Disruption Impacts Instagram and WhatsApp Services

A significant service interruption affected both Instagram and WhatsApp on Friday. The disruption commenced at approximately 1:40 p.m. Eastern Time and persisted for over thirty minutes.

Users of WhatsApp encountered difficulties establishing a connection to the server, resulting in message delivery failures. The extent to which Facebook Messenger was impacted remains uncertain, despite its recent integration of cross-platform messaging capabilities linking Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram.

Server Error Reported on Instagram

Instagram displayed a 500 error message, indicating a problem with its back-end server infrastructure. This error typically signals an internal server issue preventing proper operation.

Large User Base Affected

The outage impacted a substantial number of users, with WhatsApp boasting over two billion and Instagram approximately one billion active users globally. Facebook’s official developer status page initially did not report any widespread outages.

According to Facebook spokesperson Leslie Grant, a technical problem led to access issues for some Facebook services earlier in the day. The issue has since been resolved, and an apology was issued for any resulting inconvenience.

The specific cause of the service disruption was not publicly revealed by Facebook.

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This article has been updated to include a statement from Facebook.