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Facebook, Instagram Had A Major Outage, And A Worldwide Existential Crisis Ensued

The worldwide outage of the popular social media platforms, including Snapchat, sent everyone into a tailspin.
Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat saw worldwide outages on Wednesday.
Justin Sullivan via Getty Images
Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat saw worldwide outages on Wednesday.

Facebook and Instagram experienced an hourslong outage across the U.S. on Wednesday, and throngs of social media-savvy citizens experienced an existential crisis.

In the absence of the extremely popular platforms, many flooded Twitter to celebrate, despair or express deep suspicions over the outages.

Snapchat, another popular encrypted messaging app, was also down on Wednesday.

During those hours, some in the U.S. who tried to log into Facebook found themselves confronted with a note that said the company was down for “required maintenance” and that “Facebook Will Be Back Soon.”

Ironically, Facebook employees also turned to Twitter to let users know that there was an issue.

“We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps,” the company tweeted. “We’re working to resolve the issue as soon as possible.”

Instagram issued a similar tweet, saying it knew the situation was “frustrating” and that the company was hard at work to resolve it.

Some people suspected that the outages indicated there was a sweeping cyberattack on the social media sites. Facebook quickly addressed the rumors, assuring users that the site blackouts were not an attack.

And while access to Facebook and Instagram were restored for some users, the many still left out continue to air their grievances on good ol’ occasionally trusty Twitter.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.