Several social media sites, including Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, and WhatsApp are back up and running after users reported widespread outages Monday.
Facebook started to come back around 5 p.m. CT on Monday, but all the features weren't working properly.
Some users said they couldn't schedule posts, but the site is accessible.
Downdetector, a website that reports telecommunication and social media outages, received more than 38,000 reports of a problem with Facebook at about 10 a.m.
In a tweet, Facebook said they were aware of the problem and were working on getting the issue resolved.
"We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience."
On Twitter, Facebook chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer issued an apology: "*Sincere* apologies to everyone impacted by outages of Facebook-powered services right now," Schroepfer tweeted. "We are experiencing networking issues and teams are working as fast as possible to debug and restore as fast as possible."
Facebook released on a statement late Monday that reads in part:
"To all the people and businesses around the world who depend on us, we are sorry for the inconvenience caused by today’s outage across our platforms...
Our services are now back online and we’re actively working to fully return them to regular operations. We want to make clear at this time we believe the root cause of this outage was a faulty configuration change. We also have no evidence that user data was compromised as a result of this downtime...
We understand the impact outages like these have on people’s lives, and our responsibility to keep people informed about disruptions to our services. We apologize to all those affected, and we’re working to understand more about what happened today so we can continue to make our infrastructure more resilient."
News of Facebook's outage comes less than 24 hours after former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen's interview aired on "60 Minutes" Sunday, to expose the social media company is aware its products and decisions cause harm.
Hours after the outage was reported, Bloomberg reported that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's net worth plunged $7 billion.
So, how did this happen? According to computer security writer Brian Krebs, the likely culprit is the social media sites possibly being removed from the DNS (Domain Name System) servers.
Downdetector also received more than 54,000 reports of a problem on Instagram at around 10 a.m.
According to the site, they received more than 22,000 reports of a problem on WhatsApp at approximately 10:30 a.m.
Down Detector also reported issues with Tik Tok, after they received more than 500 reports of a problem at approximately 1:30 p.m.
For some people the social media outage was a welcome reprieve.
"It’s refreshing to tell you the truth," said David Piranha. "I think it’s really a bad thing, which is a trip, because as soon as it comes back up you’re like, 'OK, post!'"
Other people in the valley had their bank accounts impacted.
Jeff Thalblum owns Free Agent Sports, selling sports memorabilia and autographs.
The Peoria resident was preparing for a lucrative Monday, selling Cardinals' items on Facebook after the big win against the Rams on Sunday."Everyone’s jumping on the bandwagon right now," said Thalblum. "Collectibles, anything Arizona Cardinals is hot right now."When he went to post pictures of his items though, he noticed the site was down."The credit card machine doesn’t have a single sale on it today," said Thalblum. "Usually there’s a paper trail of all the sales. Today wasn’t a good day.""There's a lot of people that [social media] is their lifeblood, and that's how they sell [things]," said Tom Tardy, a cyber security expert and founder of GingerSec. "So you have this one company that has such a huge impact, financially and globally."
The Peoria resident was preparing for a lucrative Monday, selling Cardinals' items on Facebook after the big win against the Rams on Sunday.
"Everyone’s jumping on the bandwagon right now," said Thalblum. "Collectibles, anything Arizona Cardinals is hot right now."
When he went to post pictures of his items though, he noticed the site was down.
"The credit card machine doesn’t have a single sale on it today," said Thalblum. "Usually there’s a paper trail of all the sales. Today wasn’t a good day."
"There's a lot of people that [social media] is their lifeblood, and that's how they sell [things]," said Tom Tardy, a cyber security expert and founder of GingerSec. "So you have this one company that has such a huge impact, financially and globally."
