Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp down after global outage cuts off users in Mississauga, Brampton, Halton, Hamilton, Niagara, Durham and beyond

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Published October 4, 2021 at 12:38 pm

UPDATE: Nearly five hours after Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp went down, the reason for the widespread outage remains unclear. However, according to reports, multiple security experts are pointing to a Domain Name System (DNS) problem as a possible culprit. The DNS, known as the “phone book of the internet,” translates website names into IP addresses that can be read by computers.

In what’s being described as a global outage, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp all went down just before noon today for hundreds of millions of users around the world. 

Facebook and the other two apps, which are owned by the social media giant, suddenly stopped working for users at about 11:45 a.m. (EST), showing various error messages for those trying to log on. 

On Facebook’s website, an error message read: “Sorry, something went wrong. We’re working on it and we’ll get it fixed as soon as we can.” 

The outage is reportedly affecting users across Canada, the U.S., Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

The massive collapse comes the morning after Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen revealed on 60 Minutes that Facebook’s own research shows that it amplifies hate, misinformation and political unrest to maximize profits over the public good.

Downdetector, a website that monitors complaints about such outages, noted there were more than 35,000 Canadians complaining about a Facebook outage shortly after the sites went down.

Instagram logged some 21,000 reports of outages while about 14,000 reports of WhatsApp being down were tracked in Canada.

(Note: Downdetector image above shows Pacific Coast times)

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