Facebook and Instagram are experiencing outages on Thursday, leaving some users around the world unable to post photos or answer messages on the platforms.

There were thousands of complaints about both social networks being down as of 10:30 a.m. ET, according to the tracking site Down Detector. Facebook (FB), which owns both platforms, acknowledged the problem.

“We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing Facebook’s family of apps, including Instagram. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible,” a Facebook spokesperson told CNN Business.

Parts of Instagram appear to be affected, including the news feed being slow to refresh and trouble uploading pictures. Shopping on Instagram could also be potentially be disrupted just as stores launch their Black Friday sales. The outage on Instagram sparked complaints on Twitter in response to Instagram’s Wednesday post about Thanksgiving.

The two services are prone to frequent outages but Thursday’s is especially problematic because people love sharing their holiday festivities.

In July, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp were all down for nearly a day. The lengthy disruption likely upset advertisers that spend large amounts of money to reach potential customers on Facebook platforms. The company’s flagship social network has more than 2.3 billion users, and Instagram has more than 1 billion.

WhatsApp doesn’t appear to be impacted by Thursday’s outage.

Source: CNN
-Agencies