KAMPALA- Facebook and its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms which went down in many parts of the world on Monday, is working around the clock to restore the service.
The company said it was “aware that some people are having trouble accessing Facebook app” and it was working on restoring access.
Facebook said: “We are aware some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We are working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and apologise for any inconvenience.”
The company did not say what might be causing the outage, which began around 11:45 ET. It is normal for websites and apps to suffer outages, though one on a global scale is rare. Users reported being unable to access Facebook in California, New York and Europe, reports Associated Press.
Facebook is going through a major crisis after the whistleblower who was the source of The Wall Street Journal’s series of stories exposing the company’s awareness of internal research into the negative effects of its products and decisions went public on “60 Minutes” on Sunday.
Frances Haugen was identified in a “60 Minutes” interview Sunday as the woman who anonymously filed complaints with federal law enforcement that the company’s own research shows how it magnifies hate and misinformation, leads to increased polarization and that Instagram, specifically, can harm teenage girls’ mental health.
The Journal’s stories, called “The Facebook Files,” painted a picture of a company focused on growth and its own interests instead of the public good. Facebook has tried to play down the research. Nick Clegg, Clegg, the company’s vice president of policy and public affairs, wrote to Facebook employees in a memo Friday that “social media has had a big impact on society in recent years, and Facebook is often a place where much of this debate plays out.”
The BBC reports all three services are owned by Facebook and could not be accessed over the web or smartphone apps.
This website broke the news in Kampala Uganda and reported about how many users were experiencing difficulty in accessing the service.
Raymond Atuhe, WhatsApper told us he was noticing the service being slow and taking long to connect.
A micro blogger in Uganda Allan Muhindo Tsindika tweeted:
“I had not seen this, thought u Kla peeps are enjoying the Service and us in Kiwenda district myeeee,.”
Uganda has about 4 million social media users out of 41 million people.
Downdetector, which tracks outages, logged nearly 80,000 reports for WhatsApp and more than 50,000 for Facebook.
Data from the website suggests the outage is affecting users of Facebook services across the world.