Facebook confirms it was NOT hacked as the site along with Messenger and Instagram remain down HOURS into global outage

• Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram all crashed shortly after noon (ET) on Wed 
• Users have reported ‘total blackout’ in some cases,  have been unable to refresh
• Despite speculation about a huge DDoS attack, Facebook says it wasn’t hacked 

A slew of Facebook-owned sites are experiencing a worldwide outage, leaving thousands of users unable to connect to social media for several hours.

Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram have all been having issues since around noon (ET), in some cases resulting in a ‘total blackout.’

The three apps crashed primarily in major urban areas across the United States and Europe, along with parts of South America.

WhatsApp – also owned by Facebook – has been hit by spotty service issues as well, though it does not appear to have been affected as hard as the other apps. 

Facebook confirmed the platform-wide issue Wednesday afternoon, but had not yet released a fix as of about four hours after the outage first struck. 

While there has been speculation that the site may have been targeted by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, the firm said this is not the case. 

A slew of Facebook -owned social media sites are experiencing a worldwide outage, leaving thousands of users unable to connect. Outage hotspots for Facebook are shown in the map above

‘We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps,’ the firm Tweeted about two hours into the outage.

‘We’re working to resolve the issue as soon as possible.’

‘We’re focused on working to resolve the issue as soon as possible, but can confirm that the issue is not related to a DDoS attack,’ Facebook later added.

Social media users flocked to Twitter to complain about the outage after finding that not only is Facebook down, but Instagram is too.

More than a third of Facebook users affected by the outage reported that they were experiencing a ‘total blackout.’

Others said they could not refresh the News Feed or log into their accounts.  Similar problems cropped up on Instagram and Messenger at roughly the same time.

Instagram users have reported being unable to refresh the feed, log in, or access the desktop site. 

On Messenger, many users have not been able to connect to the server at all and have reported that they’re not receiving messages.

Many were quick to point out that they are frequently turning to Twitter to check if other websites are down, noting that the platform somehow is always ‘standing strong’ despite service issues elsewhere.

Others took the opportunity to joke about Facebook’s recent privacy scandals.

‘Pages won’t load. I’m sure they’re busy loading new algorithms to sell your data & spy on you better and more efficiently,’ one users tweeted.