Facebook down: Twitter is up as users complain about social network outage
Office workers forced into doing work, Social media editors forced to write stories in midst of Facebook outage
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.UPDATE: Facebook is back
Panic bled across social networks on Thursday as news spread that Facebook was down.
People who tried to access Facebook at around 9am on Thursday, perhaps to comment that something was "not news" or to wish someone they don't know well enough to text a "happy birthday" were met with a white page that simply said "Sorry, something went wrong. We're working on getting this fixed as soon as possible." Later Google simply displayed a page saying: "This webpage is not available."
Soon Twitter was flooded with posts by users complaining that the world was ending. It was not clear whether these people were being serious or there was merely an entire social network making the same joke.
The outage was worldwide with users from Bahrain to the US to the UK complaining that they were having to go onto Pintrest for their inspirational quotes, and parents complaining they were having to whatsapp pictures of their children to their friends instead. Some even said they were forced to spend time with their offspring in the midst of the desperate June Facebook outage.
This is not the first time Facebook has gone down. Facebook went down in the US for some in February of this year. It previously went down for four hours in October, with network maintenance blamed for the freeze. It went down before that in August 2012. In the movie about Facebook, 'The Social Network', founder Mark Zuckerberg was famously quoted saying Facebook would never go down.
UPDATE: Facebook is back.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments