Security News > 2021 > October > Facebook Outage Drags Down Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Oculus VR

As of Monday afternoon, Facebook had been flat on its face for hours, suffering a simultaneous worldwide outage not only on its main site, but also at its Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Oculus VR subsidiaries.

The New York Times reported that Facebook's internal communications platform, Workplace, was also dragged offline, "Leaving most employees unable to do their jobs." It's been a thumb-twiddling afternoon, the Times reported, with two Facebook employees comparing it to a "Snow day."

Me enjoying all the memes on twitter after instagram and Facebook is down#facebookdown #WhatsApp#serverdown pic.

The Verge reports that Facebook's fiefdom skidded offline just as Facebook's global head of safety, Antigone Davis, was live on CNBC. She was there to defend her employer against a whistleblower's accusations that Facebook values product optimization so much that it has embraced algorithms that amplify hate speech, as well as to address Facebook's handling of research data that suggests Instagram is harmful to teens.

Saryu Nayyar, CEO of Gurucul, said that if the Facebook outage does turn out to be caused by attackers, they're probably pissed off about Facebook's business practices.

Thus, Lawrence said that it will be interesting to see what caused this lingering outage to "Several jewels in the Facebook family."

News URL

https://threatpost.com/facebook-outage-instagram-whatsapp-messenger-oculus-vr/175308/