Facebook suffered major outages Monday afternoon, just one day after a whistleblower claimed that the social media giant is aware of how it’s used to spread hate, violence and misinformation.
Instagram and WhatsApp, both owned by Facebook, also were down as of 2:15 p.m. EST.
“We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products,” Facebook officials wrote on Twitter. “We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”
Down Detector, a tracking site monitoring the status of other websites, logged “tens of thousands of reports for each of the services.”
While Facebook would load on Monday; Instagram and WhatsApp were only accessible for viewing. Users couldn’t load content or send messages.
The problems surfaced — coincidentally or not — after whistleblower Frances Haugen claimed Sunday on “60 Minutes” that Facebook worked to hide evidence that individuals and entities used the site to spread hate, push violence and misinformation.
Facebook has denied those claims.
