Facebook down: Social network not working as users stopped from posting

Andrew Griffin
Wednesday 18 October 2023 17:56 BST
Comments
Andrew Cooper reportedly shared a post on Facebook indicating people should only seek help if they are employed and give up basics like TV and mobile phone contracts (Alamy/PA)
Andrew Cooper reportedly shared a post on Facebook indicating people should only seek help if they are employed and give up basics like TV and mobile phone contracts (Alamy/PA)

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

Facebook has stopped working, with users complaining they are unable to post.

Many feared that they had been banned from using the site. But the problems appear to be related to technical issues.

Other platforms owned by parent company Meta – such as WhatsApp and Instagram – appeared to be functioning as usual. Meta has recently been working to integrate the infrastructure of its different social networks, which seemingly means that they occasionally go offline at the same time.

Some parts of Facebook also appeared to be working as normal, at least for some users. Facebook users complained particularly that posting appeared to be broken, even as other parts of the site worked.

That led many to fear that they had been blocked from posting on the site because of some unknown infringement of the rules. On tracking website Down Detector, many said they were worried they had got in trouble until they saw details of the outage.

Meta does not operate an official status page for its customer-facing products. It does offer one to businesses, which showed no current issues at the time of publication.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in