Facebook Inc breaks silence on global outage facing its social media apps

AGENCIES: Technology Giants Facebook Inc. have finally opened up on the global outage that has shut down its social networking sites including Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram.

The popular social media apps went down for millions of users across the world at around 6:45 pm (EAT) and have since not been restored.

Tweeting about the incident, Facebook and WhatsApp confirmed the outage and said the company is working efforts to restore normal services as quickly as possible.

“We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience,” WhatsApp and Facebook said in separate Tweets.

We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.

— Facebook (@Facebook) October 4, 2021

We’re aware that some people are experiencing issues with WhatsApp at the moment. We’re working to get things back to normal and will send an update here as soon as possible.

Thanks for your patience!

— WhatsApp (@WhatsApp) October 4, 2021

According to datarepotal.com‘s global statistics, there are 3.40 million social media users in Uganda in January 2021, the majority of which are Facebook and WhatsApp users, followed by Twitter and Instagram.

Uganda National Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) statistics indicate that the number of social media users in Uganda increased by 900 thousand (+36%) between 2020 and 2021. The number of social media users in Uganda was equivalent to 7.3% of the total population in January 2021.

Ugandans mainly use social media platforms for communication, marketing products, and networking.