Millions of Facebook and Instagram users have been forced to vent their frustration via Twitter after the social media networks experienced an unexplained outage across the US and Europe.
For about an hour users from the US and Canada to Chile and Italy have reported being unable to log in or post on their feeds from 12:01pm EDT, according to DownDetector.
More than an hour after users began experiencing problems, a Facebook spokesperson confirmed that some people are "currently having trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps". The spokesperson failed to give an explanation for the global outage.
#FacebookDown began trending on Twitter globally as frustrated netizens vented their fury at being denied access to their virtual lives.
Facebook said that it is aware that “some people” are having trouble accessing their apps as media report that Instagram and Whatsapp, which are also owned by the social media giant, are affected as well. The issue with the apps has not been caused by a DDoS attack, Facebook confirmed in a Twitter post.
Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, suffered similar unexplained major outages in January this year, and November and October last year. As usual, users flocked to the “old reliable” Twitter to occupy their time until the world is restored to its natural order.