Facebook assigns the fault to the "server configuration"

Facebook and Instagram have been down for hours on Tuesday, including in the United States, just over a week after the announcement of the world's largest social network. "routine test" caused the disconnection of the site.

This time, the tech company said that "a server configuration was causing intermittent problems in all applications of the world".

"We are back 100% for everyone and we are sorry for any inconvenience," said a spokesman for Facebook in a statement issued shortly before 16:00. PT.

The outage adds to the list of issues that have affected the company this year. Last week, the New York Times published a lengthy report on the front page that shone the spotlight on how Facebook executives have faced a number of scandals, including the reckless treatment of data by society and the electoral interference of Russian trolls.

Downdetector.com, which monitors outages, shows that users have reported problems with Facebook around 4:41 pm Pacific time. The blackout mainly affected the east coast of the United States, as well as parts of South America, Europe and Asia. Prior to Black Friday, companies also reported that they could not place ads on the social network because of the outage.

Users flocked to Twitter Tuesday to evacuate the crash using Facebook and Instagram dropdown hashtags. Even Facebook contacted Twitter to alert users that the company was working to fix the blackout.

But for hours, users still reported that Facebook was slow or not working.

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