WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram recover after almost six-hour outage

Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram at least partially reconnected to the global internet after a nearly six-hour outage.

The three Facebook-owned platforms were down in many parts of the world, users reported on Monday night. On Twitter, people posted messages saying these platforms were inaccessible from around 9 pm IST. Around 400 million people use one or more of these platforms in India.

Facebook communications executive Andy Stone himself took to Twitter, posting this message at 9.37 pm India time: "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."



The family of apps of the world's largest social network with over two billion users was down at around 9 pm, according to downdetector.com. "Reports indicate there may be a widespread outage at Facebook, which may be impacting your service," Downdetector said on its website.

Facebook has not yet said what is causing the outages or by when its platforms will be up and running again.

India has the largest user base for Facebook and its platform with over 410 million users. WhatsApp, the messaging platform has 530 million users and Instagram has 210 million users, according to government data.

Here's what some Twitter users posted on the outage:





The outage comes at a time when a whistleblower accused the social media giant of prioritising profit over clamping down on hate speech and misinformation.

On Sunday, Frances Haugen revealed herself to be "Sean," the whistleblower against Facebook. A product manager who worked for nearly two years on the civic misinformation team at the social network before leaving in May, Haugen has used the documents she amassed to expose how much Facebook knew about the harms that it was causing, and provided the evidence to lawmakers, regulators and the news media.

In an interview with the TV show 60 Minutes that aired on Sunday, Haugen, 37, said she had grown alarmed by what she saw at Facebook. The company repeatedly put its own interests first rather than the public’s interest, she said. So she copied pages of Facebook’s internal research and decided to do something about it.

“I’ve seen a bunch of social networks, and it was substantially worse at Facebook than what I had seen before,” Haugen said. “Facebook, over and over again, has shown it chooses profit over safety.”

Haugen gave many of the documents to The Wall Street Journal, which last month began publishing the findings. The revelations—including that Facebook knew Instagram was worsening body image issues among teenagers and that it had a two-tier justice system—have spurred criticism from lawmakers, regulators and the public. The spotlight on Haugen is set to grow brighter. On Tuesday, she is scheduled to testify in Congress about Facebook’s impact on young users.