Gone in minutes, out for hours: How Facebook outage crippled daily lives of billions

Facebook and its family of apps, including Instagram and WhatsApp, were inaccessible for hours Monday, taking out a vital communications platform used by billions and showcasing just how dependent the world has become on a company that is under intense scrutiny.

Facebook’s apps — which include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Oculus — began displaying error messages around 11:40 a.m. Eastern time, users reported. Within minutes, Facebook had disappeared from the internet. The outage lasted more than five hours, before some apps slowly flickered back to life, though the company cautioned the services would take time to stabilize.