- // Update 1 (05/10/2021 12:02 am) Facebook and Instagram DNS record withdrawn: Report
Can’t send messages on WhatsApp or access the latest posts on Instagram or Facebook? Well, you are not alone. Facebook and all other social media companies it owns, including Instagram and WhatsApp, are facing a widespread outage right now.
Downdetector and Twitter are flooded with reports of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp being down at the moment across the globe. You might be seeing a “This site can’t be reached” error message while trying to visit Facebook or Instagram on desktop. You can see the spike in the number of error reports on Downdetector in the image below:
![[UPDATE: Back Online] WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram Are Facing an Outage Right Now!](https://beebom.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Screenshot-2021-10-04-at-9.54.21-PM.png?w=1024&quality=75)
Facebook and WhatsApp are aware of the downtime and are currently investigating the issue. You can check out the official tweets from WhatsApp and Facebook Comms exec Andy Stone attached below. Also, Facebook has tweeted that it’s working to bring the service back to normal “as quickly as possible”.
So yeah, there’s nothing to panic about because Facebook and its owned social media platforms should be functioning normally in no time. We will update you once the connectivity issues with Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are resolved. Even FB Messenger and Oculus are said to be facing an outage as well.
Update 1 (05/10/2021 12:02 am)
As reported by several security researchers on Twitter, the DNS records that tell systems how to find Facebook or Instagram have been “nuked” or to put it politely “withdrawn,” as you can see in the tweets below:
Someone nuked the DNS A and AAA records for Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp 🤭 pic.twitter.com/8TaU2eR1mm
— @jack lets nazis target my family (@chadloder) October 4, 2021
We don't know why this change was made. It could well have been the result of an internal, system wide change or update that went awry. It's all speculation at this point why. FB alone is in control over its DNS records.
— briankrebs (@briankrebs) October 4, 2021
Due to the platform’s DNS records being removed, all Facebook domains have been rendered inaccessible for the past 3-odd hours. We will keep updating you on the situation, so be sure to check back for more updates.
