Facebook Is Down: Zuckerberg's Bad Month Gets Even Worse
Facebook is down, taking Instagram with it, and it's just the latest in a series of headaches for the beleaguered social network. The company confirmed the outage, which began earlier on Tuesday, today, forced to resort to Twitter in order to confirm that no, it's not just you, Facebook is down.
"We know some people are having trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps," the company tweeted, sheepishly. "We're working to resolve the issue as soon as possible."
It's not the first Facebook outage this month, it's worth remembering. Last week the site was down for many users, with spokespeople blaming "a routine test" for the glitch. It affected not only Facebook, but WhatsApp and Instagram, both of which Facebook owns.
So far no explanation for this week's outage has been given. Not everybody is experiencing the same problems, with some still able to access WhatsApp and Instagram, while others report the Facebook page itself is still loading, albeit with errors. Even if it does work, the site seems slow.
Other users trying to log into their Facebook accounts are being redirected to a Help Center document instead. That explains that, if they're seeing a "Facebook will be back soon" message, it "usually means we're making an improvement to the database your account is stored on."
The downtime comes as Facebook faces renewed criticism for how it has handled privacy and other issues in recent months. An expose earlier in November alleged that, in an attempt to distract attention, the company retained reputation management and PR specialists. Those specialists are said to have tried to encourage critical stories of Facebook competitors, including allegations that Democratic donor George Soros was involved in anti-Facebook protests.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder and CEO, and Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's COO, have denied the claims. Nonetheless, it's unclear if they'll escape further criticism, or even see Congress wade back in and demand further answers.
As for when today's downtime will finish, Facebook hasn't given an ETA on when it might have the situation fixed. When it does return, you may well decide simply not to log back in, though actually deleting your account altogether is tougher than you might expect.