Facebook says it is aware of outages on its platforms including Facebook, Messenger and Instagram and is working to resolve the issue.
According to downdetector.com, which monitors websites, the outages started around 12 p.m. EDT on March 13 in parts of the U.S., including the East and West Coast, parts of Europe and elsewhere.
Both Facebook’s desktop site and app appeared to be affected. Some users saw a message that said Facebook was down for “required maintenance.”
We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps. We’re working to resolve the issue as soon as possible.
— Facebook (@facebook) March 13, 2019
Facebook did not say what was causing the outages. As of 4:45 EDT service was restored to some but other users were still reporting problems.
Via its Twitter account, Facebook said the outage was not due to a “distributed denial of service” or DDoS attack, a type of attack that hackers use to interrupt service to a site.
We’re focused on working to resolve the issue as soon as possible, but can confirm that the issue is not related to a DDoS attack.
— Facebook (@facebook) March 13, 2019
Advertisers Locked out of Facebook Ads Manager
Amid Facebook’s hours-long outage, reports indicate that millions of advertisers that use the platform are potentially affected.
Many users said they could not access Facebook’s Ads Manager, saying it was out of order along with the entire platform.
“We’re also aware that people are experiencing issues with access to our ads interfaces, we’ll share an update as soon as possible,” said Rob Leathern, the director of products and Facebook.
We’re also aware that people are experiencing issues with access to our ads interfaces, we’ll share an update as soon as possible. https://t.co/Wk4STxGuEq
— Rob Leathern (@robleathern) March 13, 2019
According to AdAge, there are about 6 million advertisers on Facebook and the company handles about $90 in ad revenue each day.
Akvile DeFazio, a social media advertiser with her own agency, Akvertising, told the news outlet that the ad platform has been down for approximately five hours.
“Being unable to access Facebook and Instagram has caused significant disruption to our business and to our clients today,” DeFazio said. “We have clients that spend up to hundreds of thousands of dollars per day advertising on those channels. … It’s setting us back a day, causing a ripple effect to the bottom line. … This isn’t the first time an outage has occurred.”
Look ma! I made it on AdAge today. Thanks for breaking today, Facebook. But no, really, I wish you didn’t because many of us lost a day of work. https://t.co/4reecxrpkp pic.twitter.com/n7sEX8rWcl
— Akvile DeFazio (@AkvileDeFazio) March 13, 2019
Twitter Jokes
The hours-long outage at Facebook and its platforms had people going to Twitter to for their daily dose of scrolling, with many making jokes about the situation.
Facebook and Instagram users coming to Twitter to see why it’s not working #FacebookDown #InstagramDown pic.twitter.com/LyIv4JJcLe
— OfficialWilly2.0 (@therealwill17) March 13, 2019
Time to fire this back up. #FacebookDown pic.twitter.com/Q3x9BQEin8
— Lawrence Champness (@champy) March 13, 2019
ig and fb ignoring the fact that it has been down for 5 hours #FacebookDown pic.twitter.com/1rn2HSz5jC
— created this cause instagram is down (@MU3RTOS) March 13, 2019
Me realizing it’s been three hours since being able to watch a dog video….. #FacebookDown pic.twitter.com/UuIhIftH8l
— Katie???? (@kateR_08) March 13, 2019
The Associated Press and The Epoch Times Reporter Jack Phillips contributed to this report.