Facebook and Instagram down: Sites not working as thousands report being unable to get online

Facebook prides itself on rarely going down – but occasionally buckles, often for unknown reasons

The man had tagged himself in photos at the riot (Alamy)

Facebook is down, with thousands of people already reporting that they can't get onto the social network.

Instagram, which is owned by the social network, also appears to be suffering problems. It isn't clear what has caused the problems and whether they are connected.

Facebook has always prided itself on rarely going down, and its claim became famous when it appeared in the film The Social Network. But it does occasionally experience outages, many of which are usually quickly fixed and go unexplained.

The company's status page didn't list any issues for the site. But other, working social networks like Twitter were filled with complaints about not being able to get onto Facebook.

The site Down Detector reported that thousands of people were having problems logging onto Facebook, using all of its platforms. It listed the problem as a "total blackout", affecting the whole network rather than its website or apps specifically.

The site appeared to indicate that the problem was specifically affecting those users in the UK. Almost all reports came from the country, with most of the rest of the world apparently unaffected.