Facebook-owned social media apps slowly recover from global blackout

Social media traffic here was slowly returning to normal here Monday evening after Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp were inaccessible for more than six hours in what was said to be one of the longest outages worldwide.

Facebook acknowledged users were having trouble accessing its apps but did not provide any specifics about the nature of the problem that affected the app’s 3.5 billion users.

“We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience,” Facebook tweeted about 30 minutes after the first news of the outage emerged, according to Reuters news agency.

The error message on Facebook’s webpage suggested an error in the Domain Name System (DNS), which allows Web addresses to take users to their chosen sites.

Services were also out for Facebook-owned WhatsApp and Instagram, which have emerged as a vital communications link for both businesses and individuals.

The outage was the second blow to the social media giant in as many days after a whistleblower on Sunday accused the company of repeatedly prioritising profit over clamping down on hate speech and disinformation.
(SD/REUTERS)