Facebook Inc said on Wednesday an issue with uploading or sending media files on its apps and platforms has been resolved.
Earlier in the day, many users globally were not able to send and receive images, videos and other files over its social media platforms including WhatsApp and Instagram, and the social media company said it was working to fix the problem.
“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 had said.
Facebook, which gets tens of millions of dollars from advertising revenue daily, declined to comment when asked whether it will refund businesses. In a similar incident in March, the company said it would consider refunding advertisers for lost exposure.
“The disruption appears to be related to an internal infrastructure or application issue,” said ThousandEyes, a company that monitors internet traffic globally.
The partial outage frustrated users of the world’s largest social network, with many taking to Twitter to complain.
More than 14,000 users reported issues with Instagram, while more than 7,500 and 1,600 users complained about Facebook and WhatsApp, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com.
Some people also noticed that instead of photos, blank boxes appeared with what appear to be AI-generated text.
The text includes descriptions such as, “Image may contain: 2 people, people sitting, laptop and indoor” or “your Profile Photo, Image may contain: 1 person, hat.”
Part of me, though, just wants to see how Facebook would describe a screenshot of how it describes photos. pic.twitter.com/Yy0rjMXdvH
— Megan GriffithGreene (@griffithgreene) July 3, 2019
Users Voice Outrage
An outage map posted by Downdetector.com shows that the majority reports of technical issues are concentrated in Europe and the United States.
•Facebook photos not loading
•Restarts device
•Photos not loading
•Turns WiFi on
•Photos not loading
•Restarts WiFi router
•Photos not loading
•Opens Twitter and #facebookdown
•Reads thread
•Relieved phone is not broken
•Pissed cause so much time wasted— Joshua Hernandez (@jhrnandz89) July 3, 2019
“Images still not appearing in many posts in south of England,” wrote one person.
“Seems very selective on what loading and what’s not. Seems purposely done. Take this as a sign and spend time with your family and friends,” another person wrote.
“Wow cant believe Facebook has been down for this long, photos don’t show up, videos aren’t showing up or they disappear, you name it and its not working, From Rochester NY. Hope the fix it soon,” said one.
Added another, “I guess Facebook is just taking the day off, in honor of tomorrow’s holiday?”
In March 2019, Facebook and Instagram went down for at least 12 hours.
At the time, the company said it was due to a “server configuration change,” and apologized for the downtime.
By Munsif Vengattil and Rama Venkat in Bengaluru
Epoch Times reporter Jack Phillips contributed to this article.
