Is WhatsApp down? Issues, outages and errors explained

SOCIAL media giant WhatsApp was among several apps experiencing problems on Friday, November 19, 2021.

Facebook and Instagram were also down, leaving millions of users locked out for several hours.

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Is WhatsApp down?

At around 11:45am EST on Friday, November 19, 2021, WhatsApp and other apps such as Instagram and Facebook started experiencing problems.

WhatsApp and Instagram users reported technical issues when attempting to run the apps on their mobile devices along with a dozen other apps.

WhatsApp messages were not reaching their recipients, with sent texts sitting with a clock icon next to them to indicate that they haven’t been dispatched.

Those who attempted to open the sites on desktop were reportedly being met with a black white page and a message that reads “500 server error”.

Hundreds of thousands of people reported issues with the social networking apps on the rival website Twitter, and DownDetector.

It’s still unclear what caused the outages.

Following the outage, it was reported that that Mark Zuckerberg, who owns the platform Facebook – which WhatsApp and Instagram operate through – lost a total of $7billion from the issues.

Read our Facebook outage live blog for the very latest news and updates…

How can I check if WhatsApp is down?

Those who may be experiencing difficulties with WhatsApp can check other social media apps, such as rival Twitter, for reports.

If you don’t have a Twitter account Down Detector will tell users when the apps are down or experiencing difficulties.

If it appears the problem may not be widespread, try checking the internet connection on your device or exiting the app before logging back in.

When else has WhatsApp been down?

WhatsApp first arrived on our screens in February 2009 and as of 2021 it has two billion monthly active users.

Facebook and Instagram commonly experience small individual outages, but it’s rare for the apps to all go down at once.

They run on a shared infrastructure meaning other services run by Facebook will experience server issues, including the Oculus website and Facebook Workplace.

Here’s when WhatsApp outages have been reported:

• March 2019 – Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp all went down in what was described at the times as “its worst outage ever”. The issue was put down to a server configuration change..
• July 3, 2019 – Users reported issues on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, with the latter experiencing difficulties with receiving messages. A FB spokesperson said a “routine maintenance operation” accidentally triggered a bug.
• March 19, 2021 – Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp reported issues
• October 4, 2021 –  Facebook’s biggest-ever outage takes other apps, such as WhatsApp, offline for seven hours. The crash came after a “bungled server update”.
• October 5, 2021 – DownDetector records thousands of users again reporting issues with Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.