Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp face a global outage: here is what happened

The services of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram were touched last night by users who complained about the inability to download or upload images, videos and other files on apps. Facebook, who owns both WhatsApp and Instagram, then tweeted that he was aware that people were having trouble accessing services via his apps and that he was working to fix the problem. The global outage has affected users in Europe, India and the United States, which are important markets for the company.

Facebook then clarified that the problem had been solved and that it had returned to 100% after the outage. "Earlier in the day, some people and businesses have struggled to download or upload images, videos, and other files to our apps and platforms. The problem has since been solved and we should go back to 100% for everyone. We are sorry for any inconvenience, "tweeted the company.

Learn more: Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram have had problems; users complain on Twitter

A Facebook spokesman later said the problem was due to a routine maintenance operation, which had accidentally triggered a bug and made it difficult for users to download images and videos.

#Facebookdown and #instagramdown were on Twitter because users around the world reported that these apps were not working. In India, some WhatsApp users have indicated that they can not download or view images sent to them.

Read more: Why Facebook services have been affected and why you could see more

"During one of our routine maintenance operations, we have triggered a problem that makes it difficult to upload or send photos and videos by some people," said Facebook in its statement, without giving more details.

It was not the first big Facebook crash this year. On March 13, Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram services were down for nearly 24 hours, which was described as one of the company's worst failures. He then tweeted that the problem was due to a "server configuration change" that was preventing many people from accessing Facebook applications and services.

Learn more: Facebook and Instagram down: users report difficulties accessing social media platforms

"We have now solved the problems and our systems are being recovered. We are really sorry for the inconvenience caused and appreciate the patience of each one ", was read in the release.

According to Reuters, more than 14,000 users have reported issues with Instagram, while more than 7,500 and 1,600 users have complained about Facebook and WhatsApp based on the Downdetector.com crash tracking website.

Facebook was not the only company in trouble yesterday. Twitter has reported problems with direct messages for a small proportion of users. Earlier in the week, issues related to CloudFlare resulted in half of the internet crash, with several websites not loading.