WhatsApp, Facebook & Instagram down after international blackout

When Bengaluru-based engineer Indu could not open WhatsApp for a few minutes soon after her dinner on Monday (October 4), she thought her newly purchased swanky phone stopped working. Realising that her Internet connection was fine, she took to Facebook, but that too was not downloading.

But when she noticed that her App showing IPL was streaming the Chennai Super Kings vs Delhi Daredevils game, it was then she realised “something is wrong with WhatsApp and Facebook”. Indu was right, everything was wrong with these social media sites.

On Monday night, Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram — all owned by Facebook — faced a major global outage, leaving lakhs of users, including from India, in distress, and panic.

The interruption lasted more than three hours, in what is possibly the longest outage of the social media giants in the last few years.

For the record, India has 53 crore WhatsApp users, 41 crore Facebook users and 21 crore Instagram users. 

Without specifying the reason, WhatsApp posted a tweet, saying “it’s working to get things normal”. Experts, however, say it might involve an error with DNS. DNS is like an address book or phone book for Internet, pointing web browsers to the system which serves the website they are looking for.

 As per multiple reports, the outage is estimated to have started around 9 PM IST.

“We are aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We are working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologise for any inconvenience,” a Facebook spokesperson said.

A tweet shared by Instagram said: “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”.

Microblogging platform Twitter exploded with posts, grievances and memes about the outage.