LAST UPDATE | 4 Oct 2021

MAJOR SOCIAL MEDIA platforms WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook are down – with users experiencing issues on the social media platforms.

The platforms confirmed on Twitter they are aware of issues and are working to resolve them.

According to web service monitoring platform DownDetector, thousands of people reported outages before 5pm.

Data on its website showed that almost 50,000 people had reported the outages on Facebook.

Most complaints cited issues with the website (72%), while others were linked to issues with the server connection and the app.

More than 60,000 had complained about WhatsApp, with 43% reporting issues with the app itself, while 28% cited the server connection and 28% relating to sending messages.

More than 30,000 Instagram users also had similar complaints, with 51% relating to the app, 26% over the server connection and 23% citing the website.

A graph on the DownDetector website showed a clear spike from after 4pm.

Users trying to access Facebook in affected areas have been greeted with the message: “Something went wrong. We’re working on it and we’ll get it fixed as soon as we can.”

“We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products,” Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said on Twitter.

In a tweet this evening, Whatsapp teams acknowledged the problem:

And following on from that, the team at Instagram also confirmed they were having issues:

A Facebook company spokesperson said: “We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products.

“We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologise for any inconvenience.”

Facebook’s Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer said in a tweet that he offers his “*sincere* apologies to everyone impacted by outages of Facebook powered services right now”.

“We are experiencing networking issues and teams are working as fast as possible to debug and restore as fast as possible,” he said.

With reporting by © – AFP, 2021 and Press Association