FACEBOOK Inc said it restored services on Sunday after users could not access the social networking site, its photo-sharing network Instagram and messaging app WhatsApp in many parts of the world, including Pakistan.

However, Facebook did not specify the cause or scope of the outages.

“Earlier today, some people may have experienced trouble connecting to the family of apps. The issue has since been resolved; we’re sorry for any inconvenience,” a Facebook spokesman said.

The issue comes after Facebook experienced one of its longest outages in March, when some users around the globe could not access Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp for more than 24 hours.

On Sunday, Downdetector.com indicated that there were more than 12,000 incidents of people reporting issues with Facebook at its peak.

The outage monitoring website also showed that, at the peak on Sunday, there were more than 3,000 incidents of people reporting issues with WhatsApp and over 7,000 with Instagram.

Downdetector.com’s live outage map showed that the issues were mainly in Europe and Asia.

Published in Dawn, April 15th, 2019