CONSUMERS are complaining that Facebook Messenger AND Instagram all appear to have stopped working for some users.
The Facebook-owned apps mysteriously appeared to have gone down on Thursday morning.
The first of thousands of complaints to tracking site Down Detector began being received at around 9am.
According to tracker the issues are being felt in parts of Europe, Asia and Australia.
In Europe the Messenger outage hotspots include the UK, France, Belgium, Poland and Hungary.
The complaints in the UK were centred in major centres of population in the UK, including the central belt of Scotland.
Messenger fault heatmap. Source: Down Detector
Some 79% of complaints about Facebook Messenger are about receiving messages, and one in five were having issues with logging in.
Some 37% of complaints about the Facebook app are about a "total blackout", 32% were about the app and a further 30% reported login problems.
With Instagram, 41% complained about news feed issues, 32% about the stories and 25% raised problems with posting.
At its peak, some 2,400 Facebook Messenger were complaining every minute about being unable to login, send texts, or receive calls to the popular messaging app.
The outage also comes at a difficult time for Facebook, arriving just hours after it was announced that the company was being hit by lawsuits that threaten to break up it, Instagram and WhatsApp.
One user complained about Messenger: "I couldnt send or receive messages more than an hour now...? Whats wrong with your app..?"
Another said: "Mine just keeps saying waiting for network but I am completely connected as everything else is working at home. It just doesn't make sense. "
On Twitter there a series of users complaining about the problems.
One wrote: "So Facebook is down in the UK now, great."
I don't know why, there is such an error that it shows me that I have poor internet."
Facebook maintains a “Platform Status” page, for the use of developers and others who rely on it for business.
That is reporting a “major outage” which has existed for eight days and refers to problems including the following error: "Invalid Page Welcome Message for Messenger Destination Ads".
Another error registered states: "New messaging threads result in "(#551) This person isn't available right now." This surfaced on December 4 and was supposed to be fixed.
A Facebook spokesman said: “We are aware that some people are having trouble sending messages on Messenger, Instagram and Workplace Chat.
"We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible.”
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