Update 11:32 PM: Bit by bit we see the Facebook network coming back, the homepage of the social network now shows an error message. That doesn’t solve the problem yet as millions of devices are on the go to update their content!