That could be the result of an internal mistake, though sabotage by an insider would be theoretically possible.Īn outside hack was viewed as less likely.

Security experts tracking the situation said the outage likely was triggered by a configuration error that left directions to Facebook servers unavailable. “We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible,” she said. Several Facebook employees who declined to be named said that they believed that the outage was caused by an internal routing mistake to an internet domain that was compounded by the failures of internal communication tools and other resources that depend on that same domain in order to work.įacebook, which is the second largest digital advertising platform in the world, was losing about $545,000 in US ad revenue per hour during the outage, according to estimates from ad measurement firm Standard Media Index.Ī spokeswoman for Facebook Ireland confirmed that the company was experiencing a “technical issue” that has caused its services – Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram – to go down. Soon after the outage started, Facebook acknowledged users were having trouble accessing its apps but did not provide any specifics about the nature of the problem or say how many users were affected by the outage.

“Facebook basically locked its keys in its car,” tweeted Jonathan Zittrain, director of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Security experts said the disruption could be the result of an internal mistake, though sabotage by an insider would be theoretically possible.

Why is instagram and whatsapp down