Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp Back Online After 6 Hour Outage

Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp appear to be back online Monday after an outage that lasted more than six hours. Facebook acknowledged the issue but did not say why its websites and applications had been down.

Reports on DownDetector.com suggest the outages began around 12 p.m. ET. Facebook employees were also unable to use the company's internal email on Monday, a source told CBS News. 

"We're aware that some people are having trouble accessing the Facebook app," the company said in a statement. "We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience."

Mike Schroepfer, the company's chief technology officer, also tweeted an apology: *Sincere* apologies to everyone impacted by outages of Facebook-powered services right now. We are experiencing networking issues and teams are working as fast as possible to debug and restore as fast as possible."

Facebook fell along with other big tech stocks on Monday, with the company losing nearly $50 billion, and Forbes reported that Mark Zuckerberg's fortune alone lost nearly $6 billion. 

In 2019, Facebook experienced a similar outage that lasted for several hours. The following day, the company said a "server configuration change" was to blame.

The outages come the morning after "60 Minutes" aired an interview with a whistleblower who said Facebook is aware of how it amplifies hate, misinformation, and unrest but claimed the company hides what it knows. Facebook has denied the claims.