Topline
Facebook and Instagram users took to Twitter on Thursday to report technical errors, causing the hashtags “Instagram down” and “Facebook down” to trend.
Facebook and Instagram appeared to go down for some people Thursday afternoon.
Getty
Key Facts
Errors on Facebook, which owns Instagram, spiked at 2:18 p.m. with nearly 21,000 issues reported, according to data from Downdetector, a site that collects and analyzes status reports to identify outages and service disruptions.
Errors on Instagram peaked at 2:19 p.m. with nearly 78,000 problems reported, according to Downdetector data.
Facebook and Instagram errors both dropped significantly by 3:00 p.m. with about 324 reported issues on Facebook and a little over 1,000 on Instagram.
The most common issues reported were difficulties logging in, posting and refreshing the newsfeed or seeing a total blackout when people loaded the site.
The difficulties were due to a network configuration change, a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement, adding that the issue has been resolved.
Tangent
There have been issues simultaneously on Facebook, Instagram and What’s App, which is also owned by Facebook, in the past. When there were outages on all three sites at the same time last May, Facebook apologized and said it was due to a “server configuration change.”
Further Reading
Facebook returns after its worst outage ever (Verge)
Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp were down for more than two hours (Verge)
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