Facebook, WhatsApp Hit By Photo Glitch

Facebook has apologised for a glitch on Wednesday that meant that people could not upload or send media files (i.e. photos etc) across its various apps and platforms.

Downdetector.com showed that the problems affected mostly the United States and Europe on 3 July, and lasted from 2pm until after 11pm.

There have been other Facebook outages this year. In April Facebook restored services after a three hour outage but it declined to give a reason. Facebook also experienced one of its longest outages to date in March, with Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp going offline for more than 24 hours.

Photo glitch

But this outage was much shorter. Facebook admitted on Wednesday that there was an issue with uploading or sending media files on its apps and platforms, including Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger.

“We’re aware that some people are having trouble uploading or sending images, videos and other files on our apps,” the social network tweeted. “We’re sorry for the trouble and are working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible.”

It later admitted the outage had been caused by “routine maintenance”, although Facebook did not offer any further explanation of the outage.

“During one of our routine maintenance operations, we triggered an issue that is making it difficult for some people to upload or send photos and videos,” Facebook reportedly said.

And then late on Wednesday at 23.00, the social network tweeted that the problem had been resolved.

“Earlier today, some people and businesses experienced trouble uploading or sending images, videos and other files on our apps and platforms,” tweeted Facebook. “The issue has since been resolved and we should be back at 100% for everyone. We’re sorry for any inconvenience.”

There is a chance that the outage could hurt Facebook financially, as the platform makes most its money from adverts. There is speculation that Mark Zuckerberg’s firm may have to issue refunds for advertisers.

Past outages

Facebook has been hit before by service outages in previous years. In January 2015 for example, Facebook blamed a technical fault, and not hackers, for an outage that downed its own site and those of several services it owns.

In November 2017 WhatsApp suffered a major outage after a problem prevented millions of people across the world from using the app.

WhatsApp also suffered another outage in May 2017, when a problem left people in many parts of the world unable to send or receive messages.

Quiz: Think you know all about Facebook?