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Facebook, Instagram outage sends users scurrying to Twitter

Facebook says it has invested $US13 billion over the past few years in keeping the platform safe.

Facebook says it has invested $US13 billion over the past few years in keeping the platform safe. Photo: AAP

The world’s biggest social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram, have been hit with worldwide outages this Friday morning.

The outage apparently sent users scrambling over to Twitter seeking more information on why the services were not working.

Instagram said some users were facing issues using its social media service amid widespread complaints online that Facebook was also down.

“Is your #instagramdown? We know some people are having issues right now,” the company said on Twitter.

“We’re working on it and hope to have everything running smoothly as soon as possible.”

According to downdetector.com, which monitors websites, reports of outages began to spike from about 7.30am.

But the crisis was short-lived, with Instagram advising the service was back online within half an hour of its original statement.

This is the second time all of the Facebook-owned services have crashed in the past month.

Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp had worldwide outages in March 2019.

Not all users were affected by the outage, though enough to prompt a series of memes from social media addicts desperate to know when their newsfeeds would be back online.

Many revealed they had blamed their internet and one said they spent 20 minutes switching from wifi to mobile data before realising their mistake.

Queensland Police issued a public service announcement, reminding everyone that a social media outage was not an actual emergency.

“Facebook and Instagram being down is not a matter for Triple Zero (000) – go analogue and just tell people what your breakfast looks like,” it wrote.

Many poked fun at competitor Twitter being used to confirm the outage, posting cheeky memes about the rush of users checking their Twitter feeds for information about the other social channels.

Others used the opportunity to jokingly spruik Twitter and its reliability in times of social media mayhem.

While it was widely agreed that the outage was inconvenient and frustrating for those who wished to use Facebook, Instagram and Messenger on Friday morning, for some, it was good news indeed.

-with agencies

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