WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram (Meta) go DOWN

WHATSAPP, Facebook and Instagram went down for millions of users in a massive global outage. The problems with the administrators, all of which are owned by Facebook, began around 4:45 p.m. BST (11:45 a.m. ET), according to online outage trackers. 80,000 people in the US reported problems with Facebook in the last hour More than 80,000 people in the US reported problems with Facebook in the last hour. Hundreds of thousands of individuals have reported and complained about problems with social networking applications on the DownDetector website. Google, Amazon, Spectrum, Verizon, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, Apple, Telegram and Cricket Wireless also reported outages. It is not entirely clear whether all of these school problems are related. several report being unable to access the smartphone apps and websites of massively popular services. Those trying to open the site on desktop are reportedly met with a black and white page and a "500 server error" message. The iOS and Android versions of Instagram and Facebook apps can open, but won't load users' feeds or show them new content. WhatsApp messages are not reaching their recipients and sent texts have a clock icon next to them, indicating that they have not been sent. Facebook's security chief was questioned by lawmakers last Thursday over what the company knew about the potential for Instagram to be harmful to the mental health of young users. The Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security convened the hearing following a Wall Street Journal investigation citing Facebook's own internal research, allegedly released by a whistleblower, that found Instagram had an adverse impact on mental health issues among teens, especially girls. "We are here today because Facebook has shown us once again that it is incapable of being held accountable," Blumenthal said in his opening remarks last week. “We realize 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 apologize for any inconvenience,” said a Facebook spokesperson. Facebook argued against bipartisan scrutiny at the hearing. "We understand that the recent news has raised many questions about our internal research, including the research we do to better understand young people's experiences on Instagram," Antigone Davis, Facebook's global head of security, said in written testimony. "We strongly disagree with how this report characterized our work, so we want to be clear about what this research shows and what it doesn't show." A new, upcoming committee hearing titled "Protecting Children Online: Testimony from a Facebook Whistleblower" is scheduled for Tuesday at 10 a.m. While some of the Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp outages are limited to certain geographies, the services are down globally today. These include the United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, Kuwait and others. The outage also affects platforms and services that use Facebook login. Niantic, the creator of Pokémon GO, says it is "reviewing reports of Facebook login errors and will update here as we have more information." Other services that also use Facebook logins are expected to be affected, as is Oculus. WhatsApp statement In a statement made by WhatsApp officials, they confirm that its service is down: