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Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp down across Europe for more than three hours

Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp left users frustrated today after going offline across the UK and Europe for more than three hours.

The three social network giants, which are owned by Facebook, went down at about 11am, according to monitoring website Down Detector.

The website said it had received thousands of complaints today about the networks going offline.


Down Detector has reported thousands of complaints (Source: Down Detector / OpenStreetMap)

Those trying to log on have met an error message saying the site “can’t be reached”.

People were unable to access the websites on PCs or laptops, and irate users have taken to rival Twitter to vent their annoyance.

One person said: “What are you doing, Zuckerberg?”

Another said: "Twitter , you are the winner !!!"

https://twitter.com/whatupth/status/1117393191068520448

The outage was also been reported in the United States, Turkey, Morocco and the Philippines.

Last month the websites were hit by a similar outage which hit users across the globe for 14-hours, Facebook's worst ever. The social network later blamed the issue on a “server configuration change”.

Read more: Facebook blames server problem for worst outage ever

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has also said the firm was exploring end-to-end encryption for the entire platform, extending the current security coverage of Whatsapp onto both Messenger and Instagram.

The cause of today's outage is unknown. Facebook is yet to comment.