Digital Dystopia: Major Social Networks Downed

Update: Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram are all now back online, with Facebook having resolved the issue after several hours of downtime. Ina post on Facebook Engineering , the social networkexplained that the cause of the extended outage was “configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between our data centers”. This “had a cascading effect on the way our data centers communicate, bringing our services to a halt.”

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Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram are all currently down, forcing (literally) billions of users offline. The DNS issue is affecting all of Facebook’s major services, blocking users not only from accessing the main Facebook site, but also sending messages via Messenger or WhatsApp, accessing tools such as Facebook Workplace, or any Instagram features.

As usual, Facebook remains silent regarding the outage. Although Facebook blackouts take place periodically, the company never reveals much about why the network goes down, preferring to fix the issue and move on without explaining the technical details to its users.

Are All Facebook Services Down?

At around 11:45ET, users worldwide began flooding in with reports that Facebook is down. The outage is affecting all of Facebook’s services, taking Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and any other Facebook-controlled service with it.

That means other sites that rely on Facebook’s login to provide secure access to their own services are also affected, potentially locking users out even if they’re not attempting to access Facebook specifically.

It also appears that it isn’t just regular Facebook users that face issues with the service. A tweet from Jane Manchun Wong revealed that Facebook’s internal services are suffering, too.

Why Is Facebook Down? Is Facebook Up Yet?

A DNS (Domain Name System) issue appears to be the culprit behind Facebook’s massive outage.

Facebook’s BGP routes were temporarily withdrawn from the internet, effectively removing Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram from the internet, for every user. As no one could exchange information properly with Facebook’s DNS name servers, there was no way of accessing the site.

As per the tweet linked in the previous section, even Facebook’s internal services were down in what’s described as “a pretty epic configuration error.”

What Are BGP Routes?

Facebook is down because it has withdrawn its BGP routes from the internet. But, what is a BGP route, anyway?

In simple terms, a BGP route tells traffic how to get to where it needs to be. For example, when you input “makeuseof.com” in your browser and hit enter, these words translate to an IP address, and your data is routed between your computer and the nearest server, hopefully in the most efficient manner possible.

According to world-leading web infrastructure company, Cloudfare, Facebook withdrew a huge number of its BGP routes before the service went dark. Removing its BGP routes from the internet effectively means routers, servers, and other services don’t know where to find Facebook on the internet. It’s just… gone.

The good news is that this is a perfectly fixable issue, albeit one that might take a little time to get back up and running after such a massive shutdown.

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Is Facebook Down Due to a Cyber Attack or Security Breach?

At this time, nothing points to Facebook’s downtime as an attack or security incident. The information taken from Facebook’s BGP configuration (which is openly accessible) shows what the issue is. Cloudfare CEO Matthew Prince tweeted his consensus with the situation, advising that “Nothing we’re seeing related to the Facebook services outage suggests it was an attack.”

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The Hashtag #facebookdown Trends on Twitter

Within minutes of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram going down, the hashtag #facebookdown was trending on Twitter, amassing hundreds of thousands of tweets. #whatsappdown and #instadown also shot to the top of the Twitter trending charts as panicked users flocked en masse to the social network in an attempt to find out why Facebook is down.

Trending alongside the #facebookdown hashtag is, somewhat amusingly, the hashtag #deletefacebook, with the outage coming on the back of a tumultuous day for the social network. Prior to going offline, aFacebook whistleblower delivered a damning exposé on the company, alleging that Facebook always puts the company before the public, amongst other issues.

When Will Facebook Come Back Online?

Right now, there is no specific timeframe available for Facebook coming back online, nor WhatsApp, Instagram, or any other affected service. The Facebook outage is affecting the company in more ways than one. For example, Facebook staffers couldn’t access buildings at Facebook HQ to begin assessing the damage because of internal networking issues brought about by the outage.

Furthermore, other experts believe that it will take some time for Facebook and its associated services to return to full capacity. It isn’t just a case of flicking a switch and restarting the system. Restoring a distributed network of Facebook’s size will require patience from the company and of course, its users.