Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp down (update: Back up)

(Image credit: TY Lim/Shutterstock)

Bad news for those who want to check on their friends' status: Facebook is currently down.

Based on Downdetector and Tom's Guide's own experiences, Facebook went down around 5:30 pm ET on April 8. Those trying to get to the site were greeted with an error message that read "Sorry, something went wrong. We're working on getting this fixed as soon as we can."

Update (5:55 pm ET): It appears that the outage has been fixed.

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Facebook outage — (Image credit: Facebook)

In looking at DownDetector's status page, the problem appears to be fairly widespread, with users across the U.S. reporting the outage. User comments below indicate that Facebook is suffering outages across the world, too.

The problem does not appear to be isolated to Facebook, either: Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Whatsapp, and Oculus — all Facebook-owned properties — also look to be inoperative.

The outage is affecting not just the desktop interfaces, but also the mobile apps for those sites, though we were able to successfully post to Instagram from the iOS app.

This is the second major outage among these sites in the last three weeks, affecting literally billions of people across the planet.

We have yet to hear an official statement from Facebook, but will update this story as we hear more.

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Michael A. Prospero is the U.S. Editor-in-Chief for Tom’s Guide. He oversees all evergreen content and oversees the Homes, Smart Home, and Fitness/Wearables categories for the site. In his spare time, he also tests out the latest drones, electric scooters, and smart home gadgets, such as video doorbells. Before his tenure at Tom's Guide, he was the Reviews Editor for Laptop Magazine, a reporter at Fast Company, the Times of Trenton, and, many eons back, an intern at George magazine. He received his undergraduate degree from Boston College, where he worked on the campus newspaper The Heights, and then attended the Columbia University school of Journalism. When he’s not testing out the latest running watch, electric scooter, or skiing or training for a marathon, he’s probably using the latest sous vide machine, smoker, or pizza oven, to the delight — or chagrin — of his family.