The massive global failure that on Monday plunged Facebook, its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms, and the many people who rely heavily on those services – including Facebook employees – into chaos is gradually dissipating.
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Facebook noted in the afternoon that it has been working to restore access to its services and that it is “happy to report that they are getting back online now.” The company apologized and thanked its users for dealing with the issue. But fixing it did not. It was as easy as flipping a switch. For some users, WhatsApp featured intermittent service. Others had Instagram but no Facebook, and so on.
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Facebook did not explain what could have caused the failure, which began at approximately 11:40 a.m. ET and was still not fully resolved more than six hours later.
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“This is epic,” said Doug Madory, director of internet analytics for Kentik Inc., a network monitoring and intelligence company. The latest major internet failure, shutting down some of the major websites last June, lasted less than an hour. The content delivery company affected in that case, Fastly, attributed it to a software glitch caused by a customer changing settings.
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For hours, Facebook’s only public comment was a tweet in which he acknowledged that “some people are having trouble accessing the Facebook app,” and noted that he was working to restore access. On the internal flaws, Instagram director Adam Mosseri tweeted that it feels like a “snowy day.”
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Mike Schroepfer, outgoing CTO at Facebook, later tweeted his “sincere apologies” to everyone affected by the failure. He attributed it to “network problems,” and said teams are “working as quickly as possible to eliminate faults and restore (the system) as soon as possible.”
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There was no evidence Monday of any malicious activity. Matthew Prince, CEO of internet infrastructure provider Cloudfare, tweeted that “nothing we are seeing related to the failure of Facebook services suggests that it was an attack.” Prince said the most likely explanation is that Facebook accidentally disconnected from the internet during a maintenance service.
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Facebook did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the possibility of an attack or malicious activity.
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AP reporters Mae Anderson in New York and Matt O’Brien in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this report.
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