Facebook CEO Mark
Zuckerberg issued an apology after three platforms run by the social
media giant — Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp saw hours-long outages on
Monday. “Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger are coming back online
now. Sorry for the disruption today — I know how much you rely on our services
to stay connected with people you care about,” Zuckerberg wrote.

Users across the
world started experiencing issues with the social media platforms at around 9
pm on Monday night (India time) and millions wrote on Twitter that their
messages were not being loaded and their user feed had been disrupted.

Also Read | History of worst Facebook outages over the years

Downdetector, a
site that monitors internet outages, said that the Facebook outage was the
longest it had ever seen. “The largest outage we’ve ever seen on Downdetector
with over 10.6 million problem reports from all over the globe,” the website wrote
on Twitter.

The United States
led the world in number of problem reports with 1.7 million reports, according
to news agency ANI. The US was followed by Germany with 1.3 million reports and
Netherlands saw 915,000 reports.

Also Read | Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg loses $7 billion after outage, whistleblower row

People were
largely left to Twitter and Telegram to remain connected. White Twitter was
functional, Telegram said that users in certain parts of the world were experiencing
problems loading chats and receiving notifications.

As users were
hamstrung by the outages, Facebook stocks plummeted by nearly 5%. “To the huge
community of people and businesses around the world that depend on us; we’re
sorry. We’ve been working hard to restore access to our apps and services and
are happy to report they are coming back online now. Thank you for bearing with
us,” Facebook wrote on Twitter as services were gradually restored.

Mike Schroefer,
chief technology officer on Facebook, wrote on Twitter, “Since apologies to
everyone impacted by the outages…Facebook services are coming back online now…(it)
may take some time to get to 100 per cent. To every small and large business,
family and individual who depends on us, I’m sorry.” Schoefer further said that
the platforms were experiencing networking issues.