Facebook confirmed networking issues on all its properties on Monday. Aside from messenger, the massive outage took down Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus.
With that, Facebook users flooded Twitter to post their memes and reactions on the offline services.
The Facebook outage started just before noon ET and was fixed some time at 6:00 PM ET. The almost six hours of offline service is the second-worst outage for Facebook, with the first being its 2019 incident that took more than 24 hours to fix.
Both Down Detector and Twitter newsfeeds highlighted the Facebook outage problems that happened worldwide, regardless of server or language. The outage unfortunately blocked a lot of functions from its extension websites, too.
According to The Verge, the Facebook outage broke nearly all the company's internal systems used by employees for work. Some FB employees resorted to their Outlook email accounts as a communication platform. Employees who were already logged in to their Google Docs and Zoom could still use their accounts, but employees with logged out accounts found their work email blocked in the outage.
During the outage period, Instagram servers flashed "5xx Server Error" messages. Facebook's virtual reality arm, Oculus, also experienced issues. Users could load pre-installed games and online browser, but accessing social features and installing new games were impossible to do.
Facebook Developers and Employees Apologize for the Inconvenience
With Facebook down, users moved to Twitter in search of a server update. Some Facebook personnel tweeted the announcement together with their apologies.
Facebook communications executive Andy Stone said Facebook was aware of the problem and they were working on the issue.
We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) October 4, 2021
Mike Schroepfer, the chief technology officer of Facebook, said networking issues caused the outage.
*Sincere* apologies to everyone impacted by outages of Facebook powered services right now. We are experiencing networking issues and teams are working as fast as possible to debug and restore as fast as possible
— Mike Schroepfer (@schrep) October 4, 2021
FB Users Twitter Reaction, Rants, Memes on Outage Issues
Immediately noticing the FB outage problems, users moved over to Twitter to express their frustration. The next six hours of Facebook maintenance created a flood of memes and jokes on its issues.
When the Facebook outage happened, did Mark Zuckerberg fix its systems properly?
Mark zuckerberg right now. 😂 #facebookdown #instagramdown #WhatsApp pic.twitter.com/gxpcUWovpU
— mohamed Diraac (@MohamedDiraac) October 4, 2021
Even Gordon Ramsay was spotted complaining about the issue
Well with #facebookdown what else are you going to watch ??? #GordonGinoandFred pic.twitter.com/LTF5vOhgp8
— Gordon Ramsay (@GordonRamsay) October 4, 2021
Twitter also probably tookl in a lot of new active users during the FB outage
Twitter accepting new WhatsApp and Facebook users in the past few hours#whatsappdown #instagramdown #facebookdown pic.twitter.com/SnHe6TtnDQ
— Benji (@Cule_Ben) October 4, 2021
If not Twitter, FB fans could also hang out in Club Penguin
Twitter user @HARDWHITE tweeted a Nicki Minaj joke for the moment
Be warned, FB fans and Instagram users who turned to Twitter might experience culture shock.
Instagram and Facebook users checking out Twitter while they’re down https://t.co/MGZoRYmRXl
— James Felton (@JimMFelton) October 4, 2021
Users, workers, and fans also had some downtime from FB during the outage period.
Me pretending to be productive at work when Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are down. pic.twitter.com/QzzqUPa9k2
— RESPAWN 🪑 (@RESPAWNProducts) October 4, 2021
Twitter user @BenjaminEnfield theorized a section of FB code being deleted from the server.
