FB, WhatsApp, Instagram go offline globally

Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp went offline for users across the globe, the social media giant said yesterday, as it worked on restoring its services.

Users in Bangladesh started having difficulties connecting to Facebook group's services, including its social media site, its instant messenger, WhatsApp messenger and Instagram, around 9:15pm last night. The services were still inaccessible as of filing of this report at 2:00am today.

Apart from people being unable to communicate via the popular platforms, a large number of Bangladeshi businesses were also affected as those depend heavily on getting orders, communicating with customers and delivering other services via Facebook, its messenger, and WhatsApp.  

The issue affecting the services could not be confirmed but the error message on the webpage of Facebook Inc suggested a problem with Domain Name System (DNS), reports Reuters.

DNS allows web addresses to take users to their destinations. It is kind of the telephone directory of the internet. 

Security experts tracking the situation said the outage could have been triggered by a configuration error, which could be the result of an internal mistake, though sabotage by an insider would be theoretically possible.

An outside hack was viewed as less likely.

Facebook acknowledged users were having trouble accessing its apps but did not provide any specifics about the nature of the problem or how many were affected by the outage.

"We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience," Facebook said.

Shares of Facebook, which has nearly 2 billion daily active users, fell 5.5% in afternoon trading yesterday, inching towards its worst day in nearly a year.

Facebook has experienced similar widespread outages with its suite of apps this year in March and July.

Several users using their Facebook credentials to log in to third-party apps were also facing issues.

The outage comes a day after a Facebook whistleblower accused the firm of repeatedly prioritizing profit over clamping down on hate speech and misinformation, and said her lawyers have filed at least eight complaints with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.