DownDetector: Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are all unavailable due to a global outage

According to the outage tracking website Downdetector.com, tens of thousands of Facebook users were unable to access the company’s suite of apps, which included popular photo-sharing network Instagram and messaging application WhatsApp.

Reuters was unable to confirm the nature of the problem that was disrupting the services immediately. While accessing Facebook’s website, an error notice said that a Domain Name System (DNS) problem had occurred.

The Domain Name System (DNS) enables web addresses to direct users to their intended destinations. In July, a similar outage at cloud computing provider Akamai Technologies brought down a number of websites.

It was discovered that there were more than 50,000 incidences of individuals reporting troubles with Facebook and Instagram, according to Downdetector, which exclusively tracks outages by combining status data from a variety of sources, including user-submitted faults on its site. It is possible that a higher number of customers are being affected by the outage.

Meanwhile, WhatsApp, the social media giant’s instant messaging app, was down for over 22,000 users, while Messenger was down for almost 3,000 users, according to reports.

WhatsApp was also a popular topic on Twitter, with more than 850,000 tweets mentioning it.

“We’re aware that some people are having difficulty with WhatsApp at the moment,” the official Twitter account for the messaging app stated. “We’re working hard to restore normalcy to the situation, and we’ll post an update here as soon as possible.”

Reuters reached out to Facebook for comment, but did not receive a response right away.